The politics of possession: The pretiosa collection of Hedwig Eleonora of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, Dowager Queen of Sweden (1636-1715)

Abstract

Dowager Queen Hedwig Eleonora's collection of pretiosa, housed in the late seventeenth century at Ulriksdal Palace on the outskirts of Stockholm, can be identified through two separate inventories. The two lists were drawn up simultaneously in 1719, almost four years after the death of Hedwig Eleonora. Both inventories were carefully compiled according to the testimony of the only two remaining relatives of the Dowager Queen: her granddaughter, Princess Ulrika Eleonora the Younger (1688-1741) and the Princess's nephew, Hedwig Eleonora's great-grandson, Charles Frederick (1700-1739), Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp. In this article these inventories are analysed not only as records of a particularly rare late seventeenth-century collection, but also as legal documents that help us understand the political struggle for the Swedish throne, a complicated political situation that absorbed Sweden, in the aftermath of the death of the heirless King Charles XII (1682-1718).