Rigborg Brockenhuus, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetRigborg Brockenhuus
Danish noblewoman
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Nyborg Slot, Region of Southern Denmark, Denmark
About Rigborg Brockenhuus
- Rigborg Brockenhuus (1579 - 1641), was a Danish noble and lady-in-waiting.
- She was the central figure in a famous sexual offence case in 1599. Daughter of nobles Laurids Brockenhuus and Karen Skrams, she was the sister of Jakob Brockenhuus and the maternal aunt of Corfitz Ulfeldt.
- She became maid of honor to the queen, Anne Catherine of Brandenburg in 1598.
- In 1599, she had an illegitimate son, Holger, with the courtier Frederik Holgersen Rosenkrantz.
- King Christian IV charged the couple with having broken the conduct of the royal court and the presence of the monarch, as well as the common law of seduction - an exceptional judgment against two nobles.
- Rosenkrantz was sentenced to have two fingers amputated and to lose his nobility.
- The seriousness of the sentence was deemed appropriate because Rosenkrantz had been engaged to another woman, Christence Viffert.
- His sentence was later softened, through the intervention of astronomer Tycho Brahe, to service in the war against the Ottoman Empire, where he died in 1602.
- Rigborg Brockenhuus was sentenced to life imprisonment in a room in her father's castle, Egeskov, thirty miles outside of Odense.
- Her son Holger was turned over to the custody of his father's family.
- In 1608, the queen dowager Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow obtained permission for Rigborg to leave her room to attend church once a week.
- In 1616, Rigborg's mother secured permission for Rigborg to live on her own estates, and when her mother died in 1625, this was realized.
- In 1626 she was reunited with her son, Holger. Frederik Rosenkrantz, the father of Holger, was - along with his friend Knud Gyldenstierne – the inspiration for the two treacherous characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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