April 7, 2014 • 30 mins
A handsome playboy who once courted Queen Elizabeth I, Eric started his time as king with focus and ambition. But his paranoia led him to alienate the aristocracy, fall into violent rages and stab a captive noble to death. Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast and
I've traded and UH. Today we will be covering another
mentally ill royal because listeners love them so much, and
(00:23):
this one is from a country we haven't talked about
them a lot, which is Sweden, and it actually people
will probably notice some parallels between this story and UH
the podcast we covered on Korea's Prince Sotto. There are
some similar themes that run father issues madness slowly developing.
This one is not quite as creatively gruesome, however, which
(00:44):
is a nice little break perhaps. And we're gonna actually
build this one up kind of in layers, so we're
not going to go chronologically. We're gonna cover various aspects
of this person's life categorically, So we'll talk a little
bit about the family and how they came into power.
We'll talk about out, you know, his romantic interests, will
talk about his political kind of each and chunks, and
(01:04):
then his sort of mental state and how it broke
down throughout all of this. So many of these things
were going on simultaneously and will connect the dots where
we can, but they're just each such big chunks of
his life that I wanted to kind of give them
each their own time in the spotlight. And so the
person we're talking about today is Eric the fourteenth of Sweden,
and he was not the only member of his family
(01:25):
to succumb to madness, but because he sat on the
ruling throne, his mental issues were in sharp focus during
his reign. So first we actually have to talk about
his father. His father was Gustave First. Gustav was crowned
king of Sweden in three and similarly to the story
of Korea's crown Prince Sato, Eric's father was also a
(01:47):
man who was admired for his leadership skills, but also
had kind of a darkness about him. Modern historians have
suspected that he may have had some degree of mental
illness as well. Yeah, he, again, very similar to the
Sado story, was very quick to anger. His rage could
result in very violent behavior. There are stories of him
(02:09):
tearing his daughter's hair out when she angered him, like
he grabbed her by the hair so hard he pulled
out the hair by the roots. Um he beat a
goldsmith to death for taking a day off without being
granted leave, like he hadn't asked for the time off,
and he would occasionally chase people around the castle with
knives just for annoying him, and that particular behavior will
(02:31):
kind of echo again later in his son in kind
of even a creepier way. Probably the most important legacy
of Gustav was his leadership of the rebellion against King
Christian the Second in the Swedish War of Liberation. So
before this war, Sweden and Mark and Norway were all
part of the dynastic Union of Kalmar. Gustav, who had
(02:54):
been a nobleman but not a royal, was chosen to
rule the newly liberated country, and that whole story, you know,
the liberation of Sweden could certainly be another topic on
its own. So we're not getting into all of the
politics of that. We just want to establish that Gustav
was a leader in this rebellion and kind of a
very revered leader. Uh. And then ten years into Gustav's reign,
(03:16):
Prince Eric was born, and that was on December thirteenth,
fifteen thirty three, and he was born in the Royal
castle in Stockholm. His mother was Katherine of Saxe Lauenberg,
and Catherine actually died when Eric was still quite tiny.
He was not even two years old, and as his
parents marriage was not a particularly happy one, Gustav really
was not all that broken up over the death of
(03:37):
his wife, and he soon took a second wife, Margaretta Landhuvoud,
which I may or may not have butchered, and that
she would actually end up being his second of three.
But we won't get into all of his his multiple wives.
But basically Eric grew up never really knowing his mother.
So as Eric came into his own his father granted
(03:58):
him the title of duke, and he was basically the
sixteenth century equivalent of the modern prep school superstar. He
was extremely attractive, athletic, and bright. He also ran with
a group of friends who liked a party, and he
developed a drinking habit pretty early on. His father did
not approve of all of this behavior and how prone
(04:18):
he was to just a lot of excess. Yeah, he
really was kind of your um, like you said, classic
spoiled rich kid. He could do whatever he wanted, and
so he did. This is when somebody is going to
just diagnose him with affluenza of his terrible behavior later,
I hope not that word troubles me me too. Uh.
(04:39):
But Eric eventually became king on September twenty nine, fifteen sixty,
when Gustav died, and this was just before Eric turned
twenty seven, so uh, he was kind of living the
playboy life at this point. Although he had served as
regent once before from fifteen fifty five to fifteen fifty
six while his father was away on a military campaign
(04:59):
in Russia. Uh, And he had already been ruling a
handful of provinces in his title as duke. But this
augmentation of his power once he ascended the throne kind
of played with his head a bit and probably brought
into focus some issues that had been existing but not
as obvious and not as disconcerting. So this same hedonism
(05:21):
that Eric had really embraced when he was a duke
rolled right over into his reign as a king, and
that started with his coronation. His ceremony was this huge
lavish display. He immediately redecorated the castle with all kinds
of lavish tapestries and furnishings, and he wanted everybody to
call him majesty and he was the first ruler in
(05:42):
Sweden to do so. Yeah, he added a lot of
titles to the Swedish lexicon that had not been there previously,
even though they are in the other royal lineage, Majesty
being one of them. Uh. And it's commonly believed by
most modern historians when they write about Eric that all
of the pomp and circumstance, his over indulgence in luxury, uh,
(06:03):
you know, needing to have the most beautiful everything around him,
was really just a way for him to hide a
very deep seated insecurity and that sense of inferiority that
he seemed to really just kind of stew in came
from two primary sources. One was that his father, despite
having a temper, was a really loved king and he
(06:25):
was seen as a hero, so you can imagine the
difficulty of filling those shoes as the next in line
to the throne. And the second is that that line
to the throne was very short. This is not a
long family monarchy. Eric's family, the House of Vasa, was
in its infancy as rulers of the nation because Gustav
had taken over after you know, Sweden was liberated. So
(06:46):
Eric was constantly in fear of being ousted because he
felt like he was not part of an established royal lineage,
and this brought him to the point where he was
paranoid about just about everyone he came in contact with.
He suspected everyone was going to try to take power
from him. Perhaps the thing that he's most well known
for is a courtship of a long time podcast favorite tutor,
(07:08):
Queen Elizabeth the First. He was one of her uh
several failed suitors. His pursuit of her started before he
became king, and his father was opposed to the match.
You stop thought that England was not that important, and
he really didn't see the point of forging a big
alliance with them and knowing that he would one day
be crowned as King. Eric, on the other hand, really
(07:30):
wanted to solidify his power by making a strong marriage.
This actually becomes kind of funny later on when you
find out how his marriage life worked out. But at
the time, you know, in his eyes, what would be
more impressive than a union with his virgin queen who
had been Even though England was not at the time
this huge powerhouse, she was recognized as being sort of
(07:52):
a prize. She was unattainable, many people were courting her, uh,
so he thought it would be sort of a great
feather in his camp. And we'll talk more about his
motivation for seeking out her as a bride in just
a bit. But for her part, Elizabeth sort of ran
hot and cold with the Swedish prince. She wasn't particularly
taken with him. Uh, and we'll talk about that in
(08:14):
a moment when we read a letter from her. Uh.
You know, he had sent her portraits of himself, uh,
and he had sent his brother to work as his ambassador,
his love ambassador in Elizabeth's court, but she still wasn't
particularly romantically interested. However, she did recognize that her country
needed allies at the time, so it served her purposes
to keep things pretty cordial with Eric. And remember he
(08:36):
was also very handsome, so it wasn't like she was,
you know, just leading on some poor man that had
no chance. She may have even been considering the match
at some point, but in the end that did not happen. No. Finally,
after Eric's brother presented Elizabeth with a proposal of marriage
in late fifteen fifty nine and early sixties, she responded
(08:58):
with the following letter, most serene Prince, our very dear
cousin a letter truly yours both in the writing and
sentiment was given us on thirty December by your very
dear brother, the Duke of Finland. And while we perceived
there from that the zeal and love of your mind
towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are
(09:19):
grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the
same kind of affection, and that indeed does not happen
because we doubt in any way of your love and honor.
But as often we have testified in both words and writing,
that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that
kind of affection towards anyone. We therefore beg your Serene
(09:41):
Highness again and again that you be pleased to set
a limit to your love, that it advanced not beyond
the laws of friendship for the present, nor disregard them
in the future. And we, in our turn, shall take
care that whatever can be required for the holy preservation
of friendship between princes, we will always perform towards your
(10:01):
Serene Highness. It seems strange for your Serene Highness to
write that you understand from your brother and your ambassadors
that we have entirely determined not to marry an absent
husband and that we shall give you no certain reply
until we have seen your person. We certainly think that
if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage,
(10:21):
we shall never accept or choose any absent husband, how
powerful and well and wealthy a prince, soever, But that
we are not to give you an answer. And so
we have seen your person is so far from the
thing itself that we have never even considered such a thing.
But I have always given both to your brother, who
is certainly a most excellent prince and deservedly very dear
(10:44):
to us, and also to your ambassador, likewise the same answer,
with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do
not conceive in our heart to take a husband, but
highly commend this single life, and hope that your serene
Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.
Please stop bugging me. I think at that point he
(11:06):
had been so ardent and so aggressive in his pursuit,
even though he was not there in person, that she
had just kind of hit the wall. It was like,
we have to shut the prince down now. Uh. And
when Elizabeth had finally clearly so refused his proposal, Eric's
first thought was that he should go see her in person. Uh.
And he was actually planning this trip and amassing all
(11:27):
of his travel arrangements when his father's death and some
poor weather conditions kind of conspired to put an end
to that plan. Don't be creepy, Eric. Eventually he did
accept that Elizabeth was not going to be his bride,
although they did kind of seem like they could have
been a good match. They were both quick witted, well
educated Gingers with father who fathers who had great power.
(11:50):
He moved on to other marriage targets, at one point
proposing also to Mary, Queen of Scott's as well asked
to at least two other princesses. Yeah, and I read
one account and it wasn't really substantiated enough for me
to include it as a source. But that suggested that
people were getting winto the fact that he was at
that point just going were you married me? To various
(12:11):
princesses that he thought might make a good match. Uh.
And even though he bungled all of these royal marriage attempts,
we should point out that it was not as though
the prince was chased as a bachelor. He had three
daughters with his mistress Agda pars daughter Virginia who was
born in fifteen fifty nine, Constantina, which who was born
in fifteen sixty and Lucretia, who was born in fifteen
(12:32):
sixty four. Lucretia, however, died as a young child. She
did not make it to adulthood. Agda eventually lost her
position as a mistress when Eric fell in love with
Karen Man's daughter. He had a daughter named Sigrid with
Karen in fifteen sixty six and a son, Gustav in
July fifteen sixty eight. The day after Gustav was born,
(12:53):
Eric officially married Karen, and they had been secretly married
for almost a year at that point. Yeah, that was
just their public marriage. Uh. And as you might imagine,
this choice of wife was a little bit of a problem.
Karen was not of noble birth. Her father had been
a soldier and then a jailer, and her mother was
a peasant. So, after all of his efforts to make
(13:14):
a good match with a royal family and gave an ally,
in the end he married a woman who had absolutely
no political power whatsoever. Um. And not only did this
marriage snub all of the high born people who would
have gladly married one of their relatives to the king.
This also um played into Eric's inferiority complex. He got
(13:37):
to this point where he constantly suspected people were making
fun of him and his queen behind their backs. And
again this is overlaid with his other things going on.
So when that was happening, there were other political events
taking place as well, and we will get to those
in just a moment. But do you want to take
a word from our sponsor, So getting back to King Eric,
(13:59):
So that kind of were the entirety of his romantic life,
soup to nuts. But now we're going to kind of
go back in time and talk about him sort of
as a leader in what his goals were and overlay
that over those other things that were happening. Because he
started out a pretty focused and ambitious king, his decisions
were often driven by his paranoia, but he really had
(14:20):
some good ideas. Initially. One of the first moves Eric
made as a monarch was the passage of the Articles
of of our Boga in fifteen sixty one, by calling
a Reichstag, which is a legislative assembly, to meet at
our Boga to approve the adoption of the articles. These
articles once they were put in place, basically annulled provisions
that had been set by Gustav the first and they
(14:42):
severely limited the power of royal Dukes John and Charles,
who were Eric's brothers by his father's second wife. Yeah
that he really wanted to take away power from his
brother's immediately because he was paranoid about them, whereas Gustav
had tried to set them up and say like, no, no,
they will be almost here equal even though they not
be king. That was maybe not one of his best plans, however. Uh.
(15:05):
He also established the baron and count titles into the
Swedish nobility, so similar to demanding that people call him majesty.
He also added some other uh royal levels on the
ladder UH, and he introduced a new constitution to Sweden.
He also organized a pellet courts and a Supreme Court,
and he created a refuge for people that were fleeing
(15:26):
the Inquisition in other countries. So UH he was trying
to do some good stuff. He was also constantly trying
to curtail the power and pretend potential for anyone to
overthrow him, while at the same time granting favors to
and building the stature of the people he felt would
be loyal to him, even though many of those people
were not of noble or royal birth. And one of
(15:48):
those men you're in Pearson became Eric's most trusted adviser,
and Pearson was apparently smart as a whip, but not
really a pillar of morality. When you hear him or
when you read about him in historical texts, he's really
described as pretty snaky h and many members of the
court really felt that he had way too much sway
(16:08):
over the king. One of Eric's primary strategic goals as
ruler was to build up Sweden's power in the Baltic
Sea in order to free trade through those waters from
the control of the Danes. One of the reasons he
had been so keen on marrying Elizabeth the First was
to help bolster this plan with an ally in Western Europe.
So as the union with the Tutor Queen and the
(16:30):
other ladies he had proposed to uh shortly thereafter had
not panned out to form you know, this alliance that
he thought might help this plan, he decided instead that
he was just going to start taking over as much
of the Baltic coast as he could by force. His
keen desire to expand his power was the complete opposite
of his father, who really valued peace over expansion and
(16:53):
had worked a lot to stabilize all of his relationships
with the surrounding nations. And inteen sixty two, Eric's brother John,
who was the Duke of Finland, had entered into a
treaty with the King of Poland and he married the
Polish King's daughter, and this was a problem. It was
a huge slap in the face to Eric, who opposed
the union and the power it was going to bring
(17:15):
to John, because you remember, he was paranoid and no
one else should be getting any more power. So he
decided that he would have his brother and sister in
law imprisoned. Nice one. Yeah. In fifteen sixty three, after
tensions had been rising for some time, the Seven Years
War of the North began when the King of Denmark
and Norway, Frederick the Second, joined forces with Poland and
(17:36):
Luebeck and declared war on Sweden in retaliation for Eric's
land grab in Estonia. And this war actually went pretty
well for the Swedish forces at sea, but the land
battles were a completely different story. Villages and towns were
badly damaged. Civilians were often killed or brutalized during battles,
(17:56):
and the horrific reality that Eric's subjects were being him
constantly in fear that some battle was going to break
out was in stark contrast to the life that he
was living, because even though he was catalyzing all of
these these military ventures, he rarely actually went out onto
the field of battle. He would kind of relay commands
(18:17):
from the safety of his castle, where he was often
hanging out with his friends. Throughout all the awkward courtships
and the political maneuvering, Eric's mental state had been slowly
eroding away as the pressure of his position and his
constant fear of losing it really started to take their toll.
As the Seven Years War dragged on, it chipped away
(18:38):
at the king, even though he remained as removed from
it as possible, and it started to reveal what many
have suspected to be schizophrenia. He began to have fits
of rage that were similar to those of his father,
and they would happen for progressively more minor infractions. Things
(18:58):
actually got to a point in the cast while we're
coughing or clearing your throat would get you accused of treason,
basically like don't breathe weird. Literally, he would be suspicious,
like what did you just do? Uh. Servants would be
put to death just for annoying the king if they
made too much noise. There's one story where he thought
(19:18):
that um any of the like footman or anyone that
dressed too nice, that looked to put together, was there
to steal all the women. Like He really just became
paranoid and assumed intentions on people's parts that were not
even there. And then, similar to how his father would
walk around chasing people with knives throughout the castle that
(19:40):
he thought wrong him, Eric instead just started trawling the
hallways with his sword drawn in this sort of maddened
vigilance where he was on the lookout for people that
he thought might betray him. So basically just walking around
with a sword in his hand, and anyone he came
in contact with he would look them over to see
if he thought they had ill intentions towards him, and
(20:02):
they may very well be stabbed. Finally, an incident involving
the Stura family was a turning point for Eric. Stea
family members had governed Sweden in the time before Eric's
father Gustav led the Liberation uprising and Eric was convinced
that they were plotting to overthrow him. And there had
(20:23):
been arguments and fears about the studios before, but this
time his paranoia became so great that to counter this
threat that he perceived, Eric had Niels and svant Studa,
who were father and son, imprisoned in Uppsala Castle. And
before we get to this next part of the story,
(20:44):
uh where things get quite violent, will stop and have
a quick ad break. On May sixty seven, Eric went
to visit the Stearis on the false premise that he
wanted to reach a point of reconciliation, but instead of
talking King through all of his issues with them, Eric
stabbed one of them to death. He fled the scene
(21:07):
and commanded the guards at Upsala to kill all the prisoners.
Eric laylow for several days after the incident, and in
what was likely a remorseful move, paid for lavish funerals
for the slain Stewardess and you're in Pearson, who he
mentioned earlier, Eric's most trusted adviser and kind of universally
recognized as a weasel, was actually arrested in the incident,
(21:30):
and he was removed from the office that the king
had given him, and the King, for his part, retreated
to a castle outside of Stockholm, and he stopped doing
any sort of governing and fell into a very deep depression.
For six months, a council ruled in eric Stead, and
after that time Eric returned to Stockholm, ready once again
(21:50):
to rule Sweden. His first act was to reinstate your
in person as his closest adviser. It's also the period
during which Eric was romantically in oolved with Karen Man's daughter,
and the aristocracy saw his preference for lower born confidence
as troubling, and because this preference uh for the lower
(22:11):
classes was also coupled with the full manifestation of his
mental illness, it was very easy for people to conflate
the two issues as sort of one big problem. And
part of the problem was that when Eric would fall
into a particularly dark mental state, or sometimes even become
disoriented or confused, he would retreat and he would let
his adviser, Urn Pearson and his queen, who you know,
(22:34):
had been a peasant birth rule on his behalf. And
these lower class people giving orders really nod at the
nobility and the aristocracy in the court. The brother Duke
John that Eric had imprisoned, was liberated in fifteen sixty
seven after more than four years as a captive. John
(22:55):
and his brother Charles joined forces against their clearly incapacitated brother,
and together they successfully took Stockholm and Eric abdicated his
his crown upon surrender to his half brothers and Eric
and his family UH because at this point he was
with Karen, were imprisoned together for several years, and he
and Karen actually had two more sons while they were
(23:16):
held in custody. But eventually the ousted king was separated
from his wife and children. Eric's half brother was crowned
King John the Third after Eric was removed from power.
You're in person was then put to death, and Eric
died on February fifteen, seventy seven. And while the public
announcement at the time said that the former king had
(23:37):
died after a long illness, his remains were actually examined
UH in the recent past in the nineteen fifties, and
the findings confirmed a suspicion that had been held for
a long time. Eric had actually died of poisoning with
arsenic Karen the peasant who rose to the position of
queen only to fall again, lived another thirty five years
(23:58):
after Eric died on land that she was granted after
his death. Yeah, even though he was ousted, they did
provide a pension and land for her to raise their
family and live out her life and she did. Uh.
But Eric, at that point, they they just wanted to
move on and not think about him very much anymore.
And it is, uh, you know, one of those cases
of youth so full of promise that kind of all
(24:21):
fell apart. And he, as I said at the top
of the podcast, not the only person with mental illness
in his family. He had another half brother h. I
believe his name was Magnus, that was schizophrenic. His son Gustav,
that was named after his father, exhibited the same problems
that Eric had had. And I don't he never had
a family, so clearly there's something in the bloodline. Uh.
(24:46):
Again another sad royal as as I predicted. We we
did get some angry letters from people, uh after we
talked about Crown Prince Otto, who were kind of angry
that we seem to be sympathizing with someone who had
committed so many terrible atrocities. But in a lot of ways,
it's the same story of those atrocities may have been
(25:10):
prevented had there been any kind of of mental health
diagnosis and treatment in an appropriate way and they were living.
Certainly would not ever want to diminish the loss of life, uh,
of anyone, And certainly in both of these stories, you know,
this sort of callous disregard for people, uh, you know,
(25:32):
for doing nothing more than coughing at the wrong time,
you could be killed. Of course that is horrible tragedy,
but it is also tragic that people suffer with mental
illness that has never treated. Just two different kinds of tragedies.
And I'm not uh keep saying, you know, oh, no,
poor guy, I mean, yes, poor guy that he was suffering.
Also horrible guy stopped doing that. So so, um, that's
(25:56):
the scoop on Eric the fourteenth of Sweden. Hopefully we'll
do more street pieces around Sweden and Denmark and Norway
and all of that area, because they haven't gotten a
lot of play on the podcast historically. Um. If you
also have some whistener mail for us, I do. This
is from our listener, Chelsea, and it is about our
footbinding episode. She says, Hello, thank you for the recent
(26:18):
podcast on footbinding. I studied East Asian culture and language
in college, and this was always a topic that interested
me on a number of levels. I was surprised that
you didn't bring up the end of the dynastic era
and the beginning of the Republic of China as the
end of the practice. Though clearly a practice so entrenched
in the customs of the population and permanently evidenced in
the feet of every woman, is not simply ended in
(26:38):
a day, so one cannot point to a single catalyzing event.
In my history classes, we were taught a heavier influence
of the Republican forces on the end of footbinding. The
fall of the Shan dynasty also brought swift rejection of
anything that was tied to the quote old ways. Many
people view mau Zdong and the rise of the communist
regime as the primary driver of modernization and rejection of
(26:58):
traditional practices, but the wind started blowing that way in
nineteen eleven. The Cultural Revolution certainly codified and violently enforced
this change in views, but the fall of the Shan
dynasty was the major divining point for the social and
cultural norm of foot finding. Thank you for an interesting,
a thought provoking podcast. I didn't talk a whole lot
about the politics of it because I really wanted to
focus on the culture. And truthfully, I um probably would
(27:21):
not have put it so eloquently as Chelsea did and cleanly.
I would have ended up going uner cue at his
root and being like, well, there was all said. Well,
And I've also had the Cultural Revolution on my Like
Ideas wish list for episodes much since we came onto
the podcast, and it's just so enormous. That's the thing
I have that moment of I can never include all
(27:42):
of the its. It's so enormous and there are so
many factors and how it came about and the you know,
what it influenced, and the effects that it had. That
attempting to mention it in the context of another thing
the sort of opens up this giant can of worms
and then it becomes a sick part podcast. Yeah, it's
not always a good thing. I still have the Cup
(28:04):
for Revolution on the wish list is very very big, yeah,
and it's it's such good stuff to talk about and
it's such a rich, uh sort of kettle of information,
but it is hard to break it down into digestible pieces.
But again, Chelsea put it very um cleanly and succinctly
in a way that I would not have Thank you, Chelsea. UH.
(28:25):
If you would like to write to us, you can
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Miss in history dot com is ready and waiting for
(28:47):
you to come and visit. You can peruse UH old episodes,
new episodes, blog posts. We are still working on tanging
everything the back cattalog. We got a very gen or
us offer of someone to tag it for us. We've
got a couple. Badly, yes, sadly, there are a whole
(29:07):
lot of silly reasons that we can't do it. There
are barriers that prevent us from bringing on people even
though they volunteer. And it's so kind of very generous
of everyone who has made that offer, So we thank
you for being willing to help and wish that we
could take you up on it. Uh. If you would
like to research a little bit about what we talked
about today sort of, UH, you can go to our
(29:28):
website at house to works dot com and you can
search schizophrenia and you'll get an article called how Schizophrenia works.
Will break down sort of some of those paranoid behaviors
and how people are quick to um make assumptions about
the intens of others and as well as other aspects
of it. And if you would like to research that,
you can, But you can also research almost anything else
(29:48):
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast and
I've traded and UH. Today we will be covering another
mentally ill royal because listeners love them so much, and
(00:23):
this one is from a country we haven't talked about
them a lot, which is Sweden, and it actually people
will probably notice some parallels between this story and UH
the podcast we covered on Korea's Prince Sotto. There are
some similar themes that run father issues madness slowly developing.
This one is not quite as creatively gruesome, however, which
(00:44):
is a nice little break perhaps. And we're gonna actually
build this one up kind of in layers, so we're
not going to go chronologically. We're gonna cover various aspects
of this person's life categorically, So we'll talk a little
bit about the family and how they came into power.
We'll talk about out, you know, his romantic interests, will
talk about his political kind of each and chunks, and
(01:04):
then his sort of mental state and how it broke
down throughout all of this. So many of these things
were going on simultaneously and will connect the dots where
we can, but they're just each such big chunks of
his life that I wanted to kind of give them
each their own time in the spotlight. And so the
person we're talking about today is Eric the fourteenth of Sweden,
and he was not the only member of his family
(01:25):
to succumb to madness, but because he sat on the
ruling throne, his mental issues were in sharp focus during
his reign. So first we actually have to talk about
his father. His father was Gustave First. Gustav was crowned
king of Sweden in three and similarly to the story
of Korea's crown Prince Sato, Eric's father was also a
(01:47):
man who was admired for his leadership skills, but also
had kind of a darkness about him. Modern historians have
suspected that he may have had some degree of mental
illness as well. Yeah, he, again, very similar to the
Sado story, was very quick to anger. His rage could
result in very violent behavior. There are stories of him
(02:09):
tearing his daughter's hair out when she angered him, like
he grabbed her by the hair so hard he pulled
out the hair by the roots. Um he beat a
goldsmith to death for taking a day off without being
granted leave, like he hadn't asked for the time off,
and he would occasionally chase people around the castle with
knives just for annoying him, and that particular behavior will
(02:31):
kind of echo again later in his son in kind
of even a creepier way. Probably the most important legacy
of Gustav was his leadership of the rebellion against King
Christian the Second in the Swedish War of Liberation. So
before this war, Sweden and Mark and Norway were all
part of the dynastic Union of Kalmar. Gustav, who had
(02:54):
been a nobleman but not a royal, was chosen to
rule the newly liberated country, and that whole story, you know,
the liberation of Sweden could certainly be another topic on
its own. So we're not getting into all of the
politics of that. We just want to establish that Gustav
was a leader in this rebellion and kind of a
very revered leader. Uh. And then ten years into Gustav's reign,
(03:16):
Prince Eric was born, and that was on December thirteenth,
fifteen thirty three, and he was born in the Royal
castle in Stockholm. His mother was Katherine of Saxe Lauenberg,
and Catherine actually died when Eric was still quite tiny.
He was not even two years old, and as his
parents marriage was not a particularly happy one, Gustav really
was not all that broken up over the death of
(03:37):
his wife, and he soon took a second wife, Margaretta Landhuvoud,
which I may or may not have butchered, and that
she would actually end up being his second of three.
But we won't get into all of his his multiple wives.
But basically Eric grew up never really knowing his mother.
So as Eric came into his own his father granted
(03:58):
him the title of duke, and he was basically the
sixteenth century equivalent of the modern prep school superstar. He
was extremely attractive, athletic, and bright. He also ran with
a group of friends who liked a party, and he
developed a drinking habit pretty early on. His father did
not approve of all of this behavior and how prone
(04:18):
he was to just a lot of excess. Yeah, he
really was kind of your um, like you said, classic
spoiled rich kid. He could do whatever he wanted, and
so he did. This is when somebody is going to
just diagnose him with affluenza of his terrible behavior later,
I hope not that word troubles me me too. Uh.
(04:39):
But Eric eventually became king on September twenty nine, fifteen sixty,
when Gustav died, and this was just before Eric turned
twenty seven, so uh, he was kind of living the
playboy life at this point. Although he had served as
regent once before from fifteen fifty five to fifteen fifty
six while his father was away on a military campaign
(04:59):
in Russia. Uh, And he had already been ruling a
handful of provinces in his title as duke. But this
augmentation of his power once he ascended the throne kind
of played with his head a bit and probably brought
into focus some issues that had been existing but not
as obvious and not as disconcerting. So this same hedonism
(05:21):
that Eric had really embraced when he was a duke
rolled right over into his reign as a king, and
that started with his coronation. His ceremony was this huge
lavish display. He immediately redecorated the castle with all kinds
of lavish tapestries and furnishings, and he wanted everybody to
call him majesty and he was the first ruler in
(05:42):
Sweden to do so. Yeah, he added a lot of
titles to the Swedish lexicon that had not been there previously,
even though they are in the other royal lineage, Majesty
being one of them. Uh. And it's commonly believed by
most modern historians when they write about Eric that all
of the pomp and circumstance, his over indulgence in luxury, uh,
(06:03):
you know, needing to have the most beautiful everything around him,
was really just a way for him to hide a
very deep seated insecurity and that sense of inferiority that
he seemed to really just kind of stew in came
from two primary sources. One was that his father, despite
having a temper, was a really loved king and he
(06:25):
was seen as a hero, so you can imagine the
difficulty of filling those shoes as the next in line
to the throne. And the second is that that line
to the throne was very short. This is not a
long family monarchy. Eric's family, the House of Vasa, was
in its infancy as rulers of the nation because Gustav
had taken over after you know, Sweden was liberated. So
(06:46):
Eric was constantly in fear of being ousted because he
felt like he was not part of an established royal lineage,
and this brought him to the point where he was
paranoid about just about everyone he came in contact with.
He suspected everyone was going to try to take power
from him. Perhaps the thing that he's most well known
for is a courtship of a long time podcast favorite tutor,
(07:08):
Queen Elizabeth the First. He was one of her uh
several failed suitors. His pursuit of her started before he
became king, and his father was opposed to the match.
You stop thought that England was not that important, and
he really didn't see the point of forging a big
alliance with them and knowing that he would one day
be crowned as King. Eric, on the other hand, really
(07:30):
wanted to solidify his power by making a strong marriage.
This actually becomes kind of funny later on when you
find out how his marriage life worked out. But at
the time, you know, in his eyes, what would be
more impressive than a union with his virgin queen who
had been Even though England was not at the time
this huge powerhouse, she was recognized as being sort of
(07:52):
a prize. She was unattainable, many people were courting her, uh,
so he thought it would be sort of a great
feather in his camp. And we'll talk more about his
motivation for seeking out her as a bride in just
a bit. But for her part, Elizabeth sort of ran
hot and cold with the Swedish prince. She wasn't particularly
taken with him. Uh, and we'll talk about that in
(08:14):
a moment when we read a letter from her. Uh.
You know, he had sent her portraits of himself, uh,
and he had sent his brother to work as his ambassador,
his love ambassador in Elizabeth's court, but she still wasn't
particularly romantically interested. However, she did recognize that her country
needed allies at the time, so it served her purposes
to keep things pretty cordial with Eric. And remember he
(08:36):
was also very handsome, so it wasn't like she was,
you know, just leading on some poor man that had
no chance. She may have even been considering the match
at some point, but in the end that did not happen. No. Finally,
after Eric's brother presented Elizabeth with a proposal of marriage
in late fifteen fifty nine and early sixties, she responded
(08:58):
with the following letter, most serene Prince, our very dear
cousin a letter truly yours both in the writing and
sentiment was given us on thirty December by your very
dear brother, the Duke of Finland. And while we perceived
there from that the zeal and love of your mind
towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are
(09:19):
grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the
same kind of affection, and that indeed does not happen
because we doubt in any way of your love and honor.
But as often we have testified in both words and writing,
that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that
kind of affection towards anyone. We therefore beg your Serene
(09:41):
Highness again and again that you be pleased to set
a limit to your love, that it advanced not beyond
the laws of friendship for the present, nor disregard them
in the future. And we, in our turn, shall take
care that whatever can be required for the holy preservation
of friendship between princes, we will always perform towards your
(10:01):
Serene Highness. It seems strange for your Serene Highness to
write that you understand from your brother and your ambassadors
that we have entirely determined not to marry an absent
husband and that we shall give you no certain reply
until we have seen your person. We certainly think that
if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage,
(10:21):
we shall never accept or choose any absent husband, how
powerful and well and wealthy a prince, soever, But that
we are not to give you an answer. And so
we have seen your person is so far from the
thing itself that we have never even considered such a thing.
But I have always given both to your brother, who
is certainly a most excellent prince and deservedly very dear
(10:44):
to us, and also to your ambassador, likewise the same answer,
with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do
not conceive in our heart to take a husband, but
highly commend this single life, and hope that your serene
Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.
Please stop bugging me. I think at that point he
(11:06):
had been so ardent and so aggressive in his pursuit,
even though he was not there in person, that she
had just kind of hit the wall. It was like,
we have to shut the prince down now. Uh. And
when Elizabeth had finally clearly so refused his proposal, Eric's
first thought was that he should go see her in person. Uh.
And he was actually planning this trip and amassing all
(11:27):
of his travel arrangements when his father's death and some
poor weather conditions kind of conspired to put an end
to that plan. Don't be creepy, Eric. Eventually he did
accept that Elizabeth was not going to be his bride,
although they did kind of seem like they could have
been a good match. They were both quick witted, well
educated Gingers with father who fathers who had great power.
(11:50):
He moved on to other marriage targets, at one point
proposing also to Mary, Queen of Scott's as well asked
to at least two other princesses. Yeah, and I read
one account and it wasn't really substantiated enough for me
to include it as a source. But that suggested that
people were getting winto the fact that he was at
that point just going were you married me? To various
(12:11):
princesses that he thought might make a good match. Uh.
And even though he bungled all of these royal marriage attempts,
we should point out that it was not as though
the prince was chased as a bachelor. He had three
daughters with his mistress Agda pars daughter Virginia who was
born in fifteen fifty nine, Constantina, which who was born
in fifteen sixty and Lucretia, who was born in fifteen
(12:32):
sixty four. Lucretia, however, died as a young child. She
did not make it to adulthood. Agda eventually lost her
position as a mistress when Eric fell in love with
Karen Man's daughter. He had a daughter named Sigrid with
Karen in fifteen sixty six and a son, Gustav in
July fifteen sixty eight. The day after Gustav was born,
(12:53):
Eric officially married Karen, and they had been secretly married
for almost a year at that point. Yeah, that was
just their public marriage. Uh. And as you might imagine,
this choice of wife was a little bit of a problem.
Karen was not of noble birth. Her father had been
a soldier and then a jailer, and her mother was
a peasant. So, after all of his efforts to make
(13:14):
a good match with a royal family and gave an ally,
in the end he married a woman who had absolutely
no political power whatsoever. Um. And not only did this
marriage snub all of the high born people who would
have gladly married one of their relatives to the king.
This also um played into Eric's inferiority complex. He got
(13:37):
to this point where he constantly suspected people were making
fun of him and his queen behind their backs. And
again this is overlaid with his other things going on.
So when that was happening, there were other political events
taking place as well, and we will get to those
in just a moment. But do you want to take
a word from our sponsor, So getting back to King Eric,
(13:59):
So that kind of were the entirety of his romantic life,
soup to nuts. But now we're going to kind of
go back in time and talk about him sort of
as a leader in what his goals were and overlay
that over those other things that were happening. Because he
started out a pretty focused and ambitious king, his decisions
were often driven by his paranoia, but he really had
(14:20):
some good ideas. Initially. One of the first moves Eric
made as a monarch was the passage of the Articles
of of our Boga in fifteen sixty one, by calling
a Reichstag, which is a legislative assembly, to meet at
our Boga to approve the adoption of the articles. These
articles once they were put in place, basically annulled provisions
that had been set by Gustav the first and they
(14:42):
severely limited the power of royal Dukes John and Charles,
who were Eric's brothers by his father's second wife. Yeah
that he really wanted to take away power from his
brother's immediately because he was paranoid about them, whereas Gustav
had tried to set them up and say like, no, no,
they will be almost here equal even though they not
be king. That was maybe not one of his best plans, however. Uh.
(15:05):
He also established the baron and count titles into the
Swedish nobility, so similar to demanding that people call him majesty.
He also added some other uh royal levels on the
ladder UH, and he introduced a new constitution to Sweden.
He also organized a pellet courts and a Supreme Court,
and he created a refuge for people that were fleeing
(15:26):
the Inquisition in other countries. So UH he was trying
to do some good stuff. He was also constantly trying
to curtail the power and pretend potential for anyone to
overthrow him, while at the same time granting favors to
and building the stature of the people he felt would
be loyal to him, even though many of those people
were not of noble or royal birth. And one of
(15:48):
those men you're in Pearson became Eric's most trusted adviser,
and Pearson was apparently smart as a whip, but not
really a pillar of morality. When you hear him or
when you read about him in historical texts, he's really
described as pretty snaky h and many members of the
court really felt that he had way too much sway
(16:08):
over the king. One of Eric's primary strategic goals as
ruler was to build up Sweden's power in the Baltic
Sea in order to free trade through those waters from
the control of the Danes. One of the reasons he
had been so keen on marrying Elizabeth the First was
to help bolster this plan with an ally in Western Europe.
So as the union with the Tutor Queen and the
(16:30):
other ladies he had proposed to uh shortly thereafter had
not panned out to form you know, this alliance that
he thought might help this plan, he decided instead that
he was just going to start taking over as much
of the Baltic coast as he could by force. His
keen desire to expand his power was the complete opposite
of his father, who really valued peace over expansion and
(16:53):
had worked a lot to stabilize all of his relationships
with the surrounding nations. And inteen sixty two, Eric's brother John,
who was the Duke of Finland, had entered into a
treaty with the King of Poland and he married the
Polish King's daughter, and this was a problem. It was
a huge slap in the face to Eric, who opposed
the union and the power it was going to bring
(17:15):
to John, because you remember, he was paranoid and no
one else should be getting any more power. So he
decided that he would have his brother and sister in
law imprisoned. Nice one. Yeah. In fifteen sixty three, after
tensions had been rising for some time, the Seven Years
War of the North began when the King of Denmark
and Norway, Frederick the Second, joined forces with Poland and
(17:36):
Luebeck and declared war on Sweden in retaliation for Eric's
land grab in Estonia. And this war actually went pretty
well for the Swedish forces at sea, but the land
battles were a completely different story. Villages and towns were
badly damaged. Civilians were often killed or brutalized during battles,
(17:56):
and the horrific reality that Eric's subjects were being him
constantly in fear that some battle was going to break
out was in stark contrast to the life that he
was living, because even though he was catalyzing all of
these these military ventures, he rarely actually went out onto
the field of battle. He would kind of relay commands
(18:17):
from the safety of his castle, where he was often
hanging out with his friends. Throughout all the awkward courtships
and the political maneuvering, Eric's mental state had been slowly
eroding away as the pressure of his position and his
constant fear of losing it really started to take their toll.
As the Seven Years War dragged on, it chipped away
(18:38):
at the king, even though he remained as removed from
it as possible, and it started to reveal what many
have suspected to be schizophrenia. He began to have fits
of rage that were similar to those of his father,
and they would happen for progressively more minor infractions. Things
(18:58):
actually got to a point in the cast while we're
coughing or clearing your throat would get you accused of treason,
basically like don't breathe weird. Literally, he would be suspicious,
like what did you just do? Uh. Servants would be
put to death just for annoying the king if they
made too much noise. There's one story where he thought
(19:18):
that um any of the like footman or anyone that
dressed too nice, that looked to put together, was there
to steal all the women. Like He really just became
paranoid and assumed intentions on people's parts that were not
even there. And then, similar to how his father would
walk around chasing people with knives throughout the castle that
(19:40):
he thought wrong him, Eric instead just started trawling the
hallways with his sword drawn in this sort of maddened
vigilance where he was on the lookout for people that
he thought might betray him. So basically just walking around
with a sword in his hand, and anyone he came
in contact with he would look them over to see
if he thought they had ill intentions towards him, and
(20:02):
they may very well be stabbed. Finally, an incident involving
the Stura family was a turning point for Eric. Stea
family members had governed Sweden in the time before Eric's
father Gustav led the Liberation uprising and Eric was convinced
that they were plotting to overthrow him. And there had
(20:23):
been arguments and fears about the studios before, but this
time his paranoia became so great that to counter this
threat that he perceived, Eric had Niels and svant Studa,
who were father and son, imprisoned in Uppsala Castle. And
before we get to this next part of the story,
(20:44):
uh where things get quite violent, will stop and have
a quick ad break. On May sixty seven, Eric went
to visit the Stearis on the false premise that he
wanted to reach a point of reconciliation, but instead of
talking King through all of his issues with them, Eric
stabbed one of them to death. He fled the scene
(21:07):
and commanded the guards at Upsala to kill all the prisoners.
Eric laylow for several days after the incident, and in
what was likely a remorseful move, paid for lavish funerals
for the slain Stewardess and you're in Pearson, who he
mentioned earlier, Eric's most trusted adviser and kind of universally
recognized as a weasel, was actually arrested in the incident,
(21:30):
and he was removed from the office that the king
had given him, and the King, for his part, retreated
to a castle outside of Stockholm, and he stopped doing
any sort of governing and fell into a very deep depression.
For six months, a council ruled in eric Stead, and
after that time Eric returned to Stockholm, ready once again
(21:50):
to rule Sweden. His first act was to reinstate your
in person as his closest adviser. It's also the period
during which Eric was romantically in oolved with Karen Man's daughter,
and the aristocracy saw his preference for lower born confidence
as troubling, and because this preference uh for the lower
(22:11):
classes was also coupled with the full manifestation of his
mental illness, it was very easy for people to conflate
the two issues as sort of one big problem. And
part of the problem was that when Eric would fall
into a particularly dark mental state, or sometimes even become
disoriented or confused, he would retreat and he would let
his adviser, Urn Pearson and his queen, who you know,
(22:34):
had been a peasant birth rule on his behalf. And
these lower class people giving orders really nod at the
nobility and the aristocracy in the court. The brother Duke
John that Eric had imprisoned, was liberated in fifteen sixty
seven after more than four years as a captive. John
(22:55):
and his brother Charles joined forces against their clearly incapacitated brother,
and together they successfully took Stockholm and Eric abdicated his
his crown upon surrender to his half brothers and Eric
and his family UH because at this point he was
with Karen, were imprisoned together for several years, and he
and Karen actually had two more sons while they were
(23:16):
held in custody. But eventually the ousted king was separated
from his wife and children. Eric's half brother was crowned
King John the Third after Eric was removed from power.
You're in person was then put to death, and Eric
died on February fifteen, seventy seven. And while the public
announcement at the time said that the former king had
(23:37):
died after a long illness, his remains were actually examined
UH in the recent past in the nineteen fifties, and
the findings confirmed a suspicion that had been held for
a long time. Eric had actually died of poisoning with
arsenic Karen the peasant who rose to the position of
queen only to fall again, lived another thirty five years
(23:58):
after Eric died on land that she was granted after
his death. Yeah, even though he was ousted, they did
provide a pension and land for her to raise their
family and live out her life and she did. Uh.
But Eric, at that point, they they just wanted to
move on and not think about him very much anymore.
And it is, uh, you know, one of those cases
of youth so full of promise that kind of all
(24:21):
fell apart. And he, as I said at the top
of the podcast, not the only person with mental illness
in his family. He had another half brother h. I
believe his name was Magnus, that was schizophrenic. His son Gustav,
that was named after his father, exhibited the same problems
that Eric had had. And I don't he never had
a family, so clearly there's something in the bloodline. Uh.
(24:46):
Again another sad royal as as I predicted. We we
did get some angry letters from people, uh after we
talked about Crown Prince Otto, who were kind of angry
that we seem to be sympathizing with someone who had
committed so many terrible atrocities. But in a lot of ways,
it's the same story of those atrocities may have been
(25:10):
prevented had there been any kind of of mental health
diagnosis and treatment in an appropriate way and they were living.
Certainly would not ever want to diminish the loss of life, uh,
of anyone, And certainly in both of these stories, you know,
this sort of callous disregard for people, uh, you know,
(25:32):
for doing nothing more than coughing at the wrong time,
you could be killed. Of course that is horrible tragedy,
but it is also tragic that people suffer with mental
illness that has never treated. Just two different kinds of tragedies.
And I'm not uh keep saying, you know, oh, no,
poor guy, I mean, yes, poor guy that he was suffering.
Also horrible guy stopped doing that. So so, um, that's
(25:56):
the scoop on Eric the fourteenth of Sweden. Hopefully we'll
do more street pieces around Sweden and Denmark and Norway
and all of that area, because they haven't gotten a
lot of play on the podcast historically. Um. If you
also have some whistener mail for us, I do. This
is from our listener, Chelsea, and it is about our
footbinding episode. She says, Hello, thank you for the recent
(26:18):
podcast on footbinding. I studied East Asian culture and language
in college, and this was always a topic that interested
me on a number of levels. I was surprised that
you didn't bring up the end of the dynastic era
and the beginning of the Republic of China as the
end of the practice. Though clearly a practice so entrenched
in the customs of the population and permanently evidenced in
the feet of every woman, is not simply ended in
(26:38):
a day, so one cannot point to a single catalyzing event.
In my history classes, we were taught a heavier influence
of the Republican forces on the end of footbinding. The
fall of the Shan dynasty also brought swift rejection of
anything that was tied to the quote old ways. Many
people view mau Zdong and the rise of the communist
regime as the primary driver of modernization and rejection of
(26:58):
traditional practices, but the wind started blowing that way in
nineteen eleven. The Cultural Revolution certainly codified and violently enforced
this change in views, but the fall of the Shan
dynasty was the major divining point for the social and
cultural norm of foot finding. Thank you for an interesting,
a thought provoking podcast. I didn't talk a whole lot
about the politics of it because I really wanted to
focus on the culture. And truthfully, I um probably would
(27:21):
not have put it so eloquently as Chelsea did and cleanly.
I would have ended up going uner cue at his
root and being like, well, there was all said. Well,
And I've also had the Cultural Revolution on my Like
Ideas wish list for episodes much since we came onto
the podcast, and it's just so enormous. That's the thing
I have that moment of I can never include all
(27:42):
of the its. It's so enormous and there are so
many factors and how it came about and the you know,
what it influenced, and the effects that it had. That
attempting to mention it in the context of another thing
the sort of opens up this giant can of worms
and then it becomes a sick part podcast. Yeah, it's
not always a good thing. I still have the Cup
(28:04):
for Revolution on the wish list is very very big, yeah,
and it's it's such good stuff to talk about and
it's such a rich, uh sort of kettle of information,
but it is hard to break it down into digestible pieces.
But again, Chelsea put it very um cleanly and succinctly
in a way that I would not have Thank you, Chelsea. UH.
(28:25):
If you would like to write to us, you can
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can get in touch with us? Is it on our website? Yeah?
Miss in history dot com is ready and waiting for
(28:47):
you to come and visit. You can peruse UH old episodes,
new episodes, blog posts. We are still working on tanging
everything the back cattalog. We got a very gen or
us offer of someone to tag it for us. We've
got a couple. Badly, yes, sadly, there are a whole
(29:07):
lot of silly reasons that we can't do it. There
are barriers that prevent us from bringing on people even
though they volunteer. And it's so kind of very generous
of everyone who has made that offer, So we thank
you for being willing to help and wish that we
could take you up on it. Uh. If you would
like to research a little bit about what we talked
about today sort of, UH, you can go to our
(29:28):
website at house to works dot com and you can
search schizophrenia and you'll get an article called how Schizophrenia works.
Will break down sort of some of those paranoid behaviors
and how people are quick to um make assumptions about
the intens of others and as well as other aspects
of it. And if you would like to research that,
you can, But you can also research almost anything else
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