Gunilla Bielke
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Gunilla Bielke (born 1568, died 1597) was the second wife and queen of king John III of Sweden.
She was born as the daughter of the king's cousin, the former governor of Östergötland, Johan Axelsson Bielke, and had been raised at the royal court since she was ten years old, a palyfirend of the kings daughter, Princess Anna of Finland. Just as two of the prevous queens, Margareta Leijonhufvud and Katarina Stenbock, she was engaged when the king decided to marry her, and refused the kings proposal; the king was so enraged by this that he slapped her in the face with his gloves. But her family forced her to agree, the engagent was broken, and she was married to the king in 1585, to the rage of the king's sisters, who considered it a messalliance despite the fact that their own mother was also a noblewoman; the kings brothers and sisters all refused to attend.
Gunilla Bielke was a very beautiful, blond girl at the time of her marriage, (no portraits of her is said to have made her justice) and apparently, the king married her mainly for sexual reasons and as a remedy for depression in old age, caused by the death of his first wife; theese was the reaseons he himself told the governement, and asked wy he did not marry a princess, he told them he wished to have a beatiful wife and that portraits of foreign princesses whas not to be trusted.
She was given a very large allowance and is regarded one of the richest of the queens of Sweden. Queen Gunilla had a large influence on the agedening king; she is in history desribed as having influenced him in protestantism the same way his former Queen, Catherine Jagiellon, had influenced him in catholicism, and the king oppenly admitted to having changed his decission, or having a new idea, " for the sake of our mistress the dear Queens wishes". In 1589, they had a son, John, duke of Ostrogothia.
After the kings death she reained at the Castle in Stockholm, prepared to fight for the inheritence of herself and her son, acused by her brother in law, the future Charles IX of Sweden , to stay in the capital as the only royal representative to steal from the Royal Castles belongins, and she was also acused by King Sigismunds wife Anne of Austria of having stripped the Castle when the new king and Queen arived from Poland in 1593; the two Queens hated eachother because of religious reasons, but Gunilla refused to leave Stockholm before she had secured her inheritence. She was given some of it and then ritered to Bråberg Castle, where she remained the four years untill her death.
