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Carl XV (May 3, 1826 – September 18, 1872) was King of Sweden and Norway from July 8, 1859 until his death in 1872. In Norway he was often referred to as Carl IV, Though known as King Carl XV in Sweden (and also on contemporary Norwegian coins), he was actually the ninth Swedish king by that name, as his predecessor Carl IX (reigned 1604–1611) had adopted a numeral according to a fictitious history of Sweden. Carl XV was the third Swedish monarch from the House of Bernadotte. He was the first one to be born in Sweden, and the first to be raised from birth in the Lutheran faith.

Early life

He was born in Stockholm Palace, Stockholm, in 1826 and dubbed Duke of Scania at birth. Born the eldest son of Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden and his wife Crown Princess Josephine, the first of six children of Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg (1781–1824), and his wife, Princess Augusta of Bavaria (1788–1851). Her paternal grandmother and namesake was Joséphine Tascher de La Pagerie, the first wife of Emperor Napoleon; she was given the name ‘Joséphine’ by Napoleon’s request. Her maternal grandfather was King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria.

Prince Carl of Sweden would be second in line to the throne of his grandfather, the ruling King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden. During his childhood he was placed in the care of the royal governess countess Christina Ulrika Taube. When he was just 15, he was given his first officer’s commission in 1841 by his grandfather the king.

Crown Prince

The aging King Carl XIV Johan would suffer a stroke on his 81st birthday in 1844, dying little more than a month later. His successor would be his son, Carl’s father Oscar, who ascended the throne as King Oscar I of Sweden. Upon his father’s accession to the throne in 1844, Crown Prince Carl was made a chancellor of the universities of Uppsala and Lund, and in 1853 chancellor of Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. On February 11, 1846 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The Crown Prince was Viceroy of Norway briefly in 1856 and 1857. He became Regent on September 25, 1857 and became King on the death of his father on July 8, 1859. As grandson of Princess Augusta of Bavaria, he was a descendant of King Gustaf I of Sweden and King Carl IX of Sweden, whose Vasa blood returned to the throne after being lost in 1818 when the childless King Carl XIII of Sweden died.

Marriage

Princess Louise of the Netherlands (August 5, 1828 – March 30, 1871) was the daughter of Prince Frederick of the Netherlands and Princess Louise of Prussia.

Prince Frederick of the Netherlands was the second child of King Willem I of the Netherlands and his wife Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia who was the daughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia and his second wife, Princess Frederica Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Princess Louise of the Netherlands mother, Princess Louise of Prussia,was the eighth child of King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Her education was to large extent entrusted to her Belgian governess Victoire Wauthier, and she studied French, German, English, Russian and piano.

In 1849, Princess Louise of the Netherlands was selected as a suitable spouse for Crown Prince Carl of Sweden and Norway. The marriage was arranged after the negotiations to arrange a marriage between Crown Prince and her cousin Princess Louise of Prussia had failed. The Princess Louise of Prussia was the second child and eldest daughter of Prince Charles of Prussia and Princess Marie of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Her paternal grandfather was King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.

King Oscar I of Sweden wished to secure royal family connections between the new Bernadotte dynasty and the old royal dynasties of Europe, and a Protestant princess was also seen as a necessary queen of the Protestant Sweden-Norway after two Catholic predecessors.

Princess Louise of the Netherlands fulfilled these credentials, and a great dowry was expected from the rich House of Orange-Nassau. Cabinet secretary Manderström was sent to inspect her, and diplomatically let it be known in his report that Louise had an excellent education and a good character but that she was not physically attractive.

In August 1849, a meeting was arranged between Princess Louise and Crown Prince Carl in the Hague. Reportedly, Louise fell in love with Carl elt an immediate attraction, while Carl in contrast was disappointed in her appearance. Crown Prince Carl, however, was convinced to agree to the marriage by the King.

The engagement was officially declared in February 1850. The expectations of her great fortune was debated in Sweden, both in the parliament during the discussions about the allowance, and in the radical press, who suggested that the monarch would now be able to finance the construction of the Swedish rail road net by himself. In reality, however, her dowry turned out to be very small.

During the engagement, Louise studied the Swedish language and history; she never learnt Norwegian, however. Because the Dutch government had supported the marriage, she did not have to renounce her rights to the Dutch throne upon her marriage.

On June 19, 1850 they married in Stockholm at Storkyrkan (Swedish: The Great Church’), also called Stockholms domkyrka (Stockholm Cathedral) and Sankt Nikolai kyrka (Church of Saint Nicholas), and is the oldest church in Stockholm.

The couple were personally quite dissimilar; Louise was a cultured and refined woman, however, she was considered to be quite plain and as previously mentioned, Crown Prince was disappointed with her appearance. Louise was in love with her husband, whereas he preferred other women, saddening her deeply. His well-known mistresses included the actress Laura Bergnéhr, the countess Josephine Sparre, Wilhelmine Schröder and the actresses Hanna Styrell and Elise Hwasser, and the Crown Prince neglected his shy wife. On the other hand, his relationship to his only daughter, Louise, was warm and close.

Needless to say, the relationship between Louise and Carl was unhappy. The couple had dissimilar personalities, with Louise being introverted, shy and with a preference for a simple life, and Charles extraverted and with a love for parties and social life. Louise was reportedly unhappily in love with Charles, who found her unattractive and was unfaithful to her, which pained her considerably.

From 1852 until 1860, Carl’s relationship with the perviously mentioned Josephine Sparre, maid of honor to Louise, which caused a scandal. Sparre was described as so dominant that the Crown Princess and her maid of honor was said to have changed places with each other and Louise being the lady-in-waiting to Josephine Sparre rather than the other way around. Fritz von Dardel described Sparre: “The lady in question is a great favorite of the Crown Prince as well as with the Crown Princess, and she governs them both entirely in everything about their daily life. Gifted with an unusual talent to please and make herself indispensable, she has managed to capture the Crown Prince to a strange degree.”

Louise was given sympathy and Carl was considered to be treating her with neglect. A known episode which attracted attention took place at the birthday garden party of Louise at Drottningholm Palace in 1857, when the Crown Prince proposed a toast to his “secret love” with both Louise and Josephine Sparre present. This caused a scene, and his brother, Prince Oscar, reprimanded him indirectly by asking his own spouse, Sofia of Nassau, to toast with him. This scene caused Louise to burst into tears and suffer a nervous attack.

Issue

By his wife, Louise, Carl had two children, a son who died in infancy and a daughter, named Louise after her mother. Although her father made several attempts to have Princess Louise of Sweden ecognized as his heir, she was barred from the succession as at the time only males could ascend the throne of Sweden. In 1869, she married the future King Frederik VIII of Denmark, with whom she had eight children.

The early death of his only legitimate son meant that he was succeeded on the throne of Sweden by his younger brother who became King Oscar II of Sweden.

It is interesting to speculate that if Princess Louise had been allowed to be the Queen Regnant of Sweden and Norway and had still married King Frederik VIII of Denmark, their son, King Christian X of Denmark could have theoretically united all three Scandinavian Thrones.

King Carl XV also sired an illegitimate son, Carl Johan Bolander, (February 4, 1854 – July 28, 1903), the father of Bishop Nils Bolander, and daughter, Ellen Svensson Hammar (28 October 1865 – 1931), and it has been widely rumored that he had many more extramarital children.

No subsequent King of Sweden to this day is a descendant of King Carl XV. However, his descendants are or have been on the thrones of Denmark, Luxembourg, Greece, Belgium and Norway. A few weeks before Carl XV’s death, his daughter Louise (then the Crown Princess of Denmark) gave birth to her second son. The young Prince Carl of Denmark became christened as grandfather’s namesake.

In 1905 this grandson, Prince Carl of Denmark, ascended the throne of Norway, becoming thus his maternal grandfather’s successor in that country, and assumed the reign name Haakon VII. The present king, Harald V of Norway, is Carl XV’s great-great-grandson, through both his father and mother.