Leonora Christina Ulfeldt - Birth and Family

Birth and Family

Christian IV is believed to have fathered fifteen children by his second wife, Kirsten Munk, at least three of whom were born before the couple married in 1615, and eight of whom lived to adulthood. The Munks were noble courtiers, and Kirsten's formidable mother, née Ellen Marsvin, obtained the King's signed promise to marry the girl before yielding her to the King's passion. The marriage was morganatic and Leonora Christina was not a princess, sharing rather the title of Countess af Schleswig-Holstein bestowed upon her mother in 1629 (distinct from the title borne by the Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein, dynastic kinsmen of the Danish kings who possessed actual domains in the Schleswig and Holstein provinces, some of whom also exercised sovereignty there). Nonetheless, she grew up with her parents in Copenhagen's royal palace (across the courtyard from the tower where she would eventually be imprisoned) on familiar terms with her three elder half-brothers — including the future King Frederick III — sons of the late Queen Anne Catherine of Brandenburg. The King accused his wife of betraying him with another man and divorced her in 1630, having already taken a mistress, Vibeke Kruse, his wife's servant. Although she proceeded to bear the King a new brood of children who would become the bitter rivals of Kirsten Munk's children, Leonora Christina seems to have retained her father's favor.

Leonora Christina's marriage was part of Christian IV's strategy to consolidate his dynasty's power. Since 1448 the Oldenburgs had been Denmark's ruling dynasty, father-to-son. Although hereditary monarchs de facto, until 1660 each successor became king de jure only through election by the Rigsråd. Upon the death of a king, that body would negotiate fresh limitations upon the royal authority, only ratifying the nominee's accession to the throne in return for concessions of rights and privileges. Tradition upheld the King's impartiality and dignity among the nobility by not permitting members of the royal family to marry his subjects, reserving princesses for foreign alliances. But the morganatic status of Leonora Christina and her sisters rendered them useful domestic tools of state, so Christian IV sought to bind the loyalty of powerful or promising nobles by bestowing upon them the hands of these semi-royal daughters, endowed with rich dowries. Six such marriages were arranged. Thus in 1636 the fifteen year-old Leonora Christina was married to the thirty-eight year-old Corfitz Ulfeldt, son of the late Chancellor Jacob Ulfeldt, to whom she had been engaged since the age of nine. Though the marriage failed to ensure Ulfeldt's loyalty to the Crown, the young Countess would remain loyal to her husband even beyond his death, accompanying or following him on his every misadventure, and refusing to speak posthumous ill of him even to purchase her freedom.