The Abdication (1974)

Cyril Cusack: Oxenstierna

Quotes 

• Oxenstierna : Kristina, what do you want?

  Queen Kristina : I want to be loved.

  Oxenstierna : The people love you.

  Queen Kristina : Send them to my bedroom.

• Oxenstierna : For the sake of the country, Kristina, you must begin to think about an heir.

  Queen Kristina : Make sons! Make daughters! Make sons! Make daughters!

  Oxenstierna : Make joy. Make joy for all the people - if you take husband.

  Queen Kristina : Would I? And what joy would I bring to myself?

• Oxenstierna : Charles admires you, deeply.

  Queen Kristina : He's never mentioned it.

  Oxenstierna : You know that he cannot ask for your hand.

  Queen Kristina : I know. But, I will tell you a secret, Oxenstierna. If he did, I would gladly give it to him.

  Oxenstierna : You would?

  Queen Kristina : I would have it cut off at the wrists and have it sent to him in a velvet box. As for giving him one more inch of my body, I will never do it.

• Oxenstierna : Kristina, you must marry Charles. It is your duty.

  Queen Kristina : I - am Queen of Sweden. By reason of my exulted rank and privilege, I am allowed anything I want. I'm allowed to marry a man I do not love. I allowed by night to submit to God knows what idiotic fumblings and horrors and by day to rule the fumbler and the entire world. If there's one thing you have taught me since I could hear, it is the specialness of me. Kings rule! And indulge between the sheets in every sort of pleasure. Then, they go off to battle and joyfully await news of the arrival of their sons. Find me a man who will bear my children.

  Oxenstierna : Kristina...

  Queen Kristina : Find me a battalion of men who will each let me have my way with them and then will watch me ride out of their lives forever at the dawn. Find me a chance encounter at the hill, where I pursue and he takes the consequences.

  Oxenstierna : Kristina, you realize you're asking the impossible.

  Queen Kristina : I am Queen. I can have anything I want. And I tell you I will not submit my body and my mind to what is asked of me.

• Oxenstierna : Marriage is the natural state.

  Queen Kristina : Not to me!

  Oxenstierna : It's God's way of renewing the generations.

  Queen Kristina : My pig renewed the generations yesterday. And, as far as I know, she was never a bride.