Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Who was the last King of Sweden?
Carl XVI Gustaf (Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus; born 30 April 1946) is the King of Sweden. He ascended the throne on the death of his grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf, on 15 September 1973.
He is the youngest child and only son of Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten, and Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. His father died on 26 January 1947 in an airplane crash in Denmark when Carl Gustaf was nine months old. Upon his father's death, he became second in line to the throne, after his grandfather, the then Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf. Following the death of King Gustaf V in 1950, Gustaf Adolf ascended the throne and thus Carl Gustaf became Sweden's new crown prince and heir apparent to the throne at the age of four.
The Swedish Empire (, "the Era of Great Power") was a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The beginning of the Empire is usually taken as the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, who ascended the throne in 1611, and the end as the loss of territories in 1721 following the Great Northern War.
The Kingdom of Saxony was abolished in 1918 when King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony abdicated. The succession law until the abolition of the monarchy was semi-Salic primogeniture and required the successor to be born of an equal marriage, approved in advance by the head of the house. Accordingly, the last undisputed male member of the family was Prince Albert of Saxony, who assumed the headship of the royal house and the title "Margrave of Meissen" upon the death of his brother the Margrave Maria Emanuel in July 2012. This was challenged, however, by his nephew Prince Alexander of Saxe-Gessaphe who also claimed the headship based on a 1997 agreement, and who is said to have reached an agreement with Albert just prior to the funeral of Maria Emanuel which recognised Alexander as the dynasty's heir. With the death of Albert in October 2012 the dispute continued with Prince Rüdiger of Saxony, the only agnatic great grandson of the last King of Saxony, claiming the headship.
Swedish pre-history ends around 800 CE, when the Viking Age begins and written sources are available. The Viking Age lasted until the mid-11th century, when the Christianization of Scandinavia was largely completed when Sweden became the last Norse country to adopt Christianity. Scandinavia was formally Christianized by 1100 AD. The period 1050 to 1350 – when the Black Death struck Europe – is considered the Older Middle Ages. The Kalmar Union between the Scandinavian countries was established in 1397 and lasted until King Gustav Vasa ended it upon seizing power. The period 1350 to 1523 – when king Gustav Vasa, who led the unification of Sweden, was crowned – is considered the Younger Middle Ages.
During the Swedish War of Liberation of 1521–23, Danish-controlled Stockholm was under siege by the Swedes. The abbess of the nunnery, Anna Leuhusen, offered to allow Swedes living in Stockholm to safely escape the Danes by exiting the city through the nunnery. When they arrived to the nunnery, however, she signaled the Danish authorities, and the refugees were executed as traitors. In June 1523, Stockholm was retaken by the Swedes and made capital of the independent Kingdom of Sweden. In 1525, Elin Thomasdotter is noted to have replaced Anna Leuhusen as abbess.
Following the Treaty of Roskilde, which was one of the treaties that successfully ended the Second Northern War, all areas in the historical region of Skåneland were ceded by Denmark-Norway to the Swedish Empire in early 1658. One of the most important questions for the Swedish Empire was on how to make the Scanians feel like they were Swedish, rather than a part of Denmark. On 16 April 1658, representatives of Scania, Blekinge and Halland's nobility, citizens, clergy and peasants gathered for a day of fury in Malmö Town Hall. On a given sign, the ombuds fell to the knees and promised their new king's faithfulness. The oath was appointed by a secretary. Charles X Gustav was not present himself but was represented by an empty chair surrounded by Swedish soldiers.
Thus, Sweden emerged from the war not only a military power, but also one of the largest states of Europe, possessing more than twice as much territory as modern Sweden. The land area of Sweden was 1,100,000 km. While modern Sweden is bounded by the Baltic, during the 17th century the Baltic formed a bond between various widely dispersed dominions. All the islands in the Baltic, except the Danish group, belonged to Sweden. The estuaries of all the great German rivers lay within Swedish territory, which also included two-thirds of Lake Ladoga and one-half of Lake Peipus. Stockholm, the capital, lay in the very centre of the empire, whose second greatest city was Riga, on the other side of the sea. This empire contained less than a third of the population of modern Sweden — at only 2,500,000 people, or about 2.3 people per square kilometer. However, Sweden's expansion had been possible partly due to turmoil and weakness in countries in its vicinity, and when they became more stable, they began to look for chances to regain what was lost.
Frederick Augustus III (; 25 May 1865 in Dresden – 18 February 1932 in Sibyllenort) was the last King of Saxony (1904–1918) and a member of the House of Wettin.
In about the same time Christina married in Sweden with a man of non-royal origins, Eric Jedvardsson, later known as Eric the Saint. He probably came from the province of Västergötland which bordered to Denmark. Since their son Canute was betrothed by 1160, the marriage of Christina and Eric probably took place in the early 1140s. The marriage gave Eric the means to claim the Swedish throne; the House of Stenkil, to which Christina belonged on her mother's side, became extinct in the male line in the 1120s. The new king Sverker I did not have royal forebears. According to later tradition, Eric took royal titles in 1150. Six years later, he became king after the assassination of Sverker, and Christina became the Queen of Sweden. Her queenship probably lasted for four years, from 1156 to 1160.
Georg, Crown Prince of Saxony, (15 January 1893 – 14 May 1943) the last Crown Prince of Saxony, was the heir to the King of Saxony, Frederick Augustus III, at the time of the monarchy's abolition on 13 November 1918.
He later became a Roman Catholic priest and a Jesuit.
After the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, the empire was controlled for lengthy periods by part of the high nobility, most prominently the Oxenstierna family, acting as tutors for minor regents. The interests of the high nobility contrasted with the uniformity policy (i.e., upholding the traditional equality in status of the Swedish estates favoured by the kings and peasantry). In territories acquired during the periods of "de facto" noble rule, serfdom was not abolished, and there was also a trend to set up respective estates in Sweden proper. The Great Reduction of 1680 put an end to these efforts of the nobility and required them to return estates once gained from the crown to the king. Serfdom, however, remained in force in the dominions acquired in the Holy Roman Empire and in Swedish Estonia, where a consequent application of the uniformity policy was hindered by the treaties by which they were gained.
The victory at Fraustadt had a crippling effect in Denmark, Russia and Saxony, and caused shock waves around Europe. In France, the victory was celebrated, and Prussian policy immediately became friendlier to the Swedes. In June the same year, Rehnskiöld was made Count (in 1719, the count’s branch of the Rehnskiöld family was introduced at the House of Nobility under number 48). With the main Saxon army defeated, the Swedish Army had the opportunity to move into Saxony and force Augustus II out of the war. In August, Charles XII reunited with Rehnskiöld’s army. The joint army moved through Imperial Silesia, and by September, the Swedes had successfully occupied Saxony without resistance. The Treaty of Altranstädt (1706) was concluded between Sweden and Saxony on 14 September. Under Swedish terms, Augustus II was forced to break all ties with his allies, renounce his claims to the Polish crown, and accept Stanisław Leszczyński as the new King.
Albert Leopold "Friedrich Christian" Sylvester Anno Macarius, Prince of Saxony, Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Meissen (31 December 1893 – 9 August 1968) was the second son of Frederick Augustus III, the last reigning king of Saxony before the abolition of the monarchy in 1918. Upon his father's death in 1932, he became the head of the Royal House of Saxony. He was Captain à la suite in the Royal Bulgarian Infantry, and Grand Master of the Order of the Rue Crown, and also a Knight in the Order of the Black Eagle and Knight Grand Cross in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. As head of the House of Wettin after 1932, he styled himself as "Friedrich Christian, Margrave of Meissen".
In the spring of 1751, at the age of five, she was betrothed to Gustav, the heir apparent to the throne of Sweden, and she was brought up to be the Queen of Sweden. The marriage was arranged by the Riksdag of the Estates, not by the Swedish royal family. The marriage was arranged as a way of creating peace between Sweden and Denmark, which had a long history of war and which had strained relations following the election of an heir to the Swedish throne in 1743, where the Danish candidate had lost. The engagement was met with some worry from Queen Louise, who feared that her daughter would be mistreated by the Queen of Sweden, Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. The match was known to be disliked by the Queen of Sweden, who was in constant conflict with the Parliament; and who was known in Denmark for her pride, dominant personality and hatred of anything Danish, which she demonstrated in her treatment of the Danish ambassadors in Stockholm.
Louise was widowed in 1912. Her eldest son Christian X of Denmark became the new king of Denmark. She was the last widow of a Danish monarch to use the title of Queen Dowager. From 1915 to 1917 she built herself Egelund Castle between Hillerød and Fredensborg where she lived for the rest of her life. Queen Louise died at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen in 1926 and is interred next to her husband in Roskilde Cathedral.
While some Swedish areas had Christian minorities in the 9th century, Sweden was, because of its geographical location in northernmost Europe, not Christianized until around AD 1000, around the same time as the other Nordic countries, when the Swedish King Olof was baptized. This left only a modest gap between the Christianization of Scandinavia and the Great Schism, however there are some Scandinavian/Swedish saints who are venerated eagerly by many Orthodox Christians, such as St. Olaf. However, Norse paganism and other pre-Christian religious systems survived in the territory of what is now Sweden later than that; for instance the important religious center known as the Temple at Uppsala at Gamla Uppsala was evidently still in use in the late 11th century, while there was little effort to introduce the Sami of Lapland to Christianity until considerably after that.
Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and the most populous urban area in the Nordic countries; 960,031 people live in the municipality, approximately 1.5 million in the urban area, and 2.3 million in the metropolitan area. The city stretches across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea. Just outside the city and along the coast is the island chain of the Stockholm archipelago. The area has been settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC, and was founded as a city in 1252 by Swedish statesman Birger Jarl. It is also the capital of Stockholm County.
In the crypts the heart of King Augustus the Strong is buried along with the last King of Saxony and the remains of 49 other members of the Wettin family, as well as the remains of people who married into the family, such as Princess Maria Carolina of Savoy, wife of Anthony of Saxony.
The oldest part of Stockholm is Gamla Stan ("The Old Town"), which contains some of the city's oldest buildings and ruins. One example is the ruins of the Castle Of Three Crowns, which was erected in the 13th century by the Swedish king Birger Jarl.
On N.4 Stockholms Stads Brandförsäkringskontor ("The Stockholm Fire Insurance Office"), in short Brandkontoret, was established in 1746 as a result of the devastating fire at the Royal Palace in 1697. It is thus the oldest insurance company in Sweden, a company owned by its insured customers. In 1806 the building was acquired and the office of Brandkontoret has since then been located here. The building was earlier known as the Rosendal Palace ("Rosendalska palatset"), designed by C F Adelcrantz (1716–1796) and Erik Palmstedt (1741–1803) in a transitional style bridging Rococo and Gustavian Classicism, in 1773–1780 the location of the Royal Academy of the Arts.
Gustaf VI Adolf (Oscar Fredrik Wilhelm Olaf Gustaf Adolf; 11 November 1882 – 15 September 1973) was King of Sweden from 29 October 1950 until his death. He was the eldest son of King Gustaf V and his wife, Victoria of Baden, and had been Crown Prince of Sweden for the preceding 43 years in the reign of his father. Not long before his death at age 90, he approved the constitutional changes which removed the last traces of political power from the Swedish monarch.
In 1810, French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, one of Napoleon's top generals, was elected Crown Prince Charles by the Riksdag. In 1813, his forces joined the allies against Napoleon and defeated the Danes at Bornhöved. In the Treaty of Kiel, Denmark ceded mainland Norway to the Swedish king. Norway, however, declared its independence, adopted a constitution and chose a new king. Sweden invaded Norway to enforce the terms of the Kiel treaty—it was the last war Sweden ever fought. After brief fighting, the peace established a personal union between the two states. Even though they shared the same king, Norway was largely independent of Sweden, except Sweden controlled foreign affairs. The king's rule was not well received and when Sweden refused to allow Norway to have its own diplomats, Norway rejected the King of Sweden in 1905 and selected its own king.
In 1520, Christian took the throne of Sweden, thereby making Isabella Queen of Sweden. After taking Stockholm, he asked the Swedish representatives to turn it and the regency of Sweden over to Isabella if he himself should die when his children were minors. She was to be the last Queen of Sweden who was also Queen of Denmark during the Kalmar union, but she in fact never visited Sweden; pregnant at the time of her spouse's accession to the throne of Sweden, she did not follow him there. Isabella served as the regent of Denmark during Christian's stay in Sweden. Her husband was deposed as king of Sweden the following year. King Christian imprisoned many Swedish noblewomen, related to rebellious Swedish nobles, at the infamous "Blåtårn" ("Blue Tower") of Copenhagen Castle, including Christina Gyllenstierna, Cecilia Månsdotter and Margareta Eriksdotter Vasa, and King Gustav I of Sweden used their purported harsh treatment in captivity in his propaganda against Christian II and claimed that the Danish monarch starved the women and children, who only survived by the mercy showed them by the queen of Denmark, Isabella of Austria.
"We, Carl Gustaf, King of Sweden, make it known: that since it has pleased the Highest God call to Him on High the former Mighty-powerful, Highborn Prince and Lord, Gustaf VI Adolf, King of the Swedes, the Goths and the Wends, and We, according to and by the power of the Act of Succession established and ascertained by the Estates of the Realm on 26 September 1810, succeeding the aforementioned Exalted Lord have ascended to the Royal Swedish Throne.