"Christina and Cromwell?!" you say, "Too wildly improbable, good sirs. It won't do."

Well, in fact, Cromwell did figure in a number of Christina's schemes, and, oddly enough, the idea of a marriage was floated by none other than Mrs. Cromwell. I'll let Veronica Buckley tell the story in her own entirely wonderful way:

"Cromwell's own good lady wife had not been feeling at her best, it seems, and as she sat palely in bed, glancing without apparent irony through her cherished portrait collection of the many crowned heads of Europe, she came across a picture of Christina. "If I were to die,' Mrs. Cromwell mused, 'here would be the one to replace.' The thought of the match, centuries on, still beggars the imagination."

- Count Dolby von Luckner