Christina, Queen of Sweden

Christina became queen at five when her father Gustavus Adolphus died at the Battle of Lützen in 1632, though she didn't rule the Swedish Empire until eighteen. She wanted Stockholm to be the "Athens of the North" and pushed for peace to end the Thirty Years' War, but her lavish spending nearly bankrupted the state — she once issued copper in lumps as currency during the 1644 Torstenson War. Erudite and unconventional, she adopted masculine attire and refused marriage, choices that fed scandal when combined with her conversion to Catholicism. In 1654 she abdicated to her cousin Charles X Gusta…