Swedish Monarch. He reigned as King of Sweden from 1604 until his death. The very powerful father of Gustav Adolph the Great (Gustavus Adolphus), he was the youngest son of King Gustav I and was created Duke of Sudermania, Nericia and Vermillandia by his half-brother King Eric XIV. He supported his brother John (III) in getting Eric deposed, but opposed John's son King Sigmund of Poland and Sweden and succeeded in overthrowing that nephew in 1599. Carl was then modest about assuming the throne himself, because he still had another nephew, Duke John of East Gothland, ahead of him in the succession, but finally did become King in 1604, after acting as Regent for 5 years first. By then he had managed to get a number of his staunchest opponents beheaded in the Bloodbath of Linköping in 1600. This, and other tough measures and characteristics earned him the epithet in history of "Duke Hard-Handed". Sweden at the time included Finland, northern Estonia and the Vyborg area of Russia and Carl was active all over. Once King, he wanted to address domestic problems but had to make his major efforts in warfare with Poland, Russia and Denmark. The enumeration Carl used as number IX was based on fictitious stories made up by Archbishop John Manson
who had worked with King Gustav, Carl's father, on overglorifying Swedish history. Carl had been preceded by only two real namesakes and should have been Carl III, but chose to keep the five fakes (Carls III-VIII) in the story and in the numbering system. Carl IX had been married to a princess of the Wittelsbach dynasty, Maria, before he was king and when she died, remarried an Oldenburg princess, who became his Queen Christina and the famous mother of Gustav Adolph. Carl's immediate family chose Strängnäs Cathedral as their place of interment, in the heart of their Sudermanian duchy. With his mistress Catherine (Karin) Nilsdotter, King Carl also had an extramarital son.