Born in a prison castle, Sigismund Vasa later wore two crowns at once
Sigismund III Vasa came into the world in 1566 at Gripsholm Castle, where his parents were being held captive after a failed rebellion against his uncle, the unstable Swedish king Eric XIV. Two decades later he was elected King of Poland, and for a few years he also ruled Sweden, holding both thrones simultaneously.
His mother, Catherine Jagiellon, was a daughter of the Polish king Sigismund I, and she raised her son as a Catholic with a keen sense of his Jagiellonian roots, even though his father's Sweden was turning Protestant. Tutored in Polish and Swedish and fluent in German, Italian and Latin, the young prince was tall, timid, introverted, deeply devout and artistically gifted. The family was freed in 1567, and his father became King John III of Sweden two years later.
Polish nobles elected him in August 1587, promoting him as a native candidate thanks to his Jagiellonian blood. A rival faction backed Archduke Maximilian of Austria, so Sigismund sailed across the Baltic, soothed opponents with privileges for parliament and was crowned in Krakow that December. When his father died in 1592 he inherited Sweden too, hoping to join both lands in a single Catholic kingdom. Protestant Swedes resisted, and his uncle Charles IX went to war and deposed him in 1599.
In the Commonwealth he pursued absolute power, often bypassing parliament and leaning on Jesuit advisers during the Counter-Reformation. His armies seized Smolensk and occupied Moscow during Russia's Time of Troubles, giving Poland its greatest territorial extent, and defeated Ottoman forces in southeastern Europe. Against Sweden he fared worse: Gustavus Adolphus took parts of Polish Livonia.
Poles still argue over him. His long reign overlapped the Commonwealth's Golden Age and saw real contributions to art and architecture, yet religious conflict, intrigue and the surrender of Ducal Prussia to Brandenburg planted seeds of decline. He also moved the capital from Krakow to Warsaw, where his son erected Sigismund's Column in his memory, the first secular monument in column form in modern history.
Source: Sigismund III Vasa
