her brother Charles. Sophia lived the rest of her life at Ekolsund Castle. In contrast to her siblings, she supported the marriage between John III and Gunilla Bielke in 1585. Sophia was said to have suffered from a mental illness of some kind. Aside from the chronicle of Aegidius Girs, this is not mentioned much. However, in correspondence, her siblings often asks her not to mourn too much, to prevent her from getting ill. In contrast to her brother Magnus, who was acknowledged as mentally ill and was isolated because of it, Sophia participated occasionally in court life, such as when she participated in a public dinner with the royal family in Kalmar at Easter 1586. She is not described as an efficient administrator of her estate and court: she was often forced to ask for economical assistance because of her misused lands, and her court was unstable with frequent changes of staff: she changed her chamberlain twenty-one times and her housekeeper twenty-three times during these years. In 1597, she was granted the fiefs Lagunda and Håbo. She became a widow when her absent husband died in 1603. Issue Sophia had six children, but only one of them lived past infancy: Gustav of Saxe-Lauenburg, (31 August 1570 – 11 November 1597), governor of Kalmar, unmarried but had issue Ancestry References Further reading Sophia 1547 1547 births 1611 deaths House of Vasa Duchesses of Saxe-Lauenburg Incidents of domestic violence Violence against women in Europe Daughters of kings