Frederick II of Denmark

Frederick II became King of Denmark and Norway in 1559 at 24, inheriting stable realms his father had rebuilt after civil war. Young and belligerent, driven by honor and national pride, he opened with a quick reconquest of Dithmarschen - then miscalculated badly with the Northern Seven Years' War against Sweden's Erik XIV. The exhausting conflict taught him prudence. The rest of his reign turned inward: hunting, feasting, building. His 1572 marriage to Sophie of Mecklenburg became one of Renaissance Europe's happiest, seven children in ten years, the two described as inseparable. His rivalry with Sweden shifted from battlefield to genealogy and architecture; in the 1570s he raised Kronborg at Elsinore, a Renaissance fortress known across Europe, its dance hall the largest in the North. He built one of Europe's largest fleets, backed science and culture, and craved the company of learned men - quick-witted in his dictated letters, loyal, sharp. History gave him a raw deal, painting him as a brutish drunk, overshadowed by his son Christian IV.