Danish Royalty. He was the second son of King Christian III of Denmark and Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg, thus Prince Magnus of Denmark. With his mother being from a German state, he was a member of the House Oldenburg and educated in Germany. Upon his oldest brother becoming Denmark's king, in 1560 he was sent to Saaremaa, an island off Estonia, and was elected bishop by the Roman Catholic Cathedral Chapter. In 1567, his mother attempted to bring peace between Denmark and Sweden with the marriage between him and Princess Sophia of Sweden. This arrangement failed when his brother, an angry Danish King Frederick, realized what was about to happen. As a vassal of Czar Ivan IV of Russia, he became on June 10, 1570 the titular King of Livonia, a Baltic country having the location of present-day Estonia and Latvia. On April 12, 1574 he married the Russian Princess Maria Vladimirovna of Staritsa, the only child of the late Czar Vladimir Andreyevich and niece of Czar Ivan IV. They became the parents of two daughters, Maria and Eudoxia, both died before adulthood. His wife entered a Russian convent shortly after his death and her fate is not known. During the Livonia War, he was given an army between 20,000 to 50,000 Russian soldiers by the Russian czar to fight Swedes. The czar had hoped that Margnus' brother, King Frederick of Denmark, would join forces but this did not happen causing Margnus to fail in battle. In 1577, unhappy with the czar's plans and the lack of support from his brother, he called Livonian nobility to rally with him to fight against any foreign occupation. At that point, the czar, invaded Livonia, captured and made him a prisoner, and upon his release, he denounced the Livonian throne. Earlier he had been a bishop at Pilten. The last six years of his life was spent residing at the Castle of Pilten in the Bishopric of Courland, where he was pensioner of the Polish Crown. In 1662 his remains were returned to Denmark to be reburied in the Roskilde Cathedral.