Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Who was the last King of Sweden?
Carl XVI Gustaf[lower-alpha 1] (Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus; born 30 April 1946) is the King of Sweden. He ascended the throne on the death of his grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf, on 15 September 1973.
Eric XIV, Swedish king since 1560, coveted the Livonian port of Reval (Tallinn), and the Russo-Swedish truce was re-negotiated and set to last twenty years in August 1561 with Reval subordinating itself to Swedish rule. In the Treaty of Dorpat (Tartu, May 1564), Ivan IV of Russia accepted the subordinance of Reval and some Livonian castles to Erik XIV, and in turn Erik XIV accepted the subordinance of the rest of Livonia to Ivan IV. Russian-Swedish relations deteriorated when prince and later king John III of Sweden married Catherine Jagellon who before had rejected Ivan IV. In early 1565, another truce was signed with Sweden, this time set to last seven years. In 1566, Russia and Poland-Lithuania held talks about an expulsion of the Swedes from Livonia and a partition of Livonia among themselves. In 1570, Magnus of Livonia was made king of Livonia in Moscow as a vassal of Ivan IV, and pursued to siege Reval supplied with 20,000 Russian soldiers and 15,000 rubels granted to him by the tsar. Magnus soon defected and Russia was defeated by Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Livonian War that ended with the treaty of Plussa. After renewed hostilities however, the conflict would not be concluded until the Treaty of Teusina in 1595 whereby the borders according to the peace of Nöteborg between Sweden and Novgorod from 1323 were finally agreed between Sweden and Russia. Russia had to resign all claims to Estonia.
The Union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved in 1905 before any Norwegian knights had been appointed and King Haakon VII chose not to appoint any new knights. He formally repealed the order in a Court resolution on 11 March 1952. The last living knight was King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden who died in 1973.
Helena was one of six young Swedish noble ladies who were Maids of Honour in the retinue of Princess Cecilia of Sweden, Margravine of Baden, second-eldest daughter of King Gustav I. Cecilia and her retinue departed Sweden in Autumn 1564 on a voyage to England, at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth I. It was rumoured that Cecilia was journeying to England to press the suit of her half-brother King Eric XIV of Sweden to marry Queen Elizabeth. Because Denmark-Norway was hostile towards Sweden, they were forced to take a roundabout, land route. They travelled through Finland, Livonia, Poland and Germany, which was a lengthy journey, until they reached Calais. The party is also reported to have been hampered by bad weather, and the last leg by seasickness. The voyage lasted almost a year until they reached their destination - they arrived on 8 September 1565 at Dover. Cecilia of Baden was at the time in her ninth month of pregnancy. The welcoming party at Dover was led by Sir William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton (1513–1571), the only surviving son of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal, and brother of the late Queen consort Catherine Parr.
In 1810, French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, one of Napoleon's top generals, was elected Crown Prince Charles by the Riksdag. In 1813, his forces joined the allies against Napoleon and defeated the Danes at Bornhöved. In the Treaty of Kiel, Denmark ceded mainland Norway to the Swedish king. Norway, however, declared its independence, adopted a constitution and chose a new king. Sweden invaded Norway to enforce the terms of the Kiel treaty—it was the last war Sweden ever fought. After brief fighting, the peace established a personal union between the two states. Even though they shared the same king, Norway was largely independent of Sweden, except Sweden controlled foreign affairs. The king's rule was not well received and when Sweden refused to allow Norway to have its own diplomats, Norway rejected the King of Sweden in 1905 and selected its own king.
The first Kings attested in contemporary sources are those mentioned in the "Vita Ansgari". However, very little is known about the extent of their rule. The first king attested in more than one source was Eric the Victorious, who lived around 970–995. He was succeeded by his son King Olof Skötkonung (late-960s – circa 1020), who also is the first king we know ruled over both parts of Svealand and Götaland. Earlier kings often only ruled over parts of the present territory of Sweden, and so their validity as 'kings of Sweden' may be questioned. However, according to the Viking sagas, those territories were sometimes united under a single ruler.
In 1520, Christian took the throne of Sweden, thereby making Isabella Queen of Sweden. After taking Stockholm, he asked the Swedish representatives to turn it and the regency of Sweden over to Isabella if he himself should die when his children were minors. She was to be the last Queen of Sweden who was also Queen of Denmark during the Kalmar union, but she in fact never visited Sweden; pregnant at the time of her spouse's accession to the throne of Sweden, she did not follow him there. Isabella served as the regent of Denmark during Christian's stay in Sweden. Her husband was deposed as king of Sweden the following year. King Christian imprisoned many Swedish noblewomen, related to rebellious Swedish nobles, at the infamous "Blåtårn" ("Blue Tower") of Copenhagen Castle, including Christina Gyllenstierna, Cecilia Månsdotter and Margareta Eriksdotter Vasa, and King Gustav I of Sweden used their purported harsh treatment in captivity in his propaganda against Christian II and claimed that the Danish monarch starved the women and children, who only survived by the mercy showed them by the queen of Denmark, Isabella of Austria. 
In interest of reestablishing Swedish dominance in the Baltic Sea, Sweden allied itself against its traditional ally and benefactor, France, in the Napoleonic Wars. Sweden's role in the Battle of Leipzig gave it the authority to force Denmark-Norway, an ally of France, to cede Norway to the King of Sweden on 14 January 1814 in exchange for northern German provinces, at the Treaty of Kiel. The Norwegian attempts to keep their status as a sovereign state were rejected by the Swedish king, Charles XIII. He launched a military campaign against Norway on 27 July 1814, ending in the Convention of Moss, which forced Norway into a personal union with Sweden under the Swedish crown, which lasted until 1905. The 1814 campaign was the last war in which Sweden participated as a combatant.
In 1450, Count Christian of Oldenburg and of Delmenhorst became King of Norway. He was already King of Denmark since 1448, and in 1457, he became King of Sweden as well. Norway's coat of arms was placed in the lower dexter field and, when Sweden left the Kalmar Union in 1523, in the upper sinister field. The latter lasted until 1814.
The fact that Charles was crowned as Charles XI does not mean that he was the 11th king of Sweden who had the name Charles. His father's name (as the 10th) was due to his great-grandfather, King Charles IX of Sweden (1604–1611), having adopted his own numeral by using a mythological History of Sweden. This descendant was actually the 5th King Charles. The numbering tradition thus begun still continues, with the present king of Sweden being Carl XVI Gustaf.
Varying from time to time, the Kings between 1450 and 1814 bore the coats of arms of the following kingdoms, peoples, and lands:On 4 November 1814, the Norwegian Storting elected King Charles XIII of Sweden as King of Norway. This personal union with Sweden lasted until the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905.
In 1460, Christian bought the Duchy of Schleswig and Holstein, which placed him in debt, forced him to raise taxes and destroyed his support in Sweden, who again elected Charles VIII as king in 1464. The loss of Sweden was reportedly a blow to queen Dorothea, who started a lifelong campaign to have her spouse (and later her son) again elected king of Sweden, to restore the Kalmar Union of the three Kingdoms and to retrieve her Swedish dower lands. 
The loss of her personal dower lands enabled her to personally pursue the Swedish cause in court, and she sued Charles VIII before the Pope in Rome for depriving her of her dower lands. When Charles VIII was succeeded as the regent of Sweden by Sten Sture the Elder, she pursued her case against him. 
In 1475, she traveled to Italy and visited her sister Barbara in Mantua, and the Pope Sixtus IV in Rome, and formally applied to have Sten Sture excommunicated. By use of an excommunication, the Swedish regent would be unable to govern and the Swedish kingdom would be economically and politically ruined, which would result in the fall of the Swedish regent and the election of the Danish king as king of Sweden, which was a policy she withheld and worked for her last twenty years.
The reign of John III of Sweden in 1568-1592 signified certain leanings toward a counter-reformation in Sweden inspired by the king's Catholic wife, queen Catherine Jagiellon, who acted as a mediator in the king's negotiations with the Pope in Rome for the conditions in which Sweden would be willing to return to Catholicism.
Regent Sten had already in 1504 been proposed as a candidate in the election of a new king of Sweden as a replacement for John, King of Denmark, who had been elected king of Sweden in 1497 but who was ousted from there in 1502. Upon the death of John in 1513, it was again proposed to elect regent Sten as king of Sweden rather than the son of John, Christian II of Denmark, and Sten was making preparations to arrange an election, including seeking support for it from the pope.
The story begins with King Hring ("Hringr") of Östergötland, who is said to be son of King Gauti son of King Odin of Sweden and half-brother to King Gautrekr the Generous, who appears as king of Västergötland in "Gautreks saga". But chronology is flattened so that Hring is made a contemporary of Harald Wartooth, King of Denmark and Sweden. Hring's wife was Sylgja daughter of Jarl Sæfara ('Seafarer') of Småland. Sæfara also had two sons named Dagfari ("Dayfarer") and Náttfari ("Nightfarer") who served King Harald.
King Gustaf VI Adolf was the last who used the style "By the Grace of God King of the Swedes, the Goths/Geats and the Wends" (med Guds Nåde Sveriges, Götes och Wendes Konung; Latin: Dei Gratia Suecorum, Gothorum et Vandalorum Rex). This traditional title had been in use since the establishment of the hereditary monarchy in 1544. Carl XVI Gustaf instead chose the plain and simple title "King of Sweden" (Sveriges Konung), thereby ending a centuries-old tradition.[28]
The title "Sveriges och Götes Konung" was last used for Gustaf I of Sweden, after which the title became "King of Sweden, of the Goths and of the Wends" ("Sveriges, Götes och Vendes Konung") in official documentation. Up until the beginning of the 1920s, all laws in Sweden were introduced with the words, "We, the king of Sweden, of the Goths and Wends". This title was used up until 1973. The present King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, was the first monarch officially proclaimed "King of Sweden" ("Sveriges Konung") with no additional peoples mentioned in his title.
Married in June 1296 to Ingeborg Magnusdotter of Sweden. She was the daughter of King Magnus III of Sweden and sister of King Birger, King of Sweden. The couple had eight sons who died as children, as well as six miscarriages, although the sources differ between eight and fourteen children: her many pregnancies led to miscarriages, or the birth of children who died soon after.
Since the end of the 14th century, Sweden had been a part of the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Norway. The Danish dominance in this union occasionally led to uprisings in Sweden. During Gustav's childhood, parts of the Swedish nobility tried to make Sweden independent. Gustav and his father Erik supported the party of Sten Sture the Younger, regent of Sweden from 1512, and its struggle against the Danish King Christian II. Following the battle of Brännkyrka in 1518, where Sten Sture's troops beat the Danish forces, it was decided that Sten Sture and King Christian would meet in Österhaninge for
negotiations. To guarantee the safety of the king, the Swedish side sent six men as hostages to be kept by the Danes for as long as the negotiations lasted. However, Christian did not show up for the negotiations, violated the deal with the Swedish side and took the hostages aboard ships carrying them to Copenhagen. The six members of the kidnapped hostage were Hemming Gadh, Lars Siggesson (Sparre), Jöran Siggesson (Sparre), Olof Ryning, Bengt Nilsson (Färla) – and Gustav Eriksson. Gustav was held in Kalø Castle where he was treated very well after promising he would not make attempts to escape. A reason for this gentle treatment was King Christian's hope to convince the six men to switch sides, and turn against their leader Sten Sture. This strategy was successful regarding all men but Gustav, who stayed loyal to the Sture party.
The first undisputed king of Sweden who managed to unite all the different tribes both the Geats and Swedes was Eric the Victorious, who lived around 970–995. He was succeeded by his son King Olof Skötkonung (late-960s – circa 1020), the first Christian king of Sweden.
According to genealogical research, Birgitta Gustafsdotter and Sten Sture (and consequently also Gustav Vasa) were descended from King Sverker II of Sweden, through King Sverker's granddaughter Benedikte Sunesdotter (who was married to Svantepolk Knutsson, son of Duke of Reval). One of King Gustav's great-grandmothers was a half-sister of King Charles VIII of Sweden.
Swedish pre-history ends around 800 CE, when the Viking Age begins and written sources are available. The Viking Age lasted until the mid-11th century, when the Christianization of Scandinavia was largely completed when Sweden became the last Norse country to adopt Christianity. Scandinavia was formally Christianized by 1100 AD. The period 1050 to 1350 – when the Black Death struck Europe – is considered the Older Middle Ages. The Kalmar Union between the Scandinavian countries was established in 1397 and lasted until King Gustav Vasa ended it upon seizing power. The period 1350 to 1523 – when king Gustav Vasa, who led the unification of Sweden, was crowned – is considered the Younger Middle Ages.
Meanwhile, Norwegian attempts at opposition were strangled by John's son Prince Christian (afterward King Christian II), who was the viceroy of Norway from 1507. Between 1510 and 1512, the king fought a last war with both Sweden and Lübeck in which Denmark was at first very pressed but, with the help of the Scottish Barton brothers, partly turned the tables with a naval offensive. The result concerning Sweden was the status quo, but Lübeck suffered a real political and economic setback by the peace.
Gauthildr Algautsdóttir (Swedish: Göthild Algotsdotter) (7th century) was, according to the "Heimskringla", the daughter of the Geatish king Algaut and the wife of Ingjald Ill-ruler, a semi-legendary king of Sweden. She was the mother of Olof Trätälja, the last Yngling ruler of Sweden and Åsa who married Gudröd, a legendary king of Skåne.
Many times the Swedish crown was inherited by children kings over the course of the kingdom's existence; consequently real power was held for long periods by regents (notably those of the Sture family) chosen by the Swedish parliament. King Christian II of Denmark, who asserted his claim to Sweden by force of arms, ordered a massacre of Swedish nobles in Stockholm in 1520. This came to be known as the "Stockholm blood bath" and stirred the Swedish nobility to new resistance and, on 6 June (now Sweden's national holiday) in 1523, they made Gustav Vasa their king. This is sometimes considered as the foundation of modern Sweden. Shortly afterwards the new king rejected Catholicism and led Sweden into the Protestant Reformation.