title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Brooks's lack of knowledge of filmmaking had him committing many mistakes during production, requiring the help of assistant director Michael Hertzberg. Being both inexperienced and insecure, Brooks started to have tantrums and behave angrily. He got impatient with the slow development compared to how quick television production was, temporarily banned Glazier from the set, berated a visiting reporter from "The New York Times", and had clashes with cinematographer Joseph Coffey and main actor Zero Mostel. Mostel also had a troublesome behavior caused by a leg injury received in a 1960 bus accident, which made his contract feature a clause dismissing Mostel from any work after 5:30 pm. Given the fact that the leg injury got worse in humid weather, the last scene, filmed at the Revson Fountain in Lincoln Center, had Mostel throwing a fit and giving up on production. Glazier had to leave a dentist's appointment and rush to the set where Mostel and Brooks were arguing, and once the producer managed to calm them down, the resulting scene had to be shot all night long.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Despite being described as a lavish production number, "Springtime for Hitler" was not ready until the first rehearsals. Brooks sat with Olsen and first-time composer John Morris at the piano, and improvised some lyrics. Morris then developed the stage performance with choreographer Alan Johnson, instructed to do the number "big, wonderful, flashy, but terrible". As Brooks kept suggesting bizarre costume ideas to enhance the burlesque nature of "Springtime for Hitler", such as women with clothes inspired by beer mugs and pretzels, Johnson decided to showcase them all in a parade.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Few scenes had to be altered from the original script. Leo and Max would visit the Parachute Jump in Coney Island, but the attraction was closed by the time filming began. Brooks filmed Liebkind making Max and Leo swear the Siegfried Oath, where they promised fealty to "Siegfried", accompanied by "The Ride of the Valkyries" and wearing horned helmets. But feeling that it "went overboard", Brooks cut the scene, which was restored in the stage adaptation.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: The art direction and costumes emphasized the color yellow, which Brooks considered a funny color. For the posters in Bialystock's office, production designer Charles Rosen found a collector in the Theater District and doctored a few posters to include the character's name. Rosen also incorporated an anecdote of his life, as he had to share a small elevator with a flamboyant Broadway director, to design the lift at Roger De Bris's house. Post-production extended for months, as Brooks had gotten final cut privilege, but still had complaints with Ralph Rosenblum regarding his editing.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: According to Brooks, after the film was completed, Embassy executives refused to release it as being in "bad taste". The film's premiere in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 22, 1967, was a disaster and the studio considered shelving it. However, relief came when "Pink Panther" star Peter Sellers saw the film privately and placed an advertisement in "Variety" in support of the film's wide release. Sellers was familiar with the film because, according to Brooks, Sellers "had accepted the role of Bloom and then was never heard from again". The film allegedly was "banned in Germany". The film was screened in New York City in March 1968. The film's wide release would take place on March 18, 1968.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: The title of the film for the Swedish release uses the translation of the name of the play within the story, "Springtime for Hitler". As a result of its success, most of Mel Brooks' subsequent films in Swedish were given similar titles, despite being otherwise unrelated: "Springtime for Mother-In-Law",


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: "Springtime for the Sheriff", "Springtime for Frankenstein", "Springtime for the Silent Movies", "Springtime for the Lunatics", "Springtime for World History", "Springtime for Space", and "Springtime for the Slum". The practice ended by the time "" was released, at Brooks' request.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: When it was first released, the film received a mixed response and garnered some exceptionally harsh reviews, while others considered it a great success. One of the mixed reviews came from Renata Adler, who, writing for "The New York Times," stated: ""The Producers", which opened yesterday at the Fine Arts Theater, is a violently mixed bag. Some of it is shoddy and gross and cruel; the rest is funny in an entirely unexpected way." About the acting, she writes that Mostel is "overacting grotesquely under the direction of Mel Brooks" and that, in the role of Max Bialystock, he is "as gross and unfunny as only an enormous comedian bearing down too hard on some frail, tasteless routines can be". Co-star Wilder fares better and is called "wonderful", thanks to doing "fine", despite being "forced to be as loud and as fast as Mostel" and "[g]oing through long, infinitely variegated riffs and arpeggios of neuroticism", and playing his part "as though he were Dustin Hoffman being played by Danny Kaye". She also puts the movie into the bigger context of "contemporary" comedy and that it has the same "episodic, revue quality" in the way it is "not building laughter, but stringing it together skit after skit, some vile, some boffo". Her early conclusion, at the end of the first paragraph, is also a comparison to other comedic movies of the time, it reads: "["The Producers"] is less delicate than Lenny Bruce, less funny than "Dr. Strangelove," but much funnier than "The Loved One" or "What's New Pussycat?""


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: The more critical and negative reviews partly targeted the directorial style and broad ethnic humor, but also commonly noted the bad taste and insensitivity of devising a broad comedy about two Jews conspiring to cheat theatrical investors by devising a designed-to-fail tasteless Broadway musical about Hitler only 23 years after the end of World War II. Among the most harsh critics were Stanley Kauffmann in "The New Republic," who wrote that "the film bloats into sogginess" and "Springtime for Hitler ... doesn't even rise to the level of tastelessness", John Simon wrote "The Producers" "is a model of how not to make a comedy", and Pauline Kael who called it "amateurishly crude" in "The New Yorker." Kael went on to say,


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: On the other hand, others considered the film to be a great success. "Time" magazine's reviewers wrote that the film was "hilariously funny" but pointed out that "the film is burdened with the kind of plot that demands resolution" but unfortunately "ends in a whimper of sentimentality". Although they labelled it "disjointed and inconsistent", they also praised it as "a wildly funny joy ride", and concluded by saying that "despite its bad moments, [it] is some of the funniest American cinema comedy in years". The film industry trade paper "Variety" wrote, "The film is unmatched in the scenes featuring Mostel and Wilder alone together, and several episodes with other actors are truly rare."


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Over the years, the film has gained in stature. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 90% based on 72 reviews with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A hilarious satire of the business side of Hollywood, "The Producers" is one of Mel Brooks' finest, as well as funniest films, featuring standout performances by Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel." On Metacritic, the film received a score of 96 based on 6 reviews, making it one of the highest-rated films on the site. In his review decades later, Roger Ebert claimed, "this is one of the funniest movies ever made". Ebert wrote, "I remember finding myself in an elevator with Brooks and his wife, actress Anne Bancroft, in New York City a few months after "The Producers" was released. A woman got onto the elevator, recognized him and said, 'I have to tell you, Mr. Brooks, that your movie is vulgar.' Brooks smiled benevolently. 'Lady,' he said, 'it rose below vulgarity.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: In 1996, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: In 2002, "The Producers" was re-released in three theaters by Rialto Pictures and earned $111,866 at the box office. As of 2007, the film continues to be distributed to art-film and repertory cinemas by Rialto.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Brooks has adapted the story twice more, as a Broadway musical ("The Producers," 2001) and a film based on the musical ("The Producers," 2005). He did not direct the latter, but served as a producer. Unlike the original film, it was not commercially successful.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: This film has spawned several home media releases on VHS, Laserdisc, CED, and VCD from companies such as Magnetic Video, Embassy Home Entertainment, PolyGram Video, Speedy, and Lumiere Video. A 1997 letterbox edition Laserdisc was released by PolyGram Video, which served as the basis for the extremely rare 1998 PolyGram DVD release.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which owns video rights to select Embassy Pictures titles that ended up with Nelson Entertainment and Polygram, released "The Producers" on Region 1 DVD in 2002 and reissued in 2005 to coincide with the remake released that year. In 2013, MGM licensed the title to Shout! Factory to release a DVD and Blu-ray combo pack with a new HD transfer and newly produced bonus materials. StudioCanal, worldwide rights holder to all of the Embassy Pictures library, has also released several R2 DVD editions using a transfer slightly different from the North American DVD and Blu-Ray releases. In 2018, StudioCanal gave the film its European Blu-Ray debut in the UK, Germany, and Australia. The StudioCanal releases included most extras from the Shout! Factory release as well as a new 4K restoration for a 50th anniversary Blu-ray edition.


title: NoSQL

text: A NoSQL (originally referring to "non-SQL" or "non-relational") database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than the tabular relations used in relational databases. Such databases have existed since the late 1960s, but the name "NoSQL" was only coined in the early 21st century, triggered by the needs of Web 2.0 companies. NoSQL databases are increasingly used in big data and real-time web applications. NoSQL systems are also sometimes called Not only SQL to emphasize that they may support SQL-like query languages or sit alongside SQL databases in polyglot-persistent architectures.


title: NoSQL

text: Motivations for this approach include simplicity of design, simpler "horizontal" scaling to clusters of machines (which is a problem for relational databases), finer control over availability and limiting the object-relational impedance mismatch. The data structures used by NoSQL databases (e.g. key–value pair, wide column, graph, or document) are different from those used by default in relational databases, making some operations faster in NoSQL. The particular suitability of a given NoSQL database depends on the problem it must solve. Sometimes the data structures used by NoSQL databases are also viewed as "more flexible" than relational database tables.


title: NoSQL

text: Many NoSQL stores compromise consistency (in the sense of the CAP theorem) in favor of availability, partition tolerance, and speed. Barriers to the greater adoption of NoSQL stores include the use of low-level query languages (instead of SQL, for instance), lack of ability to perform ad hoc joins across tables, lack of standardized interfaces, and huge previous investments in existing relational databases. Most NoSQL stores lack true ACID transactions, although a few databases have made them central to their designs.


title: NoSQL

text: Instead, most NoSQL databases offer a concept of "eventual consistency", in which database changes are propagated to all nodes "eventually" (typically within milliseconds), so queries for data might not return updated data immediately or might result in reading data that is not accurate, a problem known as stale reads. Additionally, some NoSQL systems may exhibit lost writes and other forms of data loss. Some NoSQL systems provide concepts such as write-ahead logging to avoid data loss. For distributed transaction processing across multiple databases, data consistency is an even bigger challenge that is difficult for both NoSQL and relational databases. Relational databases "do not allow referential integrity constraints to span databases". Few systems maintain both ACID transactions and X/Open XA standards for distributed transaction processing. Interactive relational databases share conformational relay analysis techniques as a common feature. Limitations within the interface environment are overcome using semantic virtualization protocols, such that NoSQL services are accessible to most operating systems.


title: NoSQL

text: The term "NoSQL" was used by Carlo Strozzi in 1998 to name his lightweight Strozzi NoSQL open-source relational database that did not expose the standard Structured Query Language (SQL) interface, but was still relational. His NoSQL RDBMS is distinct from the around-2009 general concept of NoSQL databases. Strozzi suggests that, because the current NoSQL movement "departs from the relational model altogether, it should therefore have been called more appropriately 'NoREL'", referring to "not relational".


title: NoSQL

text: Johan Oskarsson, then a developer at Last.fm, reintroduced the term "NoSQL" in early 2009 when he organized an event to discuss "open-source distributed, non-relational databases". The name attempted to label the emergence of an increasing number of non-relational, distributed data stores, including open source clones of Google's Bigtable/MapReduce and Amazon's DynamoDB.


title: NoSQL

text: There are various ways to classify NoSQL databases, with different categories and subcategories, some of which overlap. What follows is a non-exhaustive classification by data model, with examples:


title: NoSQL

text: Key–value (KV) stores use the associative array (also called a map or dictionary) as their fundamental data model. In this model, data is represented as a collection of key–value pairs, such that each possible key appears at most once in the collection.


title: NoSQL

text: The key–value model is one of the simplest non-trivial data models, and richer data models are often implemented as an extension of it. The key–value model can be extended to a discretely ordered model that maintains keys in lexicographic order. This extension is computationally powerful, in that it can efficiently retrieve selective key "ranges".


title: NoSQL

text: Key–value stores can use consistency models ranging from eventual consistency to serializability. Some databases support ordering of keys. There are various hardware implementations, and some users store data in memory (RAM), while others on solid-state drives (SSD) or rotating disks (aka hard disk drive (HDD)).


title: NoSQL

text: The central concept of a document store is that of a "document". While the details of this definition differ among document-oriented databases, they all assume that documents encapsulate and encode data (or information) in some standard formats or encodings. Encodings in use include XML, YAML, and JSON and binary forms like BSON. Documents are addressed in the database via a unique "key" that represents that document. Another defining characteristic of a document-oriented database is an API or query language to retrieve documents based on their contents.


title: NoSQL

text: Compared to relational databases, collections could be considered analogous to tables and documents analogous to records. But they are different: every record in a table has the same sequence of fields, while documents in a collection may have fields that are completely different.


title: NoSQL

text: Graph databases are designed for data whose relations are well represented as a graph consisting of elements connected by a finite number of relations. Examples of data include social relations, public transport links, road maps, network topologies, etc.


title: NoSQL

text: The performance of NoSQL databases is usually evaluated using the metric of throughput, which is measured as operations/second. Performance evaluation must pay attention to the right benchmarks such as production configurations, parameters of the databases, anticipated data volume, and concurrent user workloads.


title: NoSQL

text: Since most NoSQL databases lack ability for joins in queries, the database schema generally needs to be designed differently. There are three main techniques for handling relational data in a NoSQL database. (See table Join and ACID Support for NoSQL databases that support joins.)


title: NoSQL

text: Instead of retrieving all the data with one query, it is common to do several queries to get the desired data. NoSQL queries are often faster than traditional SQL queries so the cost of additional queries may be acceptable. If an excessive number of queries would be necessary, one of the other two approaches is more appropriate.


title: NoSQL

text: Instead of only storing foreign keys, it is common to store actual foreign values along with the model's data. For example, each blog comment might include the username in addition to a user id, thus providing easy access to the username without requiring another lookup. When a username changes however, this will now need to be changed in many places in the database. Thus this approach works better when reads are much more common than writes.


title: NoSQL

text: With document databases like MongoDB it is common to put more data in a smaller number of collections. For example, in a blogging application, one might choose to store comments within the blog post document so that with a single retrieval one gets all the comments. Thus in this approach a single document contains all the data you need for a specific task.


title: NoSQL

text: A database is marked as supporting ACID properties (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) or join operations if the documentation for the database makes that claim. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the capability is fully supported in a manner similar to most SQL databases.


title: Vincent Margera

text: Vincent Roy Margera (July 3, 1956 – November 15, 2015), commonly known as Don Vito, was an American reality television personality. He was known for his appearances in "Viva La Bam", "Jackass", "", and the "CKY" series alongside his nephew Bam and brother Phil.


title: Vincent Margera

text: Margera was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, and raised in Concord Township, the son of Darlene ("née" Stauffer) and Phillip Margera. He was unmarried and lived in a home formerly owned by his brother in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he had moved in the early 2000s.


title: Vincent Margera

text: Margera became known after appearing as a regular on the MTV television series "Viva La Bam", where he was commonly referred to as "Don Vito", a nickname given to him by his nephew Bam. The nickname referred to his near unintelligible speech reminiscent of Don Vito Corleone of "The Godfather", as well as saluting the Margera family's Italian heritage. He had previously appeared in sketches and videos with his family, most of whom were released as part of the "CKY" series and some later featured in "Jackass".


title: Vincent Margera

text: As a result of his 2006 arrest, the stunts involving Don Vito were removed from the theatrical and DVD release of "Jackass Number Two", but several stunts were briefly shown in previews leading up to his arrest. Due to the allegations, he was "persona non grata" among the cast for a time.


title: Vincent Margera

text: In early 2007, Margera featured in Redman's music video "Put It Down", in which he plays a police officer with Donnell Rawlings. March 20, 2007 saw the release of Vito and Ryan Dunn starring in a "Viva La Bam"-like, direct-to-DVD film titled "Dunn and Vito's Rock Tour".


title: Vincent Margera

text: On August 18, 2006, Margera was arrested at the Colorado Mills Mall in Lakewood, Colorado, on suspicion of inappropriately touching two 12-year-old girls. He was released after posting bail of $50,000.


title: Vincent Margera

text: During a preliminary hearing on February 1, 2007, Margera was represented by Pamela Mackey, the same lawyer who defended Kobe Bryant in his 2003—2005 sexual assault case. There was an arraignment hearing on March 5, 2007, at which Margera pleaded not guilty.


title: Vincent Margera

text: The trial started on October 22 in Golden, Colorado. Margera's attorney argued that his client had been playing his "goofy, outrageous and vulgar" television persona for the girls, portraying Margera as a "benign bumbler", and arguing that Margera's signature arm movement may have been mistaken for breast fondling.


title: Vincent Margera

text: The jury began to deliberate on the afternoon of October 30, returning on October 31. Margera was found guilty of two counts of sexual assault on a minor and acquitted on one count.


title: Vincent Margera

text: On December 20, 2007, Margera was sentenced to 10 years of probation, to be served in Pennsylvania. He was further ordered to not portray the character of "Don Vito" in any capacity (appearing on television, writing books, autograph signings) while serving his sentence. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender in Colorado and Pennsylvania, to receive an evaluation of his mental health and to work on his problems with alcohol.


title: Vincent Margera

text: Throughout most of his life, Margera was obese and had difficulty exercising due to his weight. He also had strabismus, which made him partially blind in one eye, as well as alcoholism. According to his nephew, Bam, he also suffered from depression following his conviction.


title: Vincent Margera

text: In October 2015, Margera collapsed in his West Chester, Pennsylvania home and was rushed to the hospital, where he remained in a coma for five days. According to family, he was dying of massive organ failure due to years of obesity and alcoholism. Despite initial improvements in the weeks before his death, he died on November 15, 2015, from kidney and liver failure at the age of 59.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina (, 18 December (New Style) 1626 – 19 April 1689), a member of the House of Vasa, was Queen of Sweden in her own right from 1632 until her abdication in 1654. She succeeded her father Gustavus Adolphus upon his death at the Battle of Lützen in 1632, but began ruling the Swedish Empire when she reached the age of eighteen in 1644.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The Swedish queen is remembered as one of the most learned women of the 17th century. She was fond of books, manuscripts, paintings, and sculptures. With her interest in religion, philosophy, mathematics, and alchemy, she attracted many scientists to Stockholm, wanting the city to become the "Athens of the North". The Peace of Westphalia allowed her to establish an academy or university when and wherever she wanted.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1644, she began issuing copper in lumps as large as fifteen kilograms to serve as currency. Christina's financial extravagance brought the state to the verge of bankruptcy, and the financial difficulties caused public unrest. Christina argued for peace to end the Thirty Years' War and received indemnity. Meanwhile, she caused a scandal when she decided not to marry, and when she converted to Catholicism secretly in Brussels and publicly in Innsbruck. The "Minerva of the North" relinquished the throne to her cousin, and settled in Rome.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Pope Alexander VII described Christina as "a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame." Notwithstanding, she played a leading part in the theatrical and musical community and protected many Baroque artists, composers, and musicians.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Being the guest of five consecutive popes, and a symbol of the Counter-Reformation, Christina is one of the few women buried in the Vatican grotto. Her unconventional lifestyle and occasional masculine style of dressing have been featured in countless novels, plays, operas, and film. In most biographies of Christina, her gender and cultural identity play an important role.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina was born in the royal castle Tre Kronor on . Her parents were the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus and his German wife, Maria Eleonora. Gustavus shared Maria's interest in architecture and her love of music. They had already had three children: two daughters (a stillborn princess in 1621, then the first Princess Christina, who was born in 1623 and died the following year) and a stilborn son in May 1625. Excited expectations surrounded Maria Eleonora's fourth pregnancy in 1626. When the baby was born, it was first thought to be a boy as it was "hairy" and screamed "with a strong, hoarse voice." She later wrote in her autobiography that, "Deep embarrassment spread among the women when they discovered their mistake." The king, though, was very happy, stating, "She'll be clever, she has made fools of us all!" Gustav Adolf was closely attached to his daughter, whereas her mother remained aloof in her disappointment at the child being a girl. In the year after Christina's birth, Maria Eleonora was described as being in a state of hysteria owing to her husband's absences. She showed little affection for her daughter and was not allowed any influence in Christina's upbringing. He was worried that her instability might pass on to their daughter.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The Crown of Sweden was hereditary in the House of Vasa, but from King Charles IX's time onward (reigned 1604–11), it excluded Vasa princes descended from a deposed brother (Eric XIV of Sweden) and a deposed nephew (Sigismund III of Poland). Gustav Adolf's legitimate younger brothers had died years earlier. The one legitimate female left, his half-sister Catharine, came to be excluded in 1615 when she married John Casimir, a non-Lutheran. So Christina became the undisputed heir presumptive. From Christina's birth, King Gustav Adolph recognized her eligibility even as a female heir, and although called "queen", the official title she held as of her coronation by the Riksdag in February 1633 was king.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In June 1630, when Christina was three years old, Gustav Adolf left for Germany to defend Protestantism in the Thirty Years' War. He secured his daughter's right to inherit the throne, in case he never returned, and gave orders to Axel Gustafsson Banér, his marshal, that Christina should receive an education of the type normally only afforded to boys.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: When Gustav Adolf did not come home as expected after the summer campaign of 1630, Maria wrote to John Casimir, her brother-in-law that she could not stand it, she wanted to die. She begged him to try to persuade the king to come home. It was decided that Maria would travel to Germany the following spring. She arrived on 10 July 1631, to Wolgast in Pomerania. On 11 January 1632 she met with her spouse, close to Hanau. The couple were spotted for the last time on 28 October 1632 at Erfurt. The very next day, Gustav Adolf broke camp and left. On 3 November Maria wrote to Axel Oxenstierna: "without H.R.M.'s presence, I am worth nothing, not even my life".


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Her mother, of the House of Hohenzollern, was said to be the most beautiful queen in Europe, but she was also considered hysterical, unstable and overly emotional. It is suggested that she inherited madness, on both the paternal and maternal line. However, this image of the hysterical, depressive and profligate queen dowager, which has become part of historiography, has been put into perspective in more recent research, first in the 1980s by the archivist Åke Kromnov, among others, and more recently in the monograph "Drottningen som sa nej" by Moa Matthis, published in 2010.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: After the king died on 6 November 1632 on the battlefield, Maria Eleonora returned to Sweden with the embalmed body of her husband. The 7-year-old Queen Christina came in solemn procession to Nyköping to receive her mother. Maria Eleonora declared that the burial should not take place during her lifetime - she often spoke of shortening her life - or at least should be postponed as long as possible. She also demanded that the coffin be kept open, and went to see it regularly, patting it and taking no notice of the putrefaction. They tried to persuade Maria not to visit the corpse so often. Axel Oxenstierna managed to have the corpse interred in Riddarholmen Church on 22 June 1634, but had to post guards after she tried to dig it up. The grief suggests mental instability.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Maria Eleanora had been indifferent to her daughter but now, belatedly, Christina became the center of her mother's attention. Gustav Adolf had decided that in the event of his death, his daughter should be cared for by his half-sister, Catherine of Sweden and half-brother Carl Gyllenhielm as regent. This solution did not suit Maria Eleonora, who had her sister-in-law banned from the castle. In 1634, the Instrument of Government, a new constitution, was introduced by Oxenstierna. The constitution stipulated that the "King" must have a Privy Council, which was headed by Oxenstierna himself.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Maria Eleonora was considered very difficult, and in 1636 she lost her parental rights to her daughter. The Riksråd motivated its decision by asserting that she neglected Christina and her upbringing, and that she had a bad influence on her daughter ... Chancellor Oxenstierna saw no other solution than to exile the widow to Gripsholm castle, while the governing regency council would decide when she was allowed to see her daughter. For the subsequent years, Christina thrived in the company of her aunt Catherine and her family.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1638, after the death of her aunt and foster mother, the Royal Regency Council under Axel Oxenstierna saw the need to appoint a new foster mother to the underage monarch, which resulted in a reorganization of the queen's household. In order to prevent the young queen from being dependent upon a single individual and favorite mother figure, the Royal Council decided to split the office of head lady-in-waiting (responsible for the queen's female courtiers) and the office royal governess (or foster-mother) in four, with two women appointed to share each office. Accordingly, Ebba Leijonhufvud and Christina Natt och Dag were appointed to share the position of royal governess and foster mother with the title "Upptuktelse-Förestånderska" ('Castigation Mistress'), while Beata Oxenstierna and Ebba Ryning were appointed to share the position of head lady-in-waiting, all four with the formal rank and title of "Hovmästarinna".


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The Royal Council's method of giving Queen Christina several foster mothers to avoid her forming an attachment to a single person appears to have been effective, as Christina did not mention her foster mothers directly in her memoirs and did not seem to have formed an attachment to any of them; in fact, with only a few exceptions, such as Ebba Sparre, Lady Jane Ruthven and Louise van der Nooth, Christina did not show any interest in any of her female courtiers, and she generally mentions them in her memoirs only to compare herself favorably toward them by referring to herself as more masculine than they.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina was educated as a royal male would have been. The theologian Johannes Matthiae Gothus became her tutor; he gave her lessons in religion, philosophy, Greek and Latin. Chancellor Oxenstierna taught her politics and discussed Tacitus with her. Oxenstierna wrote proudly of the 14-year-old girl that, "She is not at all like a female" and that she had "a bright intelligence". Christina seemed happy to study ten hours a day. Besides Swedish and German she learned at least six more languages: Dutch, Danish, French, Italian, Arabic and Hebrew.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1644, Christina was declared an adult, although the coronation was postponed because of the Torstenson War. In the Treaty of Brömsebro Denmark added the isles of Gotland and Ösel to Christina's domain while Norway lost the districts of Jämtland and Härjedalen to her. Under Christina's rule, Sweden, now virtually controlling the Baltic Sea, had unrestricted access to the North Sea and was no longer encircled by Denmark–Norway.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Chancellor Oxenstierna soon discovered that her political views differed from his own. In 1645, he sent his son, Johan Oxenstierna, to the Peace Congress in the Westphalian city of Osnabrück, to argue against peace with the Holy Roman Empire. Christina, however, wanted peace at any cost and sent her own delegate, Johan Adler Salvius.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The Peace of Westphalia was signed between May and October 1648, effectively ending the European wars of religion. Sweden received an indemnity of five million thalers, used primarily to pay its troops. Sweden further received Western Pomerania (henceforth Swedish Pomerania), Wismar, the Archbishopric of Bremen, and the Bishopric of Verden as hereditary fiefs, thus gaining a seat and vote in the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire and in the respective diets ("Kreistag") of three Imperial Circles: the Upper Saxon Circle, Lower Saxon Circle, and Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle; the city of Bremen was disputed.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Shortly before the conclusion of the peace settlement, she admitted Salvius into the council, against Oxenstierna's wishes. Salvius was no aristocrat, but Christina wanted the opposition to the aristocracy present. In 1649, with the help of her uncle, John Casimir, Christina tried to reduce the influence of Oxenstierna, when she declared her cousin Charles Gustav as her heir presumptive. The following year, Christina resisted demands from the other estates (clergy, burghers, and peasants) in the Riksdag of the Estates for the reduction of the number of noble landholdings that were tax-exempt. She never implemented such a policy. In 1649, Louis de Geer founded the Swedish Africa Company and in 1650, Christina hired Hendrik Carloff to improve trade on Gold Coast.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1645, Christina invited Hugo Grotius to become her librarian, but he died on his way in Rostock. That same year she founded "Ordinari Post Tijdender" ("Regular Mail Times"), the oldest currently published newspaper in the world. In 1647, Johann Freinsheim was appointed as her librarian. After the Battle of Prague (1648), where her armies looted Prague Castle, many of the treasures collected by Rudolph II were brought back to Stockholm. Hence Christina acquired for her library a number of valuable illustrated works and rare manuscripts. The inventory drawn up at the time mentions 100 "an allerhand Kunstbüchern" ("a hundred art books of different kinds"), among them two world-famous manuscripts: the and the .


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1649, 760 paintings, 170 marble and 100 bronze statues, 33,000 coins and medallions, 600 pieces of crystal, 300 scientific instruments, manuscripts and books (including the by Rabanus Maurus) were transported to Stockholm. The art, from Prague Castle, had belonged to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and was captured by Hans Christoff von Königsmarck during the Battle of Prague and the negotiations of the Peace of Westphalia. By 1649–1650, "her desire to collect men of learning round her, as well as books and rare manuscripts, became almost a mania," Goldsmith wrote. To catalogue her new collection she asked Isaac Vossius to come to Sweden and Heinsius to purchase more books on the market.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Her ambitions naturally demanded a wide-ranging correspondence. Not infrequently, she sat and wrote far into the night, while the servants came and went with new wax candles. The "Semiramis from the North" corresponded with Pierre Gassendi, her favorite author. Blaise Pascal offered her a copy of his pascaline. She had a firm grasp of classical history and philosophy. Christina studied Neostoicism, the Church Fathers, and Islam; she systematically looked for a copy of the "Treatise of the Three Impostors", a work bestowing doubt on all organized religion. In 1651, the kabbalist Menasseh ben Israel offered to become her agent or librarian for Hebrew books and manuscripts; they discussed his messianic ideas as he had recently spelled them out in his latest book, "Hope of Israel". Other illustrious scholars who came to visit were Claude Saumaise, Johannes Schefferus, Olaus Rudbeck, Johann Heinrich Boeckler, Gabriel Naudé, Christian Ravis, Nicolaas Heinsius and Samuel Bochart, together with Pierre Daniel Huet and Marcus Meibomius, who wrote a book about Greek dance.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina was interested in theatre, especially the plays of Pierre Corneille; she was herself an amateur actress. From 1638 Oxenstierna employed a French ballet troupe under Antoine de Beaulieu, who also had to teach Christina to move around more elegantly. In 1647, the Italian architect Antonio Brunati was ordered to build a theatrical setting in one of the larger rooms of the palace. In 1648, she commissioned 35 paintings from Jacob Jordaens for a ceiling in Uppsala Castle. The court poet Georg Stiernhielm wrote several plays in the Swedish language, such as "Den fångne Cupido eller Laviancu de Diane", performed with Christina in the main part of the goddess Diana. She invited foreign companies to play at Bollhuset, such as an Italian opera troupe in 1652 with Vincenzo Albrici and Angelo Michele Bartolotti, a guitarist. A Dutch theater troupe with Ariana Nozeman and Susanna van Lee visited her in 1653. Among the French artists she employed was Anne Chabanceau de La Barre, who was made court singer.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1646, Christina's good friend, the French ambassador Pierre Chanut, met and corresponded with the philosopher René Descartes, asking him for a copy of his "Meditations". Upon showing the queen some of the letters, Christina became interested in beginning a correspondence with Descartes. She invited him to Sweden, but Descartes was reluctant until she asked him to organize a scientific academy. Christina sent a ship to pick up the philosopher and 2,000 books. Descartes arrived on 4 October 1649. He resided with Chanut, and finished his "Passions of the Soul". It is highly unlikely Descartes wrote a "Ballet de la Naissance de la Paix", performed on her birthday. On the day after, 19 December 1649, he probably started his private lessons for the queen. With Christina's strict schedule he was invited to the cold and draughty castle at 5:00 AM daily to discuss philosophy and religion. Soon it became clear they did not like each other; she disapproved of his mechanical view, and he did not appreciate her interest in Ancient Greek. On 15 January Descartes wrote he had seen Christina only four or five times. On 1 February 1650 Descartes caught a cold. He died ten days later, early in the morning on 11 February 1650, and according to Chanut the cause of his death was pneumonia.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Already at the age of nine Christina was impressed by the Catholic religion and the merits of celibacy. She read a biography on the virgin queen Elizabeth I of England with interest. Christina understood that it was expected of her to provide an heir to the Swedish throne. Her first cousin Charles was infatuated with her, and they became secretly engaged before he left in 1642 to serve in the Swedish army in Germany for three years. Christina revealed in her autobiography that she felt "an insurmountable distaste for marriage" and "for all the things that females talked about and did." She once stated, "It takes more courage to marry than to go to war." As she was chiefly occupied with her studies, she slept three to four hours a night, forgot to comb her hair, donned her clothes in a hurry and wore men's shoes for the sake of convenience. (In fact, her permanent bed-head became her trademark look in paintings.) When Christina left Sweden, she continued to write passionate letters to her intimate friend Ebba Sparre, in which she told her that she would always love her. However, such emotional letters were relatively common at that time, and Christina would use the same style when writing to women she had never met, but whose writings she admired.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina's coronation took place on 22 October 1650. Christina went to the castle of Jacobsdal where she entered in a coronation carriage draped in black velvet embroidered in gold and pulled by three white horses. The procession to Storkyrkan was so long that when the first carriages arrived, the last ones had not yet left Jacobsdal (a distance of roughly 10.5 km or 6.5 miles). All four estates were invited to dine at the castle. Fountains at the marketplace splashed out wine for three days, a whole roast ox was served, and illuminations sparkled, followed by a themed parade ("The Illustrious Splendors of Felicity") on 24 October.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Her tutor, Johannes Matthiae, influenced by John Dury and Comenius, who since 1638 had been working on a new Swedish school system, represented a gentler attitude than most Lutherans. In 1644, he suggested a new church order, but it was voted down as this was interpreted as Crypto-Calvinism. Queen Christina defended him against the advice of Chancellor Oxenstierna, but three years later, the proposal had to be withdrawn. In 1647, the clergy wanted to introduce the Book of Concord () – a book defining correct Lutheranism versus heresy, making some aspects of free theological thinking impossible. Matthiae was strongly opposed to this and was again backed by Christina. The Book of Concord was not introduced.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1651, after reigning almost twenty years, working at least ten hours a day, Christina had what some have interpreted as a nervous breakdown. For an hour she seemed to be dead. She suffered from high blood pressure, complained about bad eyesight and a crooked back. She had seen already many court physicians. In February 1652, the French doctor Pierre Bourdelot arrived in Stockholm. Unlike most doctors of that time, he held no faith in blood-letting; instead, he ordered sufficient sleep, warm baths, and healthy meals, as opposed to Christina's hitherto ascetic way of life. She was only twenty-five and advising that she should take more pleasure in life, Bourdelot asked her to stop studying and working so hard and to remove the books from her apartments. For years, Christina knew by heart all the sonnets from the Ars Amatoria and was keen on the works by Martial and Petronius. The physician showed her the 16 erotic sonnets of Pietro Aretino, which he kept secretly in his luggage. By subtle means Bourdelot undermined her principles. Having been stoic, she now became an Epicurean. Her mother and de la Gardie were very much against the activities of Bourdelot and tried to convince her to change her attitude towards him; Bourdelot returned to France in 1653 "laden in riches and curses".


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The Queen had long conversations about Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Francis Bacon, and Kepler with Antonio Macedo, secretary, and interpreter for Portugal's ambassador. Macedo was a Jesuit, and in August 1651, smuggled on his person a letter from Christina to his general in Rome. In reply, Paolo Casati and Francesco Malines came to Sweden in the spring of 1652, trained in both natural sciences and theology. She had more conversations with them, being interested in Catholic views on sin, the immortality of the soul, rationality, and free will. The two scholars revealed her plans to Cardinal Fabio Chigi. Around May 1652 Christina, raised in the Lutheran Church of Sweden, decided to become Catholic. She sent Matthias Palbitzki to Madrid and King Philip IV of Spain sent the diplomat Antonio Pimentel de Prado to Stockholm in August.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: On 26 February 1649, Christina announced that she had decided not to marry and instead wanted her first cousin Charles Gustav to be heir to the throne. While the nobility objected to this, the three other estates – clergy, burghers, and peasants – accepted it. She agreed to stay on the condition the councils never again asked her to marry. In 1651, Christina lost much of her popularity after the beheading of Arnold Johan Messenius, together with his 17-year-old son, who had accused her of serious misbehavior and of being a "Jezebel". According to them "Christina was bringing everything to ruin, and that she cared for nothing but sport and pleasure."


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1653, she founded the Amaranten order. Antonio Pimentel was appointed as its first knight; all members had to promise not to marry (again). In the same year, she ordered Vossius (and Heinsius) to make a list of about 6,000 books and manuscripts to be packed and shipped to Antwerp. In February 1654, she plainly told the Council of her plans to abdicate. Oxenstierna told her she would regret her decision within a few months. In May, the Riksdag discussed her proposals. She had asked for 200,000 "rikstalers" a year, but received dominions instead. Financially she was secured through a pension and revenue from the town of Norrköping, the isles of Gotland, Öland, Ösel, and Poel, Wolgast and Neukloster in Mecklenburg, and estates in Pomerania.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Her plan to convert was not the only reason for her abdication, as there was increasing discontent with her arbitrary and wasteful ways. Within ten years, she and Oxenstierna had created 17 counts, 46 barons, and 428 lesser nobles. To provide these new peers with adequate appanages, they had sold or mortgaged crown property representing an annual income of 1,200,000 rikstalers. During the ten years of her reign, the number of noble families increased from 300 to about 600, rewarding people such as Lennart Torstenson, Louis De Geer and Johan Palmstruch for their efforts. These donations took place with such haste that they were not always registered, and on some occasions, the same piece of land was given away twice.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina abdicated her throne on 6 June 1654 in favor of Charles Gustav. During the abdication ceremony at Uppsala Castle, Christina wore her regalia, which were ceremonially removed from her, one by one. Per Brahe, who was supposed to remove the crown, did not move, so she had to take the crown off herself. Dressed in a simple white taffeta dress, she gave her farewell speech with a faltering voice, thanked everyone, and left the throne to Charles X Gustav, who was dressed in black. Per Brahe felt that she "stood there as pretty as an angel." Charles Gustav was crowned later on that day. Christina left the country within a few days.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In the summer of 1654, Christina left Sweden in men's clothing with the help of Bernardino de Rebolledo, and rode as Count Dohna, through Denmark. Relations between the two countries were still so tense that a former Swedish queen could not have traveled safely in Denmark. Christina had already packed and shipped abroad valuable books, paintings, statues, and tapestries from her Stockholm castle, leaving its treasures severely depleted.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina visited Frederick III, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and while there thought that her successor should have a bride. She sent letters recommending two of the Duke's daughters to Charles. Based on this recommendation, he married Hedwig Eleonora. On 10 July Christina arrived in Hamburg and stayed with Jacob Curiel at Krameramtsstuben.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In August, she arrived in the Southern Netherlands and settled down in Antwerp. For four months Christina was lodged in the mansion of a Jewish merchant. She was visited by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria; the Prince de Condé, the ambassador Pierre Chanut, as well as the former governor of Norway, Hannibal Sehested. In the afternoons she went for a ride, and each evening parties were held; there was a play to watch or music to listen to. Christina ran quickly out of money and had to sell some of her tapestries, silverware, and jewelry. When her financial situation did not improve, the archduke invited her to his Brussels palace on Coudenberg. On 24 December 1654, she converted to the Catholic faith in the archduke's chapel in the presence of the Dominican Juan Guêmes, Raimondo Montecuccoli and Pimentel. Baptized as Kristina Augusta, she adopted the name Christina Alexandra. She did not declare her conversion in public, in case the Swedish council might refuse to pay her alimony. In addition, Sweden was preparing for war against Pomerania, which meant that her income from there was considerably reduced. The pope and Philip IV of Spain could not support her openly either, as she was not publicly a Catholic yet. Christina succeeded in arranging a major loan, leaving books and statues to settle her debts.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In September, she left for Italy with her entourage of 255 persons and 247 horses. The pope's messenger, the librarian Lucas Holstenius, himself a convert, waited for her in Innsbruck. On 3 November 1655, Christina announced her conversion to Catholicism in the Hofkirche and wrote to Pope Alexander VII and her cousin Charles X about it. To celebrate her official conversion, , an opera by Antonio Cesti, was performed. Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Austria, already in financial trouble, is said to have been almost ruined by her visit. Her departure was on 8 November.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The southbound journey through Italy was planned in detail by the Vatican and had a brilliant triumph in Ferrara, Bologna, Faenza and Rimini. In Pesaro, Christina became acquainted with the handsome brothers Santinelli, who so impressed her with their poetry and adeptness of dancing that she took them into service, as well as a certain Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi. The official entry into Rome took place on 20 December, in a couch designed by Bernini through Porta Flaminia, which today is known as Porta del Popolo. Christina met Bernini on the next day, she invited him to her apartment the same evening and they became lifelong friends. "Two days afterwards she was conducted to the Vatican Basilica, where the pope gave her confirmation. It was then that she received from the pope her second name of Alexandra, the feminine form of his own." She was granted her own wing inside the Vatican, decorated by Bernini.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina's visit to Rome was the triumph of Pope Alexander VII and the occasion for splendid Baroque festivities. For several months, she was the only preoccupation of the Pope and his court. The nobles vied for her attention and treated her to a never-ending round of fireworks, jousts, mock duels, acrobatics, and operas. On 31 January "Vita Humana" an opera by Marco Marazzoli was performed. At the Palazzo Barberini, where she was welcomed on 28 February by a few hundred privileged spectators, she watched an amazing carousel in the courtyard.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina had settled down in the Palazzo Farnese, which belonged to the Duke of Parma. Every Wednesday she held the palace open to visitors from the higher classes who kept themselves busy with poetry and intellectual discussions. Christina opened an academy in the palace on 24 January 1656, called Academy of Arcadia, where the participants enjoyed music, theater, and literature. The poet Reyer Anslo was presented to her. Belonging to the Arcadia-circle was also Francesco Negri, a Franciscan from Ravenna who is regarded as the first tourist to visit North Cape, Norway. Another Franciscan was the Swede Lars Skytte, who, under the name pater Laurentius, served as Christina's confessor for eight years.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Twenty-nine-year-old Christina gave occasion to much gossip when socializing freely with men her own age. One of them was Cardinal Decio Azzolino, who had been a secretary to the ambassador in Spain, and responsible for the Vatican's correspondence with European courts. He was also the leader of the "Squadrone Volante", the free-thinking "Flying Squad" movement within the Catholic Church. Christina and Azzolino were so close that the pope asked him to shorten his visits to her palace, but they remained lifelong friends. In a letter on 26 January 1676 to Azzolino Christina writes (in French) that she would never offend God or give Azzolino reason to take offense, but this "does not prevent me from loving you until death, and since piety relieves you from being my lover, then I relieve you from being my servant, for I shall live and die as your slave." As he had promised to remain celibate, his replies were more reserved. In the meantime Christina learned that the Swedes had confiscated all her revenue as the princess had become a Catholic.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: King Philip IV of Spain ruled the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples. The French politician Mazarin, an Italian himself, had attempted to liberate Naples from Spanish rule, against which the locals had fought before the Neapolitan Republic was created. A second expedition in 1654 had failed and the Duke of Guise gave up. Christina's goal was to become a mediator between France and Spain in their contest to control Naples. Her plan detailed that she would lead French troops to take Naples and rule until bequeathing the crown to France after her death. Christina sent home all her Spanish servants, including her confidant Pimentel and her confessor Guêmes. On 20 July 1656 Christina set sail from Civitavecchia for Marseille where she arrived nine days later. In early August, she traveled to Paris, accompanied by the Duke of Guise. Mazarin gave her no official sponsorship but gave instructions that she be celebrated and entertained in every town on her way north.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: On 8 September she arrived in Paris and was shown around; ladies were shocked by her masculine appearance and demeanor and the unguarded freedom of her conversation. When visiting the ballet with la Grande Mademoiselle, she, as the latter recalls, "surprised me very much – applauding the parts which pleased her, taking God to witness, throwing herself back in her chair, crossing her legs, resting them on the arms of her chair, and assuming other postures, such as I had never seen taken but by Travelin and Jodelet, two famous buffoons... She was in all respects a most extraordinary creature".


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina was treated with respect by the young Louis XIV and his mother, Anne of Austria, in Compiègne. On 22 September 1656, the arrangement between her and Louis XIV was ready. He would recommend Christina as queen to the Kingdom of Naples and serve as guarantor against Spanish aggression. As Queen of Naples, she would be financially independent of the Swedish king, and also capable of negotiating peace between France and Spain.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: On her way back Christina visited the beautiful and atheistic Ninon de l'Enclos in the convent at Lagny-sur-Marne. In early October, she left France and arrived in Torino. During the winter Christina lived in the apostolic palace in Pesaro, probably to flee the plague which infested several regions including Naples. During the Naples Plague (1656) almost half of the population died within two years. In July 1657, she returned to France, either being impatient or not so anxious to become queen of Naples.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: On 15 October 1657 apartments were assigned to her at the Palace of Fontainebleau, where she committed an action that stained her memory: the execution of marchese Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi, her master of the horse and formerly leader of the French party in Rome. For two months she had suspected Monaldeschi of disloyalty; she secretly seized his correspondence, which revealed that he had betrayed her interests. Christina gave three packages of letters to Le Bel, a priest, to keep them for her in custody. Three days later, at one o'clock on Saturday afternoon, she summoned Monaldeschi into the "Galerie des Cerfs", discussing the matter and letters with him. He insisted that betrayal should be punished with death. She was convinced that he had pronounced his own death sentence. After an hour or so Le Bel was to receive his confession. Both Le Bel and Monaldeschi entreated for mercy, but he was stabbed by her domestics – notably Ludovico Santinelli – in his stomach and in his neck. Wearing his coat of mail, which protected him, he was chased around in an adjacent room before they finally succeeded in dealing him a fatal wound in his throat. "In the end, he died, confessing his infamy and admitting [Santinelli's] innocence, protesting that he had invented the whole fantastic story in order to ruin [him]."


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Father Le Bel was told to have him buried inside the church, and Christina, seemingly unfazed, paid an abbey to say a number of Masses for his soul. She "was sorry that she had been forced to undertake this execution, but claimed that justice had been carried out for his crime and betrayal.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Mazarin, who had sent her old friend Chanut, advised Christina to place the blame due to a brawl among courtiers, but she insisted that she alone was responsible for the act. She wrote to Louis XIV who two weeks later paid her a friendly visit without mentioning it. In Rome, people felt differently; Monaldeschi had been an Italian nobleman, murdered by a foreign barbarian with Santinelli as one of her executioners. The letters proving his guilt are gone; Christina left them with Le Bel and only he confirmed that they existed. Christina never revealed what was in the letters, but according to Le Bel, it is supposed to have dealt with her "amours", either with Monaldeschi or another person. She herself wrote her version of the story for circulation in Europe.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The killing of Monaldeschi in a French palace was legal, since Christina had judicial rights over the members of her court, as her vindicator Gottfried Leibniz claimed. As her contemporaries saw it, Christina as queen had to emphasize right and wrong, and her sense of duty was strong. She continued to regard herself as queen regnant all her life.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: She would gladly have visited England, but she received no encouragement from Cromwell and stayed in Fontainebleau as nobody else offered her a place. Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV, was impatient to be rid of her cruel guest; Christina had no choice but to depart. She returned to Rome and dismissed Santinelli in 1659, claiming to be her ambassador in Vienna without her approval.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: On 15 May 1658, Christina arrived in Rome for the second time, but this time it was definitely no triumph. With the execution of Monaldeschi, her popularity was lost. Pope Alexander VII remained in his summer residence and wanted no further visits from her. He described her as 'a woman born of a barbarian, barbarously brought up and living with barbarous thoughts ... with a ferocious and almost intolerable pride'. She began examining her past life and started with her autobiography. Christina stayed at the Palazzo Rospigliosi, which belonged to Mazarin, the French cardinal, situated close to the Quirinal Palace; so the pope was enormously relieved when in July 1659, she moved to Trastevere to live in Palazzo Riario, below the Janiculum, designed by Bramante. It was Cardinal Azzolino, her "bookkeeper" who signed the contract, as well as provided her with new servants to replace Francesco Santinelli, who had been Monaldeschi's executioner.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The Riario Palace became her home for the rest of her life. She decorated the walls with tapestries by Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi and paintings, mainly from the Venetian School and Renaissance; and almost no paintings from northern European painters, except Holbein, Van Dyck and Rubens. Her collections included very little religious subject matter and an abundance of mythological imagery, so it seems that Christina was also much interested in classical history, prompting misbegotten academic speculation about the genuineness of her conversion. No Roman collection of art could match hers. She owned Correggio's "Danaë" and two versions of Titian's "Venus and Adonis", tapestries, sculpture, medaillons, drawings by Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Titian, Veronese and Goltzius and portraits of her friends Azzolino, Bernini, Ebba Sparre, Descartes, ambassador Chanut and doctor Bourdelot.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In April 1660 Christina was informed that Charles X Gustav had died in February. His son, Charles XI, was only five years old. That summer, she went to Sweden, pointing out that she had left the throne to her first cousin and his descendant, so if Charles XI died, she would take over the throne again. But as she was a Catholic that was impossible, and the clergy refused to let the priests in her entourage celebrate any Masses. Christina left Stockholm and went to Norrköping. Eventually she submitted to a second renunciation of the throne, spending a year in Hamburg to get her finances in order on her way back to Rome. Already in 1654, she had left her income to the banker in return for him sending her a monthly allowance and covering her debts in Antwerp. She visited the Teixeira family at Jungfernstieg and entertained them in her own lodgings.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In the summer of 1662, she arrived in Rome for the third time, followed by some fairly happy years. A variety of complaints and allegations made her resolve in 1666 once more to return to Sweden. She proceeded no farther than Norrköping, where she received a decree she was only allowed to settle in Swedish Pomerania. Christina immediately decided to go back to Hamburg. There she was informed that Alexander VII, her patron and tormentor, had died in May 1667. The new pope Clement IX, a victory for the Squadrone Volante, had been a regular guest at her palace. In her delight at his election, she threw a brilliant party at her lodgings in Hamburg, with illuminations and wine in the fountain outside. The party enraged Hamburg's Lutheran populace, and the party ended in a shooting, an attempt to seize the Queen, and her escape in disguise through a back door. Again she met with the freethinker and eye doctor Giuseppe Francesco Borri.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: On 16 September 1668, John II Casimir abdicated the Polish–Lithuanian throne and left to France. The Polish monarchy was elective and Christina, as a member of the House of Vasa, put herself forward as a candidate for the throne. She recommended herself being Catholic, an old maid and intended to remain one. She had Pope Clement IX's support; but her failure seemed to please her since this meant that she could return to her beloved Azzolino. She left the city on 20 October 1668.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina's fourth and last entry in Rome took place on 22 November 1668. Clement IX often visited her; they had a shared interest in plays. Christina organized meetings of the Accademia in the Great Hall which had ‘a platform for singers and players’. When the pope suffered a stroke, she was among the few he wanted to see at his deathbed. In 1671, Christina established Rome's first public theatre in a former jail, Tor di Nona.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The new pope, Clement X, worried about the influence of theatre on public morals. When Innocent XI became pope, things turned even worse; within a few years he turned Christina's theatre into a storeroom for grain, although he had been a frequent guest in her royal box with the other cardinals. He forbade women to perform with song or acting, and the wearing of decolleté dresses. Christina considered this sheer nonsense, and let women perform in her palace. In 1675, she invited António Vieira to become her confessor. Itinerant doctor Nicolaas Heinsius the Younger, the legitimized son of a former literatus at Christina's court in Stockholm, arrived in Rome in 1679, converted and was appointed the Queen's personal physician until about 1687, providing autobiographical material for his picaresque novel,"The Delightful Adventures and Wonderful Life of Mirandor" (1695). Christina wrote an unfinished autobiography, of which there are several drafts extant, essays on her heroes Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great and Julius Cæsar, on art and music (“Pensées, L’Ouvrage du Loisir” and “Les Sentiments Héroïques”) and acted as patron to musicians and poets as Vincenzo da Filicaja. Carlo Ambrogio Lonati and Giacomo Carissimi were Kapellmeister; Lelio Colista luteplayer; Loreto Vittori and Marco Marazzoli singers and Sebastiano Baldini librettist. She had Alessandro Stradella and Bernardo Pasquini to compose for her; Arcangelo Corelli dedicated his first work, "Sonata da chiesa opus 1", to her. On 2 February 1687 Corelli or Alessandro Scarlatti directed a tremendous orchestra performing a Pasquini cantata in praise for James II, England's first Catholic monarch since Mary I to welcome Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine as the new ambassador to the Vatican, accompanied by the painter John Michael Wright, who knew Rome and spoke Italian.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1656, Christina had appointed Carissimi as her "maestro di cappella del concerto di camera". Lars Englund of Uppsala University' Department of Musicology has hypothesized that Christina's early involvement with Italian music, and in particular church music from Rome, "was part of a deliberate self-transformation, from a ruling Lutheran regent to a Catholic Queen without a land."


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina's politics and rebellious spirit persisted long after her abdication of power. When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, abolishing the rights of French Protestants (Huguenots), Christina wrote an indignant letter, dated 2 February 1686, directed at the French ambassador Cesar d'Estrees. Louis did not appreciate her views, but Christina was not to be silenced. In Rome, she made Pope Clement X prohibit the custom of chasing Jews through the streets during the carnival. On 15 August 1686, she issued a declaration that Roman Jews were under her protection, signed "la Regina" – the queen.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina remained very tolerant towards the beliefs of others all her life. She on her part felt more attracted to the views of the Spanish priest Miguel Molinos, whom she employed as a private theologian. He had been investigated by the Holy Inquisition for proclaiming that sin belonged to the lower sensual part of man and was not subject to man's free will. Christina sent him food and hundreds of letters when he was locked up in Castel Sant'Angelo.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In February 1689, the 62-year-old Christina fell seriously ill after a visit to the temples in Campania, and received the last rites. She suffered from diabetes mellitus. Christina seemed to recover, but in the middle of April she developed an acute streptococcus bacterial infection known as erysipelas, then contracted pneumonia and a high fever. On her deathbed, she sent the pope a message asking if he could forgive her insults. She died on 19 April 1689 in Palazzo Corsini at six in the morning.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina had asked for a simple burial in the Pantheon, Rome, but the pope insisted on her being displayed on a "lit de parade" for four days in the Riario Palace. She was embalmed, covered with white brocade, a silver mask, a gilt crown, and a scepter. "The Queen wore a thin mantle, decorated with hundreds of crowns and fur bordered with ermine, under this a splendid garment in two pieces, thin gloves and drawers of knitted silk and a pair of elegant textile bootees". In similar fashion to the popes, her body was placed in three coffins – one of cypress, one of lead and finally one made of oak. The funeral procession on 2 May led from Santa Maria in Vallicella to St. Peter's Basilica, where she was buried within the Grotte Vaticane – one of only three women ever given this honor (the other two being Matilda of Tuscany and Maria Clementina Sobieska). Her intestines were placed in a high urn.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1702, Clement XI commissioned a monument for the queen, in whose conversion he vainly foresaw a return of her country to the Faith and to whose contribution towards the culture of the city he looked back with gratitude. This monument was placed in the body of the basilica and directed by the artist Carlo Fontana.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina had named Azzolino her sole heir to make sure her debts were settled, but he was too ill and worn out even to join her funeral, and died in June the same year. His nephew, Pompeo Azzolino, was his sole heir, and he rapidly sold off Christina's art collections.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Until 1649, when Christina was twenty-three, the Swedish royal art collection was unimpressive, with good tapestries but for paintings, little more than "about a hundred works by minor German, Flemish, and Swedish painters". But in May 1649, the fabulous loot from the occupation of Prague Castle the previous year arrived, with the pick of the collection amassed by the obsessive collector Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552–1612), one of the most important in Europe. Rudolf's bulk purchases had included the famous collection of Emperor Charles V's leading minister Cardinal Granvelle (1517–86), which he had forced Granvelle's nephew and heir to sell to him. Granvelle had been the "greatest private collector of his time, the friend and patron of Titian and Leoni and many other artists",


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina was entranced by her new possessions, and remained a keen collector for the rest of her life, and as a female art collector is only exceeded by Catherine the Great of Russia in the Early Modern period. Rudolf had collected old and contemporary works from both Italy and northern Europe, but it was the Italian paintings that excited Christina, and by her death, her collection contained relatively few northern works other than portraits.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Most of the Prague booty remained in Sweden after Christina's departure for exile: she only took about 70 to 80 paintings with her, including about 25 portraits of her friends and family, and some 50 paintings, mostly Italian, from the Prague loot, as well as statues, jewels, 72 tapestries, and various other works of art. She was concerned that the royal collections would be claimed by her successor, and prudently sent them ahead to Antwerp in a ship in August 1653, almost a year before she abdicated, an early sign of her intentions.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina greatly expanded her collection during her exile in Rome, for example adding the five small Raphael predella panels from the Colonna Altarpiece, including the "Agony in the Garden" now reunited with the main panel in New York, which were bought from a convent near Rome. She was apparently given Titian's "Death of Actaeon" by the greatest collector of the age, Archduke Leopold William of Austria, Viceroy in Brussels – she received many such gifts from Catholic royalty after her conversion, and gave some generous gifts herself, notably Albrecht Dürer's panels of "Adam" and "Eve" to Philip IV of Spain (now Prado). She also gave away two paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, "Dull Gret" and "The Cripples" (now Louvre). In such ways, the balance of her collection shifted to Italian art.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: The Riario Palace finally provided a suitable setting for her collection, and the "Sala dei Quadri" ("Paintings Room") had her finest works, with thirteen Titians and eleven Veroneses, five Raphaels and several Correggios. Titian's "Venus Anadyomene" was among them. "Venus mourns Adonis" by Veronese was from Prague, and is now back in Sweden (Nationalmuseum).


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Christina liked to commission portraits of herself, friends, and also notable people she had not met, from 1647 sending David Beck, her Dutch court painter, to several countries to paint notabilities. She encouraged artists to study her collection, including the drawings, and exhibited some of her paintings, but apart from portraits she commissioned or bought few works by living painters, except for drawings. Sculptors did rather better, and Bernini was a friend, while others were commissioned to restore the large collection of classical sculpture which she had begun to assemble while still in Sweden.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: On her death she left her collection to Cardinal Decio Azzolino, who himself died within a year, leaving the collection to his nephew, who sold it to Don Livio Odescalchi, commander of the Papal army, at which point it contained 275 paintings, 140 of them Italian. The year after Odescalchi's death in 1713, his heirs began protracted negotiations with the great French connoisseur and collector Pierre Crozat, acting as intermediary for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, from 1715 the Regent of France. The sale was finally concluded and the 123 paintings included in the sale were delivered in 1721, forming the core of the Orleans Collection, the paintings from which were mostly sold in London after the French Revolution, with many of them being on display in the National Gallery. The French experts complained that Christina had cut down several paintings to fit her ceilings, and had over-restored some of the best works, especially the Correggios, implicating Carlo Maratti.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: At first, removing her collections from Sweden was seen as a great loss to the country; but in 1697, Stockholm castle burned down with the loss of almost everything inside, so they would have been destroyed if they had remained there. Today very few major works from her collection still remain in the country. The sculpture collection was sold to the King of Spain and mostly remains in Spanish museums and palaces. Her large and important library was bought by Alexander VIII for the Vatican Library, while most of the paintings ended up in France, as the core of the Orleans Collection – many remain together in the National Gallery of Scotland. 1700 drawings from her collection (among them works by Michelangelo (25) and Raphael) were acquired in 1790 by Willem Anne Lestevenon for the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Historical accounts of Christina include regular reference to her physical features, mannerisms and style of dress. Christina was known to have a bent back, a deformed chest, and irregular shoulders. Some historians have speculated that references to her physical attributes may be over-represented in related historiography, thus giving the impression that this was of greater interest to her contemporaries than was actually the case. However, given how influential Christina became in her own era (especially for those in Rome), it is likely her style and mannerisms were at least of general interest to those around her, and this is reflected in many accounts. As a result of conflicting and unreliable accounts (some no better than gossip), the way in which Christina is described, even today, is a matter of debate.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: According to Christina's autobiography, the midwives at her birth first believed her to be a boy because she was "completely hairy and had a coarse and strong voice". Such ambiguity did not end with her birth; Christina made cryptic statements about her "constitution" and body throughout her life. Christina also believed a wet nurse had carelessly dropped her to the floor when she was a baby. A shoulder bone broke, leaving one shoulder higher than the other for the rest of her life. A number of her contemporaries made reference to the differing height of her shoulders.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: As a child, Christina's mannerisms could probably best be described as those of a tomboy. Her father insisted she should receive "the education of a prince", and some have interpreted this as acceptance, on the part of the king, that she had masculine features or that there was some form of gender ambiguity in her upbringing. She was educated as a prince and taught (and enjoyed) fencing, horse riding and bear hunting. She was said to have preferred these masculine hobbies to more feminine ones.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: As an adult, it was said that Christina "walked like a man, sat and rode like a man, and could eat and swear like the roughest soldiers". Christina's contemporary John Bargrave described her comportment in a similar fashion but said witnesses ascribed her style more to childishness or madness than masculinity. When she arrived in Rome in 1655, she had shaven her head and wore a big, dark wig. By 1665, according to Edward Browne, she regularly wore a velvet justacorps, cravat, and peruke (man's wig).


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: While Christina may not have been alone in her own time for choosing masculine dress (Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, for example, was known for dressing the same way), she also had physical features some described as masculine. According to Henry II, Duke of Guise, "she wears men's shoes and her voice and nearly all her actions are masculine". When she arrived in Lyon, she again wore a toque and had styled her hair like that of a young man. It was noted that she also wore large amounts of powder and face cream. In one account she "was sunburnt, and she looked like a sort of Egyptian street girl, very strange, and more alarming than attractive".


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Living in Rome, she formed a close relationship with Cardinal Azzolino, which was controversial but symbolic of her attraction to relationships that were not typical for a woman of her era and station. She abandoned her manly clothes and took to wearing "décolleté" dresses so risqué that they drew a rebuke from the Pope.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: As an older woman, Christina's style changed a little. François Maximilian Misson (visiting Rome in the spring of April 1688) wrote:


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In her "Autobiography" (1681), Christina is flirting with her androgynous personality. The question of her sexuality has been debated, even as a number of modern biographers generally consider her to have been a lesbian, and her relationships with women were noted during her lifetime; Christina seems to have written passionate letters to Ebba Sparre, and Guilliet suggested a relationship between Christina and Gabrielle de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Rachel, a niece of Diego Teixeira, and the singer Angelina Giorgino. Some historians assert she maintained heterosexual, non-sexual, lesbian, or bisexual relationships during the course of her life depending on which source is consulted. According to Veronica Buckley, Christina was a "dabbler" who was "painted a lesbian, a prostitute, a hermaphrodite, and an atheist" by her contemporaries, though "in that tumultuous age, it is hard to determine which was the most damning label". Christina wrote near the end of her life that she was "neither Male nor Hermaphrodite, as some People in the World have pass'd me for".


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Bargrave recounted that Christina's relationship with Azzolino was both "familiar" (intimate) and "amorous" and that Azzolino had been sent (by the Pope) to Romania as punishment for maintaining it. Buckley, on the other hand, believed there was "in Christina a curious squeamishness with regard to sex" and that "a sexual relationship between herself and Azzolino, or any other man, seems unlikely". Based on historical accounts of Christina's physicality, some scholars believe that she may have been an intersex individual.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1965, these conflicting accounts led to an investigation of Christina's remains. Physical anthropologist Carl-Herman Hjortsjö, who undertook the investigation, explained: "Our imperfect knowledge concerning the effect of intersex on the skeletal formation ... makes it impossible to decide which positive skeletal findings should be demanded upon which to base the diagnosis [of an intersex condition]." Nevertheless, Hjortsjö speculated that Christina had reasonably typical female genitalia because it is recorded by her physicians Bourdelot and Macchiati that she menstruated. Hjortsjö's osteological analysis of Christina's skeleton led him to state that they were of a "typically female" structure.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: Some of the symptoms could be due to polycystic ovary syndrome, a complex multi-endocrine disorder including hirsutism (male pattern/type hair growth) due to increased androgen hormone levels, and abdominal obesity due to the hormone insulin receptor defects. Buckley suggested that her low comprehension of the need for most social norms, little desire to act, dress, or do other social norms, and her preference to wear, act, and do only that which she deemed logically practical, point to her having a pervasive developmental disorder, such as Asperger syndrome.


title: Christina, Queen of Sweden

text: In 1636–1637, Peter Minuit and Samuel Blommaert negotiated with the government to found New Sweden, the first Swedish colony in the New World. In 1638, Minuit erected Fort Christina in what is now Wilmington, Delaware; the Christina River was also named after her, as well as the Queen Village neighborhood in Center City, Philadelphia.


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: The fifth season of the historical drama television series "Vikings" premiered on November 29, 2017 on History in Canada. The series broadly follows the exploits of the legendary Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok and his crew, and later those of his sons. The first season of the series begins at the start of the Viking Age, marked by the Lindisfarne raid in 793.


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: The fifth season consists of a double-season order of twenty episodes, split into two parts of ten episodes; the first part concluded on January 24, 2018. The second half premiered on November 28, 2018. The premise of the fifth season differs from the previous four after the departure of Travis Fimmel as Ragnar, and it follows the adventures of his living sons. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is introduced as a main character, after his initial appearance in the fourth season's finale. The season concluded in its entirety on January 30, 2019.


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: Three main characters who died in previous seasons briefly appear played by body doubles: Sigurd's corpse is briefly shown in "The Fisher King", King Ecbert appears in "The Fisher King" as a corpse and in "Baldur" as a cloaked figure, and Athelstan is seen as a cloaked figure in "The Departed".


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: An Irish-Canadian co-production presented by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the fifth season of "Vikings" was developed and produced by TM Productions and Take 5 Productions. Morgan O'Sullivan, Sheila Hockin, Sherry Marsh, Alan Gasmer, James Flynn, John Weber, and Michael Hirst are credited as executive producers. This season was produced by Keith Thompson for the first four and last four episodes, and Liz Gill for the fifth to sixteenth episodes. Bill Goddard and Séamus McInerney are co-producers.


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: The production team for this season includes casting directors Frank and Nuala Moiselle, costume designer Susan O'Connor Cave, visual effects supervisor Dominic Remane, stunt action designer Richard Ryan, composer Trevor Morris, production designer Mark Geraghty, editors Aaron Marshall for the first, third, fifth, tenth, fourteenth, seventeenth and twentieth episodes, Tad Seaborn for the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, thirteenth, sixteenth and nineteenth episodes, Michele Conroy for the seventh, ninth and eleventh episodes, Dan Briceno for the twelfth episode, and Don Cassidy for the fifteenth and eighteenth episodes and cinematographers PJ Dillon for the first and second episodes, Peter Robertson for the third, fourth, and seventh to sixteenth episodes, Suzie Lavelle for the fifth, sixth, seventeenth and eighteenth episodes, and Owen McPolin for the nineteenth and twentieth episodes.


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: At the same time that the series was renewed for a fifth season, it was announced that Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers would be joining the cast, as Heahmund, a "warrior bishop". Vikings creator Michael Hirst, explained: "I was looking at the history books, and I came across these warrior bishops. The antecedents of the Knights Templar: these are people who were absolutely religious, yet they put on armor and they fought. Don't let their priestly status fool you, either. They were crazy! They believed totally in Christianity and the message, and yet, on the battlefield, they were totally berserk."


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: Former WWE star Adam Copeland was cast in a recurring role for the fifth season, as Kjetill Flatnose, a violent and bold warrior. He is chosen by Floki to join an expedition to set up a colony in a new land. Irish actor Darren Cahill plays the role of Aethelred in the fifth season. Nigerian actor Stanley Amuzie told local media he had landed a small role in the fifth season. The fifth season also includes Irish actor, musician and real-life police detective, Kieran O'Reilly, who plays the role of White Hair. In April 2017 it was announced that Danish actor Erik Madsen had joined the cast for the fifth season, as King Hemming. He spent several months of 2016 on the set of "The Last Kingdom", portraying a Viking.


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: The musical score for the fifth season was composed by Trevor Morris in collaboration with Einar Selvik. The opening sequence is again accompanied by the song "If I Had a Heart" by Fever Ray.


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: The soundtrack album was released on December 27, 2019 by Sony Classical Records. An additional original song not included in the album is "Skidarima", written and performed by Einar Selvik and featured in "Homeland".


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: Additional non-original music by Norwegian music group Wardruna is featured in the episodes "The Plan" and "A Simple Story". The featured tracks are "MannaR - Drivande", "Løyndomsriss", and "Heimta Thurs".


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 91% approval rating, with an average rating of 8.10/10 based on 11 reviews. The consensus reads: "Brutal battles and epic quests help Vikings' fifth season remain an engaging, exciting journey." IGN awarded episode 10, "Moments of Vision", with a rating of 9 out of 10. Entertainent Weekly gave the episode an "A".


title: Vikings (season 5)

text: The second half of the season drew some criticism. Writing in Forbes, Erik Kain said: "the show continues to falter, an unfortunate mix of melodrama, one-note characters and absurd fantasy parading as historical fiction" and that the show "has simply lost its way". In "A Simple Story", Aethelred is portrayed rejecting the throne in favour of his younger brother Alfred. In history, after the death of Aethelwulf, three of Alfred's elder brothers ruled, for two, five and six years respectively, all dying before Alfred took the throne in 871. Writing in Forbes, Erik Kain described the storyline as "just a huge unforced error".


title: Tall Girl

text: Tall Girl is a 2019 American teen romantic comedy film directed by Nzingha Stewart, from a screenplay by Sam Wolfson. The film stars Ava Michelle, Griffin Gluck, Sabrina Carpenter, Paris Berelc, Luke Eisner, Clara Wilsey, Anjelika Washington, Rico Paris, Angela Kinsey, and Steve Zahn. It was released by Netflix on September 13, 2019.


title: Tall Girl

text: Jodi Kreyman is 16 years old and tall. She has been tall for her age since she was three, which has made her insecure her whole life. Students regularly joke about her height. In contrast, Jodi's older sister Harper is of average height and has won multiple beauty pageants. Jack Dunkleman, a life-long friend, frequently asks her out, but she is reluctant, partly because he's much shorter than her.


title: Tall Girl

text: Stig Mohlin, a Swedish foreign exchange student, joins Jodi's class, and she is immediately interested in him, along with most girls in her school. However, Kimmy Stitcher, her bully, starts showing him around. Dunkleman is distressed to learn that Stig will be staying at his house as the host family. Jodi asks her sister for help getting Stig to notice her. Harper and their mother help her with a complete makeover.


title: Tall Girl

text: Kimmy and Schnipper prank call Jodi, pretending to be Stig and asking her to homecoming. To Fareeda's frustration, Jodi hides in the bathroom to avoid Kimmy. Stumbling across Stig playing the piano, he encourages her to play, and they sing the duet "I've Never Been in Love Before" from the musical "Guys and Dolls".


title: Tall Girl

text: Jodi finds her father has organized a meeting of a club for tall people in their house, which she finds upsetting. Stig calls, and at first, thinking it is another prank call, she yells at him, but he invites her to watch a musical. She turns up to Dunkleman's house, and he becomes jealous when he realizes she is there to see Stig. He continually interrupts their evening, but as Stig escorts Jodi home, they kiss. Later, feeling guilty, Stig asks Dunkleman for advice, and he tells him to focus on being with Kimmy. Jodi gets angry at Dunkleman when she learns this.


title: Tall Girl

text: Meanwhile, another girl—Liz—asks Dunkleman on a date. Schnipper is now interested in Jodi, so he gets Kimmy to ask her to join them for an escape room activity; Jodi ditches a concert with Fareeda to go. In the escape room, they kiss in couples: Jodi and Schnipper, Kimmy and Stig, and Dunkleman and Liz, until Jodi gets frustrated and leaves. Jealous, Stig talks to Jodi and agrees to go on a date to Harper's pageant competition. Harper wins, but Stig does not turn up. At Dunkleman's party, Stig explains that he lost track of time.


title: Tall Girl

text: Dunkleman rejects Liz when she asks him to the homecoming dance. He gives Jodi platform heels to apologize for being a bad friend. Jodi is sent a video from after she left the party. Stig pretended that Jodi had an unrequited love for him and says he stood her up. Dunkleman and Stig have a fistfight, causing him to get a black eye.


title: Tall Girl

text: At the homecoming dance, Kimmy and Stig are crowned Homecoming Queen and King, but he breaks up with her. Jodi arrives in the high heels Dunkleman gave her and made a speech expressing newfound confidence in herself. Stig asks Jodi out, but she rejects him. She talks to Dunkleman: he reveals the reason he always carries a milk crate: he stands on it and leans in to kiss her.


title: Tall Girl

text: In November 2018, it was announced that Netflix would collaborate with McG of Wonderland Sound and Vision for a fourth time on the film "Tall Girl", with Nzingha Stewart set as the director. In January 2019, Ava Michelle, Griffin Gluck, Luke Eisner, Sabrina Carpenter, Paris Berelc, Steve Zahn, Angela Kinsey, Anjelika Washington, Clara Wilsey, and Rico Paris joined the cast of the film.


title: Tall Girl

text: The film released on September 13, 2019. On October 17, 2019, Netflix announced that the film had been viewed by over 41 million viewers after its release on their platform.


title: Tall Girl

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads, "While charming at times, "Tall Girl" is mostly an uninspired teen comedy that fails to bring anything new to the genre."


title: Tall Girl

text: On December 1, 2020, DiscussingFilm reported that "Tall Girl 2" was in the works at Netflix, with Michelle returning as Jodi alongside the majority of the supporting cast. Filming began in April 2021, with Sam Wolfson returning as the screenplay writer. "Tall Girl 2" was eventually released on February 11, 2022.


title: Phenylalanine

text: Phenylalanine (symbol Phe or F) is an essential α-amino acid with the formula . It can be viewed as a benzyl group substituted for the methyl group of alanine, or a phenyl group in place of a terminal hydrogen of alanine. This essential amino acid is classified as neutral, and nonpolar because of the inert and hydrophobic nature of the benzyl side chain. The -isomer is used to biochemically form proteins coded for by DNA. Phenylalanine is a precursor for tyrosine, the monoamine neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and epinephrine (adrenaline), and the skin pigment melanin. It is encoded by the codons UUU and UUC.


title: Phenylalanine

text: Phenylalanine is found naturally in the milk of mammals. It is used in the manufacture of food and drink products and sold as a nutritional supplement for its analgesic and antidepressant effects. It is a direct precursor to the neuromodulator phenethylamine, a commonly used dietary supplement. As an essential amino acid, phenylalanine is not synthesized de novo in humans and other animals, who must ingest phenylalanine or phenylalanine-containing proteins.


title: Phenylalanine

text: The first description of phenylalanine was made in 1879, when Schulze and Barbieri identified a compound with the empirical formula, CHNO, in yellow lupine ("Lupinus luteus") seedlings. In 1882, Erlenmeyer and Lipp first synthesized phenylalanine from phenylacetaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, and ammonia.


title: Phenylalanine

text: The genetic codon for phenylalanine was first discovered by J. Heinrich Matthaei and Marshall W. Nirenberg in 1961. They showed that by using mRNA to insert multiple uracil repeats into the genome of the bacterium "E. coli", they could cause the bacterium to produce a polypeptide consisting solely of repeated phenylalanine amino acids. This discovery helped to establish the nature of the coding relationship that links information stored in genomic nucleic acid with protein expression in the living cell.


title: Phenylalanine

text: Good sources of phenylalanine are eggs, chicken, liver, beef, milk, and soybeans. Another common source of phenylalanine is anything sweetened with the artificial sweetener aspartame, such as diet drinks, diet foods and medication; the metabolism of aspartame produces phenylalanine as one of the compound's metabolites.


title: Phenylalanine

text: The Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) of the U.S. Institute of Medicine set Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for essential amino acids in 2002. For phenylalanine plus tyrosine, for adults 19 years and older, 33 mg/kg body weight/day.


title: Phenylalanine

text: -Phenylalanine is biologically converted into -tyrosine, another one of the DNA-encoded amino acids. -tyrosine in turn is converted into -DOPA, which is further converted into dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and epinephrine (adrenaline). The latter three are known as the catecholamines.


title: Phenylalanine

text: Phenylalanine uses the same active transport channel as tryptophan to cross the blood–brain barrier. In excessive quantities, supplementation can interfere with the production of serotonin and other aromatic amino acids as well as nitric oxide due to the overuse (eventually, limited availability) of the associated cofactors, iron or tetrahydrobiopterin. The corresponding enzymes for those compounds are the aromatic amino acid hydroxylase family and nitric oxide synthase.


title: Phenylalanine

text: Phenylalanine is the starting compound used in the synthesis of flavonoids. Lignan is derived from phenylalanine and from tyrosine. Phenylalanine is converted to cinnamic acid by the enzyme phenylalanine ammonia-lyase.


title: Phenylalanine

text: The genetic disorder phenylketonuria (PKU) is the inability to metabolize phenylalanine because of a lack of the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase. Individuals with this disorder are known as "phenylketonurics" and must regulate their intake of phenylalanine. Phenylketonurics often use blood tests to monitor the amount of phenylalanine in their blood. Lab results may report phenylalanine levels using either mg/dL and μmol/L. One mg/dL of phenylalanine is approximately equivalent to 60 μmol/L.


title: Phenylalanine

text: A (rare) "variant form" of phenylketonuria called hyperphenylalaninemia is caused by the inability to synthesize a cofactor called tetrahydrobiopterin, which can be supplemented. Pregnant women with hyperphenylalaninemia may show similar symptoms of the disorder (high levels of phenylalanine in blood), but these indicators will usually disappear at the end of gestation. Pregnant women with PKU must control their blood phenylalanine levels even if the fetus is heterozygous for the defective gene because the fetus could be adversely affected due to hepatic immaturity.