Catharina Ebba Horn

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Catharina Ebba Horn af Åminne, (27 May 1720- 12 September 1781 in Jakobsberg), was a Swedish noble, a German Roman countess and the second official royal mistress of king Frederick I of Sweden. She was one of two official royal mistresses in Sweden.

[edit] Biography

Catharina Ebba Horn was born as the child of Krister Horn and the sister of Fredric Horn. When Hedvig Taube, the official mistress of the king, died in 1744, the king approached Catharina Horn in an attempt to make her his mistress. The king had at this point a bad reputation because of his open and frequent use of prostitutes from the streets and his alcoholism, but the fact that he had made Hedvig Taube an official mistress, the first one in Sweden, had set an example. Catharina Ebba agreed to give in to his advances with the condition that she would be officially recognised and receive a title in her own right and her own income, in the French form of royal mistress and "queen to the left", which had been granted Hedvig Taube.

King Frederick agreed to her demands, and she became his mistress in 1745; in 1746, the king, in his position as Landgrave of Hesse, applied for a noble title from the German Roman emperor for her in the same fashion as he had done for Hedvig Taube, and she received the title of German Roman countess. The relationship did not have any political importance as she did not have much influence, and in 1748, it was over; there is no support for the old rumours that they had secretly entered a morganatical marriage. The king died in 1751, and in 1762, she married the statesman count Ulrik Barck.