As the Bernadotte family approaches its bicentennial it appears to be deeply rooted in Sweden, but in a historical perspective the position of the dynasty has been far from given. When Jean Baptiste Bernadotte (1769-1844), maréchal of Napoleon's Empire, arrived in Sweden as the elected hereditary prince of the throne, his position was in fact quite problematic. From an interdisciplinary starting-point the research project aims to analyse the establishment of Bernadotte as a royal dynasty (1810-c. 1860) by focusing on the making of royal myths and images about Jean Baptiste Bernadotte (Karl XIV Johan). The creation of this dynasty is viewed as a huge multi-media show in which the contributions of different media as well as institutions such as the Swedish Academy were used in order to form and communicate conceptions of royalty.
The election of Bernadotte to the throne occurred in a time of political and cultural change. The political map of Europe was radically altered by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. In Sweden, absolutist rule was replaced by a constitutional monarchy in 1809 and the conditions of political communication were transformed by the rise of romanticism and a public sphere. Bernadotte could not, therefore, simply imitate his predecessors but had to invent new forms of communication and mobilise new lines of argument. Theoretically and methodically, the project is part of current international research on political power and the legitimacy of power. By applying these new perspectives, it will address hitherto unacknowledged issues of political communication in 19th-century Sweden.