Gustav II Adolf's success in making Sweden…

Gustav II Adolf's success in making Sweden one of the great powers of Europe, and perhaps the most important power in the Thirty Years' War after France and Spain, was due not only to his military brilliance, but also to important institutional reforms in Sweden's government.

The chief among these reforms had been the institution of the first Parish registrations, so that the central government could more efficiently tax and conscript its populace.

After his death, his wife initially keeps his body, and later his heart, in the castle of Nyköping for over a year.

Queen Maria Eleonora had ordered that the king should not be buried until she could be buried with him.

She also demanded that the coffin be kept open, and goes to see it every forenoon, patting it, taking no notice of the putrefaction.

(The king had fallen on November 6, 1632, but will not be buried until June 22, 1634, more than eighteen months later.

His remains, including his heart, now rest in Riddarholmskyrkan in Stockholm.)

The Swedish Riksdag of the Estates in February 1633, decides that his name will be styled Gustav Adolf the Great (or Gustaf Adolf den Store in Swedish).

No such honor has been bestowed on any other Swedish monarch before or since.

The crown of Sweden is inherited in the Vasa family, and from Charles IX's time has excluded those Vasa princes who had been traitors or descended from deposed monarchs.

Gustavus Adolphus' younger brother had died ten years before, and therefore there is only the King's daughter left as a female heir.

Queen Maria Eleonora and the king's five principal ministers, headed by Axel Oxenstierna, take over the government on behalf of Gustavus Adolphus' underage daughter Christina upon her father's death.

He leaves one other known child, his illegitimate son Gustav, Count of Vasaborg.