Christopher O'Neill

Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was born in 1763 in Pau in south western France, the son of a provincial lawyer, and rose through the revolutionary French army to become a Marshal of the Empire under Napoleon and Prince of Pontecorvo. In 1810 the Swedish Riksdag, looking for an heir for the childless Charles XIII, elected him crown prince of Sweden; he took the name Charles John and converted to Lutheranism. He succeeded to the thrones of Sweden and Norway in 1818 as Charles XIV John and reigned until his death in 1844, founding the House of Bernadotte, which reigns in Sweden to this day. With his wife Desideria, born Desiree Clary, he had one son, the future Oscar I.

Desiree Clary, who reigned as Queen Desideria, was born in Marseille in 1777, the daughter of a wealthy silk merchant. In her youth she was engaged to the young Napoleon Bonaparte, and her sister Julie married his brother Joseph; in 1798 she married General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, and their only child, the future Oscar I, was born in Paris the following year. When her husband was elected crown prince of Sweden she found the northern climate and the formality of the Stockholm court difficult, and lived largely in Paris between 1811 and 1823 before returning for her son's wedding and settling in Sweden for good. She was crowned queen in 1829 and died in Stockholm in 1860.

Oscar I was born Joseph Francois Oscar Bernadotte in Paris in 1799, the only child of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte and Desiree Clary, and came to Sweden as a boy of eleven when his father was elected crown prince. King of Sweden and Norway from 1844 until his death in 1859, he was the first Bernadotte brought up Swedish, and his reign brought liberal reform: equal inheritance rights for women in 1845, reform of the prison system, which he had studied and written a book about, freer trade, and a cautious sympathy for Scandinavianism. He married Josephine of Leuchtenberg in 1823, and their sons included Charles XV and Oscar II.

Charles XV was born in Stockholm in 1826, the eldest son of Oscar I and Josephine of Leuchtenberg, and reigned as king of Sweden and Norway from 1859 until his death in 1872. Informal, popular and a gifted amateur painter and poet, he left much of the detail of government to his ministers, and his reign is remembered above all for the reform of 1866 that replaced the ancient Riksdag of the Estates with a two chamber parliament. He married Louise of the Netherlands in 1850; their only surviving child, Louise, became queen of Denmark, so the Swedish throne passed at his death to his younger brother Oscar II.

Oscar II was born in Stockholm in 1829, the third son of Oscar I, and became king in 1872 on the death of his elder brother Charles XV. He reigned over Sweden until 1907 and over Norway until 1905, when the union between the two kingdoms was dissolved and he renounced the Norwegian throne for himself and his house, a crisis he handled with a restraint that preserved good relations between the countries. A trained naval officer, he was also a writer and translator of Goethe and Herder and an energetic patron of science, polar exploration and the arts. With Sophia of Nassau he had four sons, among them Gustaf V and Prince Oscar Bernadotte.

Gustaf V was born at Drottningholm in 1858, the eldest son of Oscar II and Sophia of Nassau, and reigned as king of Sweden from 1907 until his death in 1950, for nearly forty three years. His reign spanned the end of the union with Norway, the arrival of full parliamentary democracy and Swedish neutrality in both world wars. In the Courtyard Crisis of 1914 he made the last serious attempt by a Swedish monarch to direct policy against his government, and afterwards the crown's political role steadily receded. A lifelong tennis enthusiast, he competed into old age under the pseudonym Mr G and founded the Swedish tennis association. He married Victoria of Baden in 1881.

Prince Carl, Duke of Vastergotland, born in 1861, was the third son of Oscar II and Sophia of Nassau and a cavalry general in the Swedish army. He is remembered chiefly for humanitarian work: as chairman of the Swedish Red Cross for more than four decades he organised prisoner of war exchanges and relief transports through the First World War and famine relief in Russia, and the organisation grew into a major institution under him. In 1897 he married Princess Ingeborg of Denmark. Their daughters married into three royal houses, which made him a grandfather of Harald V of Norway and Albert II of Belgium. He died in 1951 at the age of ninety.

Gustaf VI Adolf was born in Stockholm in 1882, the eldest son of Gustaf V and Victoria of Baden, and was king of Sweden from 1950 until his death in 1973. A genuine scholar, he was a serious archaeologist who took part in excavations in Greece, Italy, Korea and China, a recognised authority on Chinese art and a notable gardener and botanist, elected to several learned academies on merit. His unassuming manner and his motto, Duty before all, made him personally popular and helped carry the monarchy through the republican debates of the 1950s and 1960s. He married Margaret of Connaught in 1905 and, after her death, Louise Mountbatten in 1923, and was succeeded by his grandson Carl XVI Gustaf.

Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Sodermanland, born in 1884, was the second son of Gustaf V and Victoria of Baden and had a long career as a writer. A naval officer by training, he published poetry, essays and travel books, and was an early documentary film maker whose expeditions to Africa and Asia in the 1920s and 1930s produced both films and popular accounts of them. He married Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia in 1908; their only child was Lennart, later Count Bernadotte of Wisborg, and the marriage was dissolved in 1914. He spent much of his later life at Stenhammar in Sodermanland and died in 1965.

Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Vasterbotten, born in 1906, was the eldest son of the future Gustaf VI Adolf and Margaret of Connaught, and from 1950 would have been crown prince of Sweden. A cavalry officer and a notable horseman, he was chairman of the Swedish Olympic Committee, of the national scouting association and of several sports federations, and was widely seen as a capable future king. In 1932 he married Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; they had four daughters and then a son, the future Carl XVI Gustaf, who was nine months old when his father died in January 1947 at the age of forty.

Sigvard Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, born in 1907, was the second son of Gustaf VI Adolf and Margaret of Connaught and one of the first members of a European royal family to earn his living as a professional designer. He lost his Swedish royal title in 1934 on marrying Erica Patzek, and was created Count Bernadotte of Wisborg by Luxembourg in 1951. Trained in Stockholm and Munich, he designed silver for Georg Jensen in Copenhagen from 1930 and in 1950 founded the firm Bernadotte and Bjorn with Acton Bjorn, an early industrial design partnership whose work ranged from the Margrethe mixing bowl to typewriters and kitchen appliances. He died in 2002.