Page "Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg" Paragraph 5

Maria Eleonora had additional suitors in the young William of Orange, Wladislaw Vasa of Poland, Adolph Friedrich of Mecklenburg and even the future Charles I of England.

Maria Eleonora's brother George William was flattered by the offer of the British Crown Prince and proposed their younger sister Catherine ( 1602 – 1644 ) as a more suitable wife for the Swedish king.

Maria Eleonora, however, seems to have had a preference for Gustavus Adolphus.

For him it was a matter of honour to acquire the hand of Maria Eleonore and none other.

He had the rooms of his castle in Stockholm redecorated and started making preparations to leave for Berlin to press his suit in person, when a letter arrived from Maria Eleonora's mother to his mother.

The Electress demanded in no uncertain terms that the Queen Dowager should prevent her son's journey, as " being prejudicial to Brandenburg's interests in view of the state of war existing between Sweden and Poland ".

Her husband, she wrote, was " so enfeebled in will by illness that he could be persuaded to agree to anything, even if it tended to the destruction of the country ".

It was a rebuff that verged on an insult.