Hedvig Taube

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Countess Hedvig Ulrika Taube (1714-1744) was an Estonian-Finnish-Swedish noblewoman, official mistress to King Frederick I of Sweden and mother of Fredrik Vilhelm von Hessenstein and three other children.

Hedvig Taube was the daughter of a noble family who suffered from severe gambling debts when the king noticed the beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter of the family in 1730. King Frederick I, nearing sixty, was at this point more and more infamous for his sexual excesses. The young girl at first refused him; she was said to be persuaded by her family to give in to save the family from ruin.

She was installed at court as lady-in-waiting to queen Ulrika Eleonora, and apparently became more to the king then merely a sexual plaything.

In 1734, the king had the Holy Roman Emperor grant her the title countess von Hessenstein, acknowledged her as his official mistress and gave her her own palace to live in with her own household. This caused a great scandal, as she thus was the first official royal mistress in Swedish history. Of course, many Swedish kings had mistresses, but they had never previously been official, in the "French way"; the Queen lockt herself in her rooms, the priests refused to pay homage in the curches to a king "with two wives", satirical phamflettes cirulated in Stockholm, the oppinion of the public greatly favoured the Queen, as she was respected for her pious behaviour and the last of the old Swedish dynasty, and leaders of the government reminded the king of his promise to always "treat the queen with respect" when she abdicated in his favour. The king answered that the matter of treating the Queen with respect out of gratitude for her abdication had nothing to do with his private life, and wrote a letter to the Queen and asked her to protect Hedvig after his death.

The Queen had the bishops of the parlaments clericall group lecture both Hedvig and the king; the king answered that the government had promised not to get inwalved in his personal affairs and refused to accept a writtenprotest. Hedvig followed the manner of the queen and pretended to be sick, but the bishops forced their way in to "The public sinner" and lectured her laying in bed with half of her face covered by a sheet. She said to them, "I had no aidea that Her Majesty was displeased because of this," and the bishops replyed "We can asure you missy that it is so, and how else should it be?", and she said to them that they should have lectured her when she was younger and defensless.

The countess herself lived an unhappy and discreet life. After her first public apearence at court after her aknowledgement in 1735 the Queen protested by caliming to be indisposed and refused to leave her rooms, and after this, Hedvig never appeared at court again.She had never wanted to be a mistress, and when foreign ambassadors visited her to ask her to use her influence, she told them she had none and that she did not wish to have any. She did, however, became a noted mecenat for artists, and her salon became an own little court that rivaled that of the religous Queen.

In 1739, the Queen wanted Hedvig and her two sons expelled from the country, and they left for Hesse, but Hedvig stayed behind in Nyköping, where the king met her, claiming to go hunting, and she never left the country. This enraged the Queen who refused to leave her room for fourteen days, and it was said to have contributed to the Queens declining health, and Hedvig continued as his mistress.

She was intruduced to the new Crownprince Adolf Fredrick in 1743, and the year after, she died in childbirth. After her death, the king made himself a laughing-stock by his way of life, spending his time drinking and using underage prostitutes from the streets after ladies of the court refused to have anything to do with him.