Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark - Life As Queen

Life As Queen

Ulrika Eleonora was described as beautiful and kind and was received with enthusiasm among the public in Stockholm and Sweden, mainly because she was seen as a hope for peace between the two countries of Sweden and Denmark. According to legend, her spouse was never unfaithful to her, which was unusual for a king during this era; when he died, he told his mother he had not been happy since his wife died. However, he was also said to have been by nature cold and unable to show her the love he felt for her. Above all, he was forever under the strong influence of his mother, Hedvig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp, who never surrendered the position of queen to her daughter-in-law. While lingering distrust between Denmark and Sweden caused by the Scanian War remained, Hedvig Eleonora and the government of Sweden were never receptive to the son's idea to marry a Danish princess. Possibly to please them and show that she had no influence over him, the king always simply referred to Ulrika Eleonora as "My wife" and called his mother "The queen". Mindful of this, the foreign ambassadors, always visited Hedwig Eleonora first, and then Ulrika Eleonora, when paying their respects to the royal family.

Under the shadow of her mother-in-law, Ulrika Eleonora was never happy or at ease with her life at court. Her private family life with the king and her children, on the other hand, was said to be very happy. Her most enjoyable moments came when her brother-in-law and sister the duke and duchess of Holstein-Gottorp visited her, and she also enjoyed the days when she and her husband and children visited the simpler, more modern and rural palace Karlberg Palace that her husband used as a relaxation place. At Karlberg, she enjoyed a simple life away from the court and developed an interest in painting. She was also interested in theatre and dance and performed plays with the ladies at court. Among the nobles participating in her amateur performances were the famous Aurora Königsmarck with her sister Amalia Wilhelmina Königsmarck. Among her noted ladies-in-waitings were the sister-couple De la Gardie; the singer Ebba Maria and the poet Johanna Eleonora.

Ulrika Eleonora once tried to exercise some political influence over her spouse. During "The Great Reversion" to the crown of counties, baronies and large lordships from the nobility (most of them richly given away by Queen Christina), she tried to speak on the behalf of the people whose property was confiscated by the government, but the king simply told her that the reason he had married her was not that he wanted her political advice. She then quietly helped the most poor people whose property had been confiscated by secretly compensating them economically from her own budget. She was most known for her great activity within charity; she founded a large number of orphanages, poor-houses, work-houses, widow-houses, schools to teach poor people professions and other such institutions, and in that aspect, she had some political influence in society. Her best-known projects were Drottninghuset (English: The Queenhouse), a home for poor widows in Stockholm (1686), and the tapestry school at Karlberg, were poor girls were educated to tapestry manufacturing by three unmarried Finnish noblewomen. She supported a large number of people from her personal budget, such as invalid soldiers and their spouses and converts to Protestantism from Judaism, Islam and Catholicism (especially female converts).