SELF-EXPRESSIVE SWEDES

In the World Values Survey, Sweden ranked first (on the top of the list!) when it comes to self-expression values. Nine out of ten Swedes would accept a woman for a ruler (there have been two titular queens, Christina and Ulrika Eleonora the Younger, and one queen consort much more influent than her spouse, Louise Ulrika, aside from Crown Princess Victoria, the current heiress to the throne), support divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia.
Swedish picture books feature children with two parents of the same gender (one heroine had a Swedish birth mother and a Turkish stepmother!), characters eager to cross gender boundaries (both tomboys playing football and sensitive guys dressing up dolls [aside from our dynamic and self-reliant acquaintance Christina, there have been sensitive, effeminate monarchs such as Charles X and Gustavus III]), and discussions about taboos such as sex and death (in a 2004 storybook, two children and their father discuss whether their pet pig should be euthanized: the gent himself had, as a child, got to put a fatally wounded seagull to sleep).

From a backwater/hinterland Danish province oppressed by absolute monarchs, Sweden has become "the most modern nation in Europe", competing with Japan for the world title. Such development could not be possible without the contribution of many a socially aware ruler:

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  Gustavus I / Gustavus Vasa: regarded as the father of the nation, the revolutionary feudal aristocrat who, in the sixteenth century, sucessfully defeated Christian II and welcomed the Protestant Reformation. He established also the national colours and emblems (blue and yellow, flag with cross, three crowns on the coat of arms).
  
• Gustavus (II) Adolphus: the eldest grandson of Gustavus Vasa welcomed Central European Protestant refugees, established iron foundries and universities, and fought for freedom of thought against the Catholic League in the Thirty Years' War. When he fell, like a true hero, on the field of battle at Lützen (in 1632), his victories had weakened the Habsburg Empire enough to trigger its decadence.
  
•  Christina: the only daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. Against her regent's warmonging posture, she supported the Peace of Westphalia and caused it to be signed, sealing also the fate of the defeated Habsburgs and the rise of victorious Protestant Europe. A lover of the arts and literature, she supported cultural life both in Sweden and abroad (during her self-imposed exile). She was also a woman ahead of her times, refusing to marry and bring up children.
  
•  Charles XI: left fatherless at the tender age of four, this seventeenth-century ruler was socially aware and gave lands from the aristocracy to the poor peasants (of course, the aristocracy didn't approve as much as the peasants did). Perhaps this decision, along with his pacifism, prompted the royal tutors to raise the heir to the throne the Spartan way. Obviously, Charles XII, being the antithesis of his late father, lost many a war (mostly, to Russia) and caused the deaths of many able young men, plunging Sweden back into misery.
  
• Ulrika Eleonora the Younger: daughter of Charles XI, who rose to power after her father's death (due to cancer), her brother's death (killed in action, as he deserved), and her weak-willed German consort's death (though, when Frederick was still alive, she was the one who pulled the strings of state). She put an end to Charles XII's absolutism and reinstated Parliament. Then, she had to hold Parliament together, because warmonging MPs, with a military background, and Enlightened, socially-aware MPs were always quarrelling whether public funds should be invested in another war on Russia, or in more yielding crops and farm animals  aside from education. Having had no children, she adopted two high-bred German young people. And one of them was: 
  
• Louise Ulrika: born in Prussia, she was abused by her father and trained, against her will, to become the submissive ideal spouse. That generation of Prussian royal children had to read books and play music in secret. Louise's eldest brother would be Frederick the Great, who would make a relevant and developed nation-state out of Prussia. Shortly after her father's death, she was adopted by Ulrika Eleonora and transferred to Sweden. Since her consort, Adolphus Frederick, lacked willpower, she became the de facto ruler of her adoptive country, where she could pursue her passions for literature and dressing up. However, upon the death of her spouse, she returned to the Prussian court due to conflict with her eldest son. And who was he?
  
• Gustavus III: Sweden's resident enlightened despot took after his Prussian-born mother. He shared Louise Ulrika's love of the arts, literature and costumes, and he had a strong will and an extraverted personality. Thus, it came as no surprise that, once come of age, he clashed with his mother. By creating the Royal Academy of Science and the Swedish Academy of Letters, opening public schools in rural areas, and sparing death penalty for extreme cases, he became a figurehead for the Enlightenment. However, he also gained the hatred of the nobility (like Charles XI before), and thus, he was shot by conspirators during a masked ball in 1792.
  
• Charles XIV John (né Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, born a Frenchman): When Gustavus III was dead, his son Gustavus IV in exile (having lost a war to Russia), and Gustavus III's brother Charles XIII was elderly, childless, and prone to seizures, Lieutenant Mörner went to Paris and back to get an heir to the Swedish throne. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, a humble clerk from the Pyrinees, had enlisted to seek his fortune. The French Revolution gave him a lieutenant's epaulets, and he was one of Napoleon's twelve marshals when Mörner offered him the crown of Sweden. Bernadotte accepted, and it meant nothing to him to convert to Lutheranism and change his name. Aside from freeing Central Europe from Napoleonic sway, the forefather of Sweden's current ruling dynasty made basic education obligatory for the Swedish public: the State started to offer education for free to all children, regardless of gender and economic standing. This was the first step in the successful Nordic model of welfare state.