Philip Christoph von Königsmarck

Philip Christoph von Königsmarck (4 March 1665 in Stade – 2 July 1694 in Hanover), also spelled Philipp, was a Swedish count of Brandenburgian extraction and a soldier. He was allegedly the lover of Sophia Dorothea, Princess of Celle, the wife of Duke George Louis of Brunswick and Lunenburg, the heir presumptive of the Principality of Calenberg, later to become Elector of Hanover (as George I Louis, 1708) and King of Great Britain (as George I, 1714).

Königsmarck was the grandson to the Swedish Field Marshal Hans Christoff von Königsmarck, Bremen-Verden's governor general in Stade, and nephew to the Swedish Field Marshal Otto Wilhelm Königsmarck and Beata Elisabet von Königsmarck. He was the son of Count Kurt Christoph von Königsmarck (1634-1673), son of Hans Christoff von Königsmarck, and Countess Maria Christina von Wrangel (1628-1691), daughter of Count Hermann von Wrangel. His sister Maria Aurora of Königsmarck was later mistress to Augustus II the Strong of Poland, with whom she had the son Maurice de Saxe, the brilliant French military commander. His other sister Amalia Wilhelmina was a noted dilettante artist. His brother Karl Johann von Königsmarck is alleged to have hired three assassins to kill Thomas Thynne – husband of heiress Elizabeth Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, whom Königsmarck had been wooing – on 12 February 1681. The assassins were hanged on 10 March 1682 though their alleged hirer was acquitted.