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Seal of Christopher II

Christopher II (September 29, 1276 - August 2, 1332) was king of Denmark from 1320 to 1326 and again from 1329 until his death. He was son of Eric V. His name is connected with national disaster, as his rule ended in an almost total dissolution of the Danish state.

Being the brother of King Eric VI, Christopher was a possible heir to the throne. As a quite young man with the title of Duke of Estonia he supported the politics of his brother. Among other things he arrested Archbishop Jens Grand in 1294. But later on he joined the opposition and went into exile at the death of Eric in 1319.

The magnates wanted a weak royal power, and he was accepted as king in 1320; in return he signed a contractual haandfæstning, the first time this kind of document was used as a coronation charter. He received a beginning "bankrupt estate" in which vital parts of the kingdom were mortgaged to German and Danish magnates. The conditions of the charter were very hard, because they limited his possibilities of taxation, as well as demanded his payment.

During the next years Christopher tried to strengthen his position by reviving Eric’s war policy in Northern Germany. This resulted in new mortgages and taxes, and very soon he was in conflict with both the church and the magnates. During a rebellion in 1326 he was overthrown by an alliance between Danish magnates and Holstein Count Gerhard III. He was forced into exile, while the minor Duke Valdemar of South Jutland was made a puppet king.

Until 1329 Christopher lived in exile, but a growing chaos in the "magnates’s republic" of Denmark, and frictions between Gerhard and his cousin Count Johan of Plön, Christopher’s half-brother, gave him another chance.

Christopher was restored as Danish king 1329-1330 by the co-operation of Johan, but this time he was reduced to the position of a puppet from the start. Most of his country was mortgaged, and he had no chance of holding his royal power. In 1331 an attempt of using a new conflict between Gerhard and Johan by joining the latter ended in a clear military defeat at Dannevirke. At the peace he remained king, but a ruined and broken man; he died on Lolland the next year.

Upon his death Denmark ceased being a formal kingdom, and for the next eight years it was subdued by various mortgagees to a German military rule.

Posterity’s judgement of Christopher normally has been extremely hard, and he has often been regarded as a weak, unreliable and incapable tyrant— "the king who mortgaged Denmark to the Germans". He in many ways simply carried on the policy of his predecessor. The line of mortgaging was widely advanced as he took over the throne. Nor would it be right to call him a passive ruler; the firm resistance by the Danish magnates and their co-operation with the Holsteiners partly undermined his freedom of action.

Christopher had three sons of which the last one, Valdemar IV Atterdag, was to restore the Danish kingdom in 1340.

• Ancestors and Family of Christopher II