King of Sweden. He was the first monarch of the Bielbo Dynasty, the only Swedish king by his name, and the son of a sister of the late King Eric the Lisper-and-Halter of Sweden, Princess Ingiburga. His father was the mighty Birger Jarl, Duke of Sweden, who had been running the country for the somewhat decrepit Eric and started his own sons off as the kingdom's first territorial dukes, Birger's mother being Princess Ingrid Wolfa of Sweden. King Eric died childless in 1250, four years before his sister's death, and was nominally succeeded by his young nephew, but as long as Duke Birger was alive, he went on running things. After both parents had died, King Waldemar had his own uproarious brothers to contend with. Brothers in the new dynasty were often at drastic odds even in times to come. A reinforced and enlarged Stockholm was now considered the nation's most important town, though Upsala, where the great catholic cathedral was being built, has ever remained the seat of the Swedish Church, which was very powerful in Waldemar's day. His queen, Sophia, a reputably haughty Danish princess, had a sister who was a nun but after visiting was preferred over his wife by the King. The affair he had with his sister-in-law forced him personally to travel to Rome to seek the forgiveness of Pope Gregory X, the Pontifex Maximus (an imperial Roman title that survived with the Popes). After returning, Waldemar declared all of Sweden taxable by the church, which was one reason why his brothers dethroned him in 1275. He spent the last 14 years of his life as his brothers' prisoner at various castles, and that of his nephews King Birger of Sweden and brothers, outliving all three of his own brothers and dying at Castle Nyköping on the Baltic at about 60. Three of his daughters married well, and his son, Eric, default of the crown, did serve in the government as Senator and had the strongest male branch of the dynasty, extinct in the 1390's. According to some sources Waldemar was remarried several times, after Sophia's death in 1286, to as many as three known women who had been his concubines. Research in the 1990's has led to a reasonable deduction that he was buried at Riddarholm Church, which he and Magnus had founded together in times of peace between them. It has also been found out that Waldemar was blond and Magnus was very dark, which Queen Sophia had utilized to bully the latter.