Kaksi Kuningatarta: Kolminäytöksinen Murhenäytelmä

A three-act tragedy written in the early 20th century. Set in Naples during the waning years of the Black Death, it stages a moral and political duel between Queen Johanna and the pilgrim-mystic Birgitta Birgerintytär, while rival factions and the Orsini family circle the throne. Into this courtly tempest strides the audacious Swedish knight Kaarle, whose reckless charm ensnares both the queen and the young lady-in-waiting Bianca Maria, as the threat of Durazzo’s Charles gathers outside the walls. The play explores power, guilt, repentance, and desire as private passions collide with public ambition. The opening of the play presents Johanna’s glittering yet brittle court, where Nolan’s Count warns of plague and rebellion, a troubadour mocks, and Alvastra’s Petrus ushers in Birgitta with her children, Kaarin and Birger. Birgitta confronts the queen with stark accusations—complicity in husbands’ deaths, rampant sensuality—and urges a barefoot pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre; Johanna wavers, promising “when the wind turns north.” Kaarle bursts onstage brash and magnetic, defies his mother Birgitta, and is lured by Johanna into her secret chambers, even as he later falls genuinely for Bianca Maria and plots flight with her. Meanwhile Birger schemes to bind Kaarle to the queen for power, Kaarin gently binds Nuori Orsini to a penitential quest, and a jealous Johanna, catching a glimpse of Kaarle and Bianca Maria together, quietly orders her taster to prepare poisoned oysters for a private “celebration.”