House of Mecklenburg
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
sv:Furstehuset Mecklenburg fi:Mecklenburgin suku
Ducal House of Mecklenburg A North German Princely dynasty
Origins
Lords of the vend tribe Obotrites
Claims to Swedish throne
The Dukes of Mecklenburg pursued from 14th century a claim to inheritance in Sweden: The Duke of Mecklenburg was a descendant and the heir of two women whom legends tied to Swedish royal houses as daughters of kings.
- Duke Henry II of Mecklenburg's paternal great-grandmother, a Scandinavian noblewoman named Christina, who was the wife of Henry Borwin II of Mecklenburg (d 1226), was claimed at least by later tradition to have been a daughter of King Sverker II of Sweden. (However, Swedish sources attest that king Sverker II had a son, John, and one daughter, Helena, who married a Swedish nobleman. No further children seem to be attested in sources close to Sweden of that time.) Christina was the mother of John I of Mecklenburg, whose son was Henry I of Mecklenburg.
- Duke Henry II of Mecklenburg's maternal grandmother, a Scandinavian noblewoman named Marianna, who was the first wife of Duke Barnim I of Pomerania (d 1278), lord of Wolgast, was claimed to have been a daughter of King Eric X of Sweden and his wife Richeza of Denmark. (However, sources of the time are scarce, and there is not much attestation of marriages, fates and precise names of those slighted daughters of Eric X.) Marianna had given birth to an only surviving child, daughter named Anastasia of Pomerania, who then became the wife of Henry I of Mecklenburg (d 1302) and mother of Henry II.
The Sverker dynasty had long been extinct, having lost the throne ultimately to Eric XI. The male dynasty of Eric X was also now extinct, and his other daughters had been sidestepped by Birger Jarl, the husband of his (possibly youngest) daughter, Ingeborg, who took care to secure the kingship to his own sons. Dukes of Mecklenburg helped the said legends of their foremothers' Swedish royalty to embellish and spread, and used them as pretexts for the royal aspirations.
Claim became reality for a brief reign: Henry's son Duke Albert II (1318-79) married a kinswoman, a Scandinavian heiress Euphemia of Sweden and Norway (born 1317 and died 1370). Albert III deposed his uncle from the Swedish throne, and ascended as King Albert of Sweden.
