Speaker 1: Before we begin on the podcast today, just a quick
Speaker 1: note of housekeeping. If you want to support the show,
Speaker 1: we're over on Patreon, Patreon dot com, slash Noble Blood Tales,
Speaker 1: where I release episode scripts and where I do mini
Speaker 1: series is discussing mostly fictitious television shows based on royals.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm going through the old c W show
Speaker 1: Rain episode by episode, So join the Patreon if that
Speaker 1: interest to you. We also have merch at the website
Speaker 1: df t b a dot com. We're selling pins, mugs,
Speaker 1: We had totes. They might have sold out, but all
Speaker 1: that's very exciting. And then one more announcement, I am
Speaker 1: leading a pilgrimage to England this April through this amazing
Speaker 1: company called common Grounds, and it's a pilgrimage where we're
Speaker 1: talking about Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, which I'm just like
Speaker 1: absolutely thrilled to. There's a link in the episode description
Speaker 1: if you're interested. I think there might still be a
Speaker 1: few slots left. So if you're interested in joining me
Speaker 1: and traveling throughout England and talking about Mary Shelley and
Speaker 1: Frankenstein this spring, yeah, look into that. I think that'll
Speaker 1: be really exciting. So, without further ado, here's the episode
Speaker 1: m Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion
Speaker 1: is advised. It was a spring morning when a stranger
Speaker 1: appeared straggling out of the woods on the outskirts of
Speaker 1: the small Swedish village of odin Sala. The man was filthy,
Speaker 1: wearing peasant clothes that fit poorly. They looked borrowed or stolen. Still,
Speaker 1: even though the man looked like a beggar, there was
Speaker 1: something familiar in his countenance, his blue eyes, his long,
Speaker 1: red blonde beard. A whisper carried itself through odin Sala
Speaker 1: faster than a horse could run. This stranger wasn't a
Speaker 1: vagabond or a peasant. He was King Eric the four,
Speaker 1: the King of Sweden. Eric had been missing for three days,
Speaker 1: ever since he ran off into the woods after what
Speaker 1: had happened at Uppsala Castle. Had the King been raving
Speaker 1: like a madman lost in the woods for three days straight,
Speaker 1: or had he disguised himself as a peasant on purpose,
Speaker 1: trying to invent a new life for himself. For years,
Speaker 1: there had been rumors that the King's behavior was verging
Speaker 1: on erratic that he was prone to mental instability. But
Speaker 1: in May of fifteen sixty seven, those rumors would reach
Speaker 1: a crisis point. King Eric would stain his soul with
Speaker 1: murder and there would be no coming back for him.
Speaker 1: Somehow word got to the capital that the king had
Speaker 1: appeared in odin Sala, and the king was brought back
Speaker 1: to Stockholm, where he was bathed, stripped out of his
Speaker 1: rough peasant clothing, and redressed in the finery befitting of
Speaker 1: a monarch. He still wasn't talking much sense. His servants
Speaker 1: and advisers were scared to speak with him. Instead, they
Speaker 1: brought in his stepmother and then his mistress to help
Speaker 1: soothe him, to try to get him to explain what
Speaker 1: had happened. All Eric could do was beg for forgiveness. Please,
Speaker 1: please forgive me, he said, over and over again. Heads
Speaker 1: of state caused people's deaths all the time. Wars are
Speaker 1: fought in their names, sentences carried out for their justice,
Speaker 1: but those deaths are indirect. In his madness, King Eric
Speaker 1: would go one step further. He had imprisoned a group
Speaker 1: of nobles, a powerful rival family, on largely false charges,
Speaker 1: but merely containing them wouldn't soothe the nagging voice in
Speaker 1: Eric's head, the paranoia and fear that had calcified into
Speaker 1: a cancer. On May sixty seven, Eric went into the
Speaker 1: cell where the nobleman Neil Store was being kept. Niels
Speaker 1: was on his knees in prayer, already King. Eric raised
Speaker 1: a dagger and stabbed him, and then Eric went to
Speaker 1: the next cell over where Niel's father was imprisoned. Eric
Speaker 1: raised the knife again and brought it down, whispering the
Speaker 1: entire time, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. I'm Danis Schwartz,
Speaker 1: and this is noble blood. The trope of royal madness
Speaker 1: is common and recurring, both in his dry and in
Speaker 1: popular culture. Mad seems to be one of those words
Speaker 1: that's used, like eccentric, to provide a euphemistic sheen to
Speaker 1: mental illness when someone is wealthy or powerful. Princess Alexandra
Speaker 1: of Bavaria believed she had swallowed a grand piano made
Speaker 1: of glass, and that it remained intact inside her, threatening
Speaker 1: to shatter at any moment. Charles the Fourth in France
Speaker 1: was said to have suffered from the glass delusion as well,
Speaker 1: believing that his own body parts were made of glass
Speaker 1: instead of flesh. The stories of madness are seemingly endless,
Speaker 1: and I've covered a fair share of them on this
Speaker 1: podcast already. There's George the Third in England, who babbled
Speaker 1: for days straight, Ludwig the Second in the hills of
Speaker 1: southern Germany, who spoke to portraits as though they were
Speaker 1: his dining companions, Carlotta, the ill fated Empress of Mexico,
Speaker 1: and of course there's the Spanish princess known to popular
Speaker 1: his story predominantly as Juana la Loca. Inbreeding is a
Speaker 1: favorite armchair explanation for the prevalence of royal madness that
Speaker 1: the family trees of Europe were so entangled that mental
Speaker 1: illness as a genetic trait spun its away around royal
Speaker 1: families the same way the prominent Habsburg chin did, or
Speaker 1: the way hemophilia would after Queen Victoria. A few writers
Speaker 1: throughout history have suggested that it actually might be the
Speaker 1: pressures and privileges of being a royal itself that causes
Speaker 1: a mind to teeter away from sanity. It's a theory,
Speaker 1: and not a very scientific one, mind you, known as
Speaker 1: Caesar madness, the notion that unchecked power could give rise
Speaker 1: to paranoia and megalomania. But whatever the cause of the
Speaker 1: madness to come, there weren't any clues that it would
Speaker 1: emerge at all. When Eric was a young prince, Eric
Speaker 1: was the oldest son of King Gustav the First, sometimes
Speaker 1: known as Gustav Vasa in many ways. Gustavasa is considered
Speaker 1: to be the father of modern Sweden. It was under
Speaker 1: his authority that Sweden broke from the Catholic Church and
Speaker 1: began to establish itself in earnest as a Protestant power.
Speaker 1: Eric was an excellent student, a quick study in languages, history,
Speaker 1: and math. His mother had died when he was still
Speaker 1: an infant, and his father had two more sons, John
Speaker 1: and Charles, by his second wife. Eric would be tutored
Speaker 1: alongside his younger brother John, the pair of them wheedling
Speaker 1: each other, trying to show off for their esteemed tutor,
Speaker 1: the French Calvinist scholar Dionysus Bureaus. In addition to the
Speaker 1: basic school subjects that one might have expected a young
Speaker 1: prince to study, Eric also learned astrology, a fundamental tool
Speaker 1: in any monarchs arsenal in the sixteenth century, when it
Speaker 1: came to trying to predict the future. There was one
Speaker 1: astrological prediction that's stuck with Eric for his entire life,
Speaker 1: that he would be undone by a fair headed man.
Speaker 1: A worrying prediction and also not a very specific one,
Speaker 1: considering that our young prince was living in Sweden, where
Speaker 1: fair headed men are pretty much a krona a dozen.
Speaker 1: The sense that his crown might be taken away from
Speaker 1: him was the central concern in Eric's life. One of
Speaker 1: the most important things he could do in terms of
Speaker 1: solidifying his power was making an advantageous marriage. Eric set
Speaker 1: his sight on Queen Elizabeth, the first in England. His
Speaker 1: requests for her hand in marriage were numerous. He started
Speaker 1: before she even ascended to the throne, back when she
Speaker 1: was just the sister of the Catholic Queen Mary, but
Speaker 1: then he continued asking after Elizabeth became a Queen of
Speaker 1: England in her own right. Eric sent multiple envoys to Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: and he sent along a beautiful, full length portrait of
Speaker 1: himself wearing a dashing orange outfit that I imagine he
Speaker 1: believed would send Elizabeth swooning. After two unsuccessful ambassador missions
Speaker 1: to secure the marriage, Eric sent his younger half brother, John,
Speaker 1: a Duke to England to plead his case in person.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth had been stringing Eric along in the most polite terms,
Speaker 1: never outright rejecting him, just in case his proposal might
Speaker 1: serve a useful purpose when it came to leverage later on.
Speaker 1: But eventually, even diplomatic Elizabeth had to be straightforward, writing
Speaker 1: perhaps one of the most scorchingly devastating letters in history.
Speaker 1: Translated from the Latin, it reads, A letter truly yours,
Speaker 1: both in the writing and sentiment, was given to us
Speaker 1: on December by your very dear brother, the Duke of Finland.
Speaker 1: And while we perceive therefore in the zeal and love
Speaker 1: of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in
Speaker 1: part we are grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene
Speaker 1: Highness with the same kind of affection, And that indeed
Speaker 1: does not happen because we doubt in any way of
Speaker 1: your love and honor. But as often we have testified,
Speaker 1: both in words and in writing, that we have never
Speaker 1: yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone.
Speaker 1: We therefore beg your Serene Highness again and again that
Speaker 1: you be pleased to set a limit to your love
Speaker 1: that it advanced not beyond the laws of friendship for
Speaker 1: the present, nor disregard them in the future. I have
Speaker 1: always given both to your brother, who is a most
Speaker 1: excellent prince and deservedly very dear to us, and also
Speaker 1: to your ambassador. Likewise the same answer, with scarcely any
Speaker 1: variation of the words, that we do not conceive in
Speaker 1: our heart to take a husband, but highly commend the
Speaker 1: single life, and hope that your serene Highness will not
Speaker 1: longer spend time in waiting for us. Of course, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: referring to herself as we and us is a prime
Speaker 1: example of using the royal we. She's only referring to herself.
Speaker 1: But even after this letter, Eric still wasn't deterred. He
Speaker 1: decided to make the arrangements to go visit England in
Speaker 1: person himself. Surely if Elizabeth saw him, his handsome long
Speaker 1: beard in the Swedish style, his excellent fashion, surely then
Speaker 1: she would understand just how excellent of a match the
Speaker 1: pair of them would make. Luckily for Elizabeth, Eirik's plans
Speaker 1: were curtailed. As he was making final arrangements to travel
Speaker 1: to England, Eirik's father died, which meant that he Eirik
Speaker 1: was now the king of Sweden. Eric took the regnal
Speaker 1: name Eirik the fourteenth, even though there had not been
Speaker 1: thirteen previous king Erik's of Sweden. He took that number
Speaker 1: from the semi fictitious History of Sweden written by Olaus Magnus,
Speaker 1: which traced the glorious Swedish monarchy back to Magog, the
Speaker 1: grandson of Noah. So, as you can imagine, it's closer
Speaker 1: to mythology than fact. But it's great pr not to
Speaker 1: be just the seventh Eirik, as was more likely, but
Speaker 1: the fourteenth merely the next in a long and illustrious lineage.
Speaker 1: One of his first moves as the newly crowned King
Speaker 1: Erik the fourteenth was to summon representatives of all of
Speaker 1: the estates of Sweden together in a Riksdag, a legislative
Speaker 1: body almost like a parliament. The purpose of Eric's political
Speaker 1: move was simple, to curtail the authority of his two
Speaker 1: half brothers, the royal Dukes, and to minimize the role
Speaker 1: of the nobility altogether. Instead of surrounding himself with the
Speaker 1: usual quadre of noblemen, Eric selected one man, a commoner
Speaker 1: named Gore and person who would go on to become
Speaker 1: his closest adviser, and some would argue the Machiolvellian political
Speaker 1: presence behind Eric's entire reign. Eric had some reason to
Speaker 1: be suspicious of noblemen. His half brother John had married
Speaker 1: a Polish princess without Eric's permission, which gave John powerful leverage.
Speaker 1: That was the sort of thing that could give someone
Speaker 1: the power to overthrow Eric and to make matters worse
Speaker 1: for the king. He was still unmarried, though he had
Speaker 1: an number of illegitimate children by mistresses. Bastards did no
Speaker 1: good when it came to having an heir to the throne.
Speaker 1: It makes a monarch all the more unstable if he
Speaker 1: can't establish a clear cut dynasty. Eric tried proposing not
Speaker 1: just to Queen Elizabeth, but to princesses and queens all
Speaker 1: over Europe, including to Elizabeth's rival and cousin, Mary, Queen
Speaker 1: of Scots, all to no avail. The only woman that
Speaker 1: Eric seemed to be able to establish any real relationship
Speaker 1: with was a Swedish commoner, a woman named Karen Man's daughter.
Speaker 1: Karen was the daughter of a corporal, and the way
Speaker 1: the legend goes, she was selling nuts in a Christmas
Speaker 1: marketplace when the king, strolling through town, saw her and
Speaker 1: couldn't look away. The selling nuts in a marketplace story
Speaker 1: is almost certainly fictitious. More grounded sources say that she
Speaker 1: was a servant in the household of the king's face
Speaker 1: ever at court musician, and that she was serving the
Speaker 1: king as a waitress while he was drinking with his friend.
Speaker 1: But however they met, the King was besotted. She became
Speaker 1: the King's mistress and was granted a room at court,
Speaker 1: a significant wardrobe and servants. It was a small scandal,
Speaker 1: the King making such a show about a woman with
Speaker 1: such little pedigree. She must be a witch, people said
Speaker 1: around the palace. How else could you explain how entranced
Speaker 1: the King seemed by her all of a sudden. According
Speaker 1: to one story, Karen Man's daughter was actually engaged to
Speaker 1: another man before she caught the king's eye. She wisely
Speaker 1: dumped her fiancee, but he reappeared sneaking into the palace
Speaker 1: after Karen was elevated to her new chambers. He begged
Speaker 1: her to come run away with him. The ex fiancee
Speaker 1: was caught and brought before the King, who sentenced him
Speaker 1: to be executed. But even if Karen made the King
Speaker 1: incredibly jealous, when they were together, she seemed to bring
Speaker 1: out the best in him, calming him down, grounding him.
Speaker 1: I've noticed that people tend to write about Eric like
Speaker 1: he's King Kong. In one famous portrait of the King
Speaker 1: and Karen, she's an angelic figure with long blonde hair,
Speaker 1: wearing a white dress, leaning over Eric's right shoulder, while
Speaker 1: the scheming Goren person hovers over the King's left shoulder,
Speaker 1: a symbolic angel and devil of the King's decision making.
Speaker 1: It was around this time, in fifteen sixty three that
Speaker 1: the King's mental illness began to become more pronounced. He
Speaker 1: would make arbitrary decisions, snap at people, become randomly violent,
Speaker 1: and this period was marked by a profound paranoia that
Speaker 1: the nobles were plotting against him, especially the nobles in
Speaker 1: the powerful Steward family. The Store family patriarch was a
Speaker 1: man named Savante Stenson Store. His wife, Martha, was the
Speaker 1: sister of the King's second wife, the mother of Eric's
Speaker 1: half brothers and apologies in advance for this incredibly confusing
Speaker 1: family tree. Martha was also the aunt of the former
Speaker 1: king's third wife, which, if you're constructing the mental map
Speaker 1: in your head, means that, yes, the king married a
Speaker 1: woman who died, married another woman who died, and then
Speaker 1: married that second woman's niece. The details of the family
Speaker 1: tree don't matter as much as the larger fact that
Speaker 1: the Store family was powerful and deeply entrenched in Swedish nobility,
Speaker 1: and Savante's oldest son, Niels, was their shining golden boy.
Speaker 1: The golden boy part was literal. Niels had light blonde hair.
Speaker 1: Eric had never forgotten the prediction that he would be
Speaker 1: usurped by a blond man. He became convinced that it
Speaker 1: was Niel's steward. In fifteen sixty six, Eric had Nail's
Speaker 1: arrested and accused of treason for a vague and all
Speaker 1: but made up claim that he was quote neglecting his
Speaker 1: duties by not having some peasants properly working at the
Speaker 1: fortress port of Verin. Niels was forced to stand trial
Speaker 1: before the High Court, and with Gore on Person standing
Speaker 1: as chief prosecutor, Niels was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: Sentencing him to death sounds a little bit more dramatic
Speaker 1: than it actually was. When Eric became king, he replaced
Speaker 1: most of the nobles on the High Court with commoners
Speaker 1: who were loyal to him, and of course he installed
Speaker 1: his right hand man, Gore in Person as chief prosecutor.
Speaker 1: In the five years between fifteen sixty two and fifteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, the High Court sentenced over three hundred people
Speaker 1: to death, but almost every one of those sentences were commuted.
Speaker 1: Torture was only allowed to be used on people who
Speaker 1: were already sentenced to death, so that sentence was something
Speaker 1: of a loophole. Sentencing someone to death meant that you
Speaker 1: could torture them to get whatever information you wanted out
Speaker 1: of them, and then you would naturally commute the sentence.
Speaker 1: So Niels to her sentence of death was almost immediately
Speaker 1: reduced to merely humiliation. Nils was forced to wear a
Speaker 1: crown made of straw, and he was paraded through the
Speaker 1: streets of Stockholm in a broken down carriage so that
Speaker 1: passers by could shout and throw things at him. During
Speaker 1: his procession, Nils was still bleeding from torture. The idea,
Speaker 1: insofar as King Eric had an idea, was to so
Speaker 1: humiliate Neil Store that no one would ever see Neil's
Speaker 1: as a plausible rival again, and Nils would also sir
Speaker 1: as an example to the other nobles who might want
Speaker 1: to undermine the king. The idea backfired completely. Neil Store's
Speaker 1: punishment only further reminded the nobles how irrational and arbitrary
Speaker 1: the King could be. It united the nobles against him.
Speaker 1: The king probably sensed that the Store family was whispering
Speaker 1: and having secret meetings behind his back. At one point,
Speaker 1: the King sent Neil Store post humiliation to try to
Speaker 1: negotiate a marriage treaty with Princess Nada of Lorraine. Like
Speaker 1: all of the kings would be marriages. It failed, but
Speaker 1: the King got wind that maybe Nils had sabotaged him
Speaker 1: on purpose, and so gathering evidence against the nobles. The
Speaker 1: King announced that there was going to be a Reeks
Speaker 1: dog in Upsala, which naturally all of the nobles would
Speaker 1: have to attend. As they were making their way from
Speaker 1: Stockholm to Upsala, Eric invited several prominent nobles to joy
Speaker 1: in him at spart Show Castle. They came expecting to
Speaker 1: be hosted by the King and his court. Instead, it
Speaker 1: was in ambush. The nobles were arrested and tried before
Speaker 1: the High Court. Those who fell for the trap were
Speaker 1: Neil Store's brother Eric Store, Nils father Spante Store, Abraham
Speaker 1: Sen Book, Stan Banner, Ivor Iverson, and Stan Ericsson. The
Speaker 1: Reichstag was postponed. The ambush noblemen were sentenced to death
Speaker 1: and sent to be imprisoned at Upsala Castle. A few
Speaker 1: days later, Neil Store was arrested in Lorraine and brought
Speaker 1: to Psala Castle to join his brother and father. The
Speaker 1: delayed Reichstag eventually assembled, although for obvious reasons, it included
Speaker 1: a smaller representative of nobles than normal. Eric was planning
Speaker 1: on getting the Reichstag to discuss the sentencing of the
Speaker 1: accused nobles, but when he stood up to speak before
Speaker 1: the assembly, he realized he had lost the notes he
Speaker 1: had prepared for his speech. Fumbling, he wasn't able to
Speaker 1: speak at all. Meanwhile, Savante's wife, Martha, the sister of
Speaker 1: the former queen, was desperate to try to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get her family out of this terrible, unjust situation.
Speaker 1: She and her daughter Anna came to Sparta to try
Speaker 1: to get an audience with the king, but they were
Speaker 1: turned away, not just rejected, but placed under house arrest
Speaker 1: with guards in the nearby village. Martha kept trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what was going on. She begged Karen Man's daughter,
Speaker 1: the voice of reason in the King's ear, to intervene
Speaker 1: on her behalf to ask the king to release the
Speaker 1: stores who hadn't done anything wrong. Martha eventually made her
Speaker 1: way Topsala Castle and met with Karen, who was able
Speaker 1: to offer her reassurances that Eric promised her that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't hurt the prisoners, but the king's promise didn't seem
Speaker 1: to mean much. The King began acting erratically, stalking up
Speaker 1: and down the hallways of Upsala Castle where the prisoners
Speaker 1: were being kept, sometimes seeming angry, sometimes apologizing. At one point,
Speaker 1: the King entered Sponte's door's cell, where he fell to
Speaker 1: his knees begging for Sponte's forgiveness. I promise, the King said,
Speaker 1: this will all be handled and there will be a
Speaker 1: full reconciliation. There wasn't. On May twenty fourth, fifteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: in what might be characterized as a man estate, the
Speaker 1: King ran into the chamber where they were keeping Niel's stour.
Speaker 1: The King had a dagger drawn when he saw Niels,
Speaker 1: he shouted, so there thou art thou Trader. Allegedly, Niels
Speaker 1: was reading a prayer book at the time. He had
Speaker 1: only moments from when he saw the king coming at
Speaker 1: him to proclaim his innocence to pray for forgiveness, but
Speaker 1: the King ignored him. King Eric stabbed Nail's store until
Speaker 1: he was dead. Eric's hand still shaking, still covered in blood,
Speaker 1: but still gripping the knife. Eric stood and went next
Speaker 1: door into the room where Spante's door Nails as father
Speaker 1: was imprisoned. The King fell to his knees before the
Speaker 1: man for the second time, while Spante slowly absorbed what
Speaker 1: had happened, the shouting he had heard the king before him,
Speaker 1: covered in blood the knife. I'm sorry, the King said,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, but I can never expect to you
Speaker 1: to be able to forgive me for killing your son,
Speaker 1: And then before Svante could react, King Eric stabbed him
Speaker 1: as well. Leaving the room, Eric let the bloody dagger
Speaker 1: fall to his side, but he kept it in his hand.
Speaker 1: He turned to the head guard, a royal provost marshal,
Speaker 1: kill all of the other prisoners he ordered, except Harsten.
Speaker 1: The guards obliged. Niels and Spante's store were already dead.
Speaker 1: But the guards killed the remaining noblemen imprisoned in Upsala Castle.
Speaker 1: Two men were spared, Sten Axelsson and Sten Ericsson, because
Speaker 1: they were both named Sten, and none of the guards
Speaker 1: were sure which of them the king had been referring to.
Speaker 1: The king wandered outside the castle, still manic, covered in blood,
Speaker 1: holding the dagger. His old tutor, Dionysus Barris, found him
Speaker 1: and tried to calm the king down, but the king
Speaker 1: was long gone. He shoved off his tutor. Kill him too,
Speaker 1: he said to the guards, and they obliged. From there
Speaker 1: the king wandered into the woods, where he disappeared for
Speaker 1: three days, only to reappear later dressed as a peasant
Speaker 1: in a nearby village. The guards at Uppsala were ordered
Speaker 1: to keep the deaths a secret, and so they still
Speaker 1: stood guard and still received food deliveries and gifts from
Speaker 1: the prisoners families, as if there were still men in
Speaker 1: the cells. It's likely that the Reichstag in session didn't
Speaker 1: know on Ma when Gore in Person arranged for them
Speaker 1: to sign to the fact the nobles had been traders
Speaker 1: and should be sentenced to death, that they were all
Speaker 1: already dead. Person was covering the king's tracks, retroactively turning
Speaker 1: the murders into executions. After the king was brought back
Speaker 1: to Stockholm, no one dared speak to him or hold
Speaker 1: an audience with him. It was only the king's final stepmother,
Speaker 1: his father's third wife, who was brave enough to approach him.
Speaker 1: She was the first person to be granted an audience.
Speaker 1: Upon seeing the dowager Queen, the cousin of several of
Speaker 1: the men who had been killed, Eric fell to his
Speaker 1: knees and wept. He begged her for forgiveness and began
Speaker 1: working with her immediately on establishing some sort of settlement
Speaker 1: for the families of the men. The two Stints who
Speaker 1: had been spared were released, and Sfante's wife Martha soon
Speaker 1: arrived to help negotiate the reconciliation. The king agreed that
Speaker 1: there had been a quote venomous person who had advised
Speaker 1: him to do the executions, meaning really they were all
Speaker 1: the fault of gore on Person. That would be enough
Speaker 1: later on for the senators who would later be appointed
Speaker 1: to hold power. As Eric's faculties continued to slip, gore
Speaker 1: on Person would be arrested and found guilty of percolation.
Speaker 1: And perjury. Although the senators wouldn't execute him, they would
Speaker 1: merely imprison him in case the king recovered his senses.
Speaker 1: But for the time being, Eric was still the king,
Speaker 1: and whether it was madness or love, he turned all
Speaker 1: of his attention to his mistress, Karen Man's daughter, doing
Speaker 1: everything he could to marry her legitimately and to legitimize
Speaker 1: the two children that he already had by her, even
Speaker 1: though she was a full commoner. The two were married
Speaker 1: morganatically in secret December nine, fifteen sixty seven, and then
Speaker 1: married officially in the next year. Karen had warned the
Speaker 1: dowager Queen that Eric was planning on killing his two stepbrothers,
Speaker 1: the Dukes, and perhaps wisely, they both stayed away from
Speaker 1: the wedding, but Eric and his half brother John were
Speaker 1: able to reconcile. Eric forgave him for any past transgressions
Speaker 1: as long as he recognized that the marriage between the
Speaker 1: King and Karen was fully legitimate, and as long as
Speaker 1: John honored their son Gustavus as the next king. John agreed,
Speaker 1: although I wonder if an eye roll was implicit the
Speaker 1: King's attempts to legitimize his commoner wife, whom he elevated
Speaker 1: to queen with the name Cuterina, Madnu's daughter would be
Speaker 1: the final nail in the coffin of his reputation. Though
Speaker 1: Karen was kind and I'm sure people liked her as
Speaker 1: a person, she was a commoner, a bar wench. It
Speaker 1: was as sure a sign of lunacy as anything the
Speaker 1: King had done trying to pass her off as a
Speaker 1: rightful queen. For her part, Karen seemed aware of the
Speaker 1: tricky position that the king had put her in, and
Speaker 1: she was more than aware of the public's feelings towards her.
Speaker 1: In a letter to the King's sisters, her new sisters
Speaker 1: in law, she referred to herself not as queen, but
Speaker 1: as Eric's quote chosen queen language that couches herself with humility,
Speaker 1: a phrase that seems to imply, yes, I also know
Speaker 1: that this is a little out of the ordinary. After
Speaker 1: the wedding, Eric issued a circular to be disturbed me
Speaker 1: did among the people giving thinks that he had been
Speaker 1: delivered from the assaults of the devil, saying, in short,
Speaker 1: that he was no longer mad. The problem with the writing, however,
Speaker 1: was that madness was visible in every sentence. It was
Speaker 1: finally time for his brothers to depose him, which they
Speaker 1: did fairly easily. The king won two victories against the rebels,
Speaker 1: but by September of fifteen sixty eight they captured Stockholm,
Speaker 1: and King Eric surrendered both his crown and Gore in person.
Speaker 1: John was declared to be King John the Third, and
Speaker 1: he basically immediately ordered that Gore in person be executed
Speaker 1: a very slow death by torture and then eventually beheading.
Speaker 1: The former King Eric was imprisoned alongside his beloved commoner
Speaker 1: wife Karen in a series of castles. The only known
Speaker 1: portrait we have of Karen, the first commoner Queen of Sweden,
Speaker 1: is from this period. It's a scribble of her that
Speaker 1: the king did a sketch while in prison. Karen and
Speaker 1: the King had two more children, who died as infants
Speaker 1: in the terrible conditions of captivity. After that, the new
Speaker 1: king kept Karen imprisoned separately to prevent her from having
Speaker 1: more children who might become a threat to the new
Speaker 1: royal line. In his diary, Eric wrote, they took my
Speaker 1: wife from me. Eric spent two more years imprisoned alone
Speaker 1: before he died in autopsy centuries later confirmed what had
Speaker 1: long been rumored he had been poisoned by arsenic. According
Speaker 1: to legend, the arsenic came in his final meal of
Speaker 1: peace soup. In the end, it was a fair haired
Speaker 1: man who deposed him. His brother John was blonde. That's
Speaker 1: the sad story worry of Eric, King of Sweden. But
Speaker 1: keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about
Speaker 1: what happened to Karen Man's daughter and their children. After
Speaker 1: the King's death, Karen Man's daughter was released from imprisonment.
Speaker 1: No longer seen as any real threat, she was given
Speaker 1: an estate in Finland where she was allowed to live
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life, and she was well liked.
Speaker 1: They're making friends, especially among the peasantry. When there would
Speaker 1: be a peasant rebellion years later, they wouldn't plunder her estate.
Speaker 1: Karen and Eric's daughter, SIGRed, became a lady in waiting
Speaker 1: to the new King's daughter her cousin, and she would
Speaker 1: eventually marry two Swedish noblemen. Karen and Eric's son, however,
Speaker 1: would have a much more challenging life. Though secret had
Speaker 1: been allowed to stay with Karen in prison, their son Gustavus,
Speaker 1: was taken from her, sent to be educated by Jesuits
Speaker 1: in Poland. There's only one confirmed meeting of Karen getting
Speaker 1: to see her son again, in fifteen ninety five in Estonia.
Speaker 1: Gustavus had become a Catholic. He didn't recognize his mother,
Speaker 1: and he had forgotten how to speak Swedish. She only
Speaker 1: knew it was her son at all because she recognized
Speaker 1: his birthmarks. He was poor, wearing ragged clothes working as
Speaker 1: a mercenary. Karen did her best to try to give
Speaker 1: her son money to try to provide for him, to
Speaker 1: try to persuade the Swedish king to allow her son
Speaker 1: to return to his home country, but the government refused.
Speaker 1: Gustavus was banished for life. It was too big of
Speaker 1: a risk to have the son of a deposed king
Speaker 1: in the country. Gustavus remained a vagabond, dying alone in
Speaker 1: Central Russia in sixteen o seven. Noble Blood is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz.
Speaker 1: Executive producers include Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by rema il Keali and Trevor Young.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
Speaker 1: and you can learn more about the show over at
Speaker 1: Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.