Gustav III was king of Sweden from 1771 to 1792. I noticed a curious thing about how many popular history books depict this particular monarch. He is always criticized for being extremely distrustful, borderline paranoid even, constantly dissimulating, never showing his true feelings, having an intractable personality, etc etc.
There is just one problem with this description.
Gustav III was assassinated.
I say he wasn´t distrustful enough! The fate of king Gustav reminds me of that old joke "of course I´m paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me"...
The king is also taken to task for being obsessed with Freemasons and other secret societies. Once again, I wonder about the competence of our popular history writers. For starters, his murderer Anckarström was a Freemason. But then, so was the king himself. Indeed, he was the de facto head of Swedish Freemasonry. But why? Weird obsession? Or something else entirely?
Welcome to the 18th century, guys! Masonic lodges all over Europe were covers for the intelligence services of various nations. French Freemasonry was a front for French intelligence. British Freemasonry for British intelligence. And yes, Swedish Freemasonry also had lodges abroad, and was of course a cover for Swedish (and presumably French) intelligence (Sweden was a French ally). I´m sure there were also Masonic lodges that were used as fronts for revolutionary groups. Once again, France is a good example. Or Bavaria. Remember the Illuminati? (The real ones.)
So it turns out that Gustav III wasn´t an intractable weirdo, after all. OK, maybe to some extent. But I somehow suspect that his personality traits may have helped him survive in the super-conspiratorial atmosphere of 18th century politics-as-usual. At least until 1792...
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