Margareta Brahe

Margareta Abrahamsdotter Brahe (1603–1669) was a Swedish noble and lady-in-waiting and a Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg. She aroused a lot of attention with her marriages, which were considered scandalous.

She was the daughter of Count Abraham Pedersson Brahe and Elsa Gyllenstierna and the sister of Per Brahe the Younger; she was also the cousin of Ebba Brahe. Prior to her first marriage, she was the lady-in-waiting of the Queen, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. In 1633 she married Bengt Oxenstierna (1591–1643) and followed him to Swedish Livonia. Widowed in 1643, she returned to the court as lady-in-waiting to Queen Christina of Sweden.

In 1647, she received a proposal from Johan Oxenstierna, son of Axel Oxenstierna. Marriages within the nobility were political contracts made to balance power within the different families. This proposal caused political conflicts at court, in which the monarch was forced to balance between the two noble families Brahe and Oxenstierna. It also caused a scandal because of the age difference, as the bride and not the groom was one decade senior. Margareta was furthermore considered sterile due to age. As the marriage was neither political, economical or intended to produce children, it was clearly a love match. Axel Oxenstierna engaged his other son to Elsa Elisabeth Brahe, which was seen as a way to allow his son to marry Margareta without disturbing the power balance, but he was actually strongly against the marriage. He wrote to his son that although he would gladly see Margareta as his daughter-in-law if she was younger, he could not understand why Johan wanted to marry an "old" and sterile woman, who could not give his parents grandchildren. But Johan was genuinely in love and married Margareta against his parents' advice four months after the death of his first spouse. The marriage lasted ten years. When Johan died in 1657, Margareta was one of the richest people in Sweden.

...
Wikipedia