with Johann Georg von Brandenburg were finally discontinued in 1609. The rumors that she had a love relationship with the exiled Swedish count Gustaf Brahe, a supporter of Sigismund, have never been confirmed, but it was used by Charles IX, who feared her political influence and in a letter to Sigismund from 1607 referred to her as: "Your poisonous sister, the creator of all evil and born to the destruction of all lands and the Kingdom". Charles IX once feared that she would marry Tsar Dmitrij of Russia, which was however a false rumor. Sigismund made Anna starosta of Brodnica in 1605 and Golub in 1611. She divided her time between her fief and the court of her brother. Anna's appanage was Strasburg (now Brodnica), a Royal Prussian district in Poland near the Baltic, where she lived in Golub and Strasburg. She became very respected because of her great learning. She was interested in literature, music, gardening and medicine. She was a specialist in medicinal herbs and kept her own apothecary. With the help of an Italian assistant, she made her own experiments in herbal medicine. She financed the herbarium of Simon Syrenius. Anna was buried at the Church of St. Mary in Toruń, Poland several years after her death, as the Pope had first forbidden the burial of a Protestant in a blessed graveyard in Catholic Poland. Her nephew, king Władysław IV Vasa, got that decree reversed. He built a beautiful black Dębnik marble tomb monument with a white alabaster figure of his beloved aunt. Ancestry Gallery References Anteckningar om svenska qvinnor / (In Swedish) Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon / (In Swedish) http://www.visittorun.pl/386,l2.html#vasa http://www.historiesajten.se/visainfo.asp?id=588 Further reading House of Vasa Anna 1568 1568 births 1625 deaths People from Eskilstuna Converts to Lutheranism from Roman Catholicism People of the War against Sigismund Daughters of kings 16th-century Swedish people 16th-century Swedish women 17th-century Swedish people 17th-century Swedish women Royal reburials