The Duke and Duchess of Sussex may feel like they are sailing into uncharted waters by starting a fresh life in America, but they are far from the first royals to flee to another country, whether by force or by choice. From Napoleon to James II of England to the Shah of Iran, exile has been the lot of many royals throughout the centuries. Freedom from life in the royal fishbowl may at first seem exhilarating, but Harry and Meghan should take heed. While some exiled royals have flourished away from the royal court, others have floundered, missing the pomp, power, and prestige of life in an exalted station with ready-made fortune and fame.
Queen Christina of Sweden
An ingenious free spirit, Christina (portrayed famously on film by Greta Garbo in 1933) became Queen of Sweden at the age of five. According to Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric by Veronica Buckley, her decision to abdicate in 1654 at the age of 27 was a longtime coming. The queen hated her country’s freezing weather, intellectual stagnation, and Protestant religion. Plus, she refused to marry—likening the marriage bed to a tomb—much to her advisers’ dismay.
After her abdication, Christina traveled to the border between Sweden and Denmark, chopping off her hair and changing into men’s attire before entering the country. From then on she would dress in masculine clothes, her voice deepening and her behavior increasingly stereotypically masculine. “Free at last!” she reportedly cried, as she ran across a stream separating the two countries. “Out of Sweden, and I hope I never come back!”
Christina converted to Catholicism and settled primarily in Rome, where she held salons, allegedly fell in love with a cardinal, patronized the arts, and unsuccessfully schemed for a new throne in Naples, Poland, and eventually Sweden. Still eager for notoriety, Christina’s eccentric actions created many scandals, including the “execution” of a member of her household staff she accused of disloyalty. In the later years of her life she became heavily involved in alchemy, attempting to transmute lead into gold to finance her dream of “leading a Christian army against the Turks.” Until her death in 1689, it was said that her mini court housed all the “thieves, assassins, and debauch’d women” of Rome, according to her contemporary, Christian Gottfried Franckenstein.
For Christina it was a life well lived. “My ambition, my pride, incapable of submitting to anyone, and my disdain, despising everything,” she wrote in her unfinished Memoirs, “have miraculously saved me.”
Queen Caroline of England
After being virtually hounded out of England by her vindictive husband, Prince George, and his political cronies, the controversial Princess Caroline took off to explore the world in 1814. She caused a scandal throughout Europe, acquiring Italian lover Bartolomeo Pergami, according to widespread rumors, as well as cavorting with Bonapartes, dancing in flimsy costumes, and riding a donkey throughout the Italian countryside. “Although if I could have foreseen all that I have had to meet with, I might not have undertaken so distant and dangerous a journey,” she wrote. “I am far, very far from repenting it; I have gleaned so much real knowledge, and been gratified with such long-anticipated sights, that I feel well repaid for the trouble.”
Caroline even traveled extensively in the Middle East and North Africa. “The…Barbarians are much more real, kind, and obliging to me than all the civil people of Europe,” she wrote from Tunis. “I am living a perfect enchantment.”