46 Ellen Key for the love of Princess Gyda, who had made this the condition of marrying him! That Karl VIII (Knutson) had been King of Sweden meant nothing to her, compared with the fact that he had so deeply loved his wife that the chronicle touchingly relates their happiness and his grief at her death. And Leonora Kristina Ulfeld had languished in prison forty years because of her loyalty to her beloved husband. Very proud was Ellen of her an- cestor, the younger Sten Sture, and his wife, Kristina Gyllenstjerna, who in her dead hus- band's place had so bravely defended Stock- holm's palace against the Danes. And she loved the story of their granddaughter, Malin Sture, and the latter's cousin, Erik Stenbock, who after years of faithful love ran away to become imited, defying law and custom. Ebba Brahe, the beloved of Gustavus II (Adolphus), is another romantic character among the many that abound in Ellen Key's ancestry. And Ellen heard of weird and wonderful personalities, not many generations removed from herself. Her paternal great-grandmother, as a widow, contracted a romantic marriage with one Lautier, said to have been an Italian pirate. Her maternal great-grandmother was,