Application - WIP
Player Information
Name: kira/narva
Personal Journal: whatisnarva
Contact Info: PM works best
Other Characters: N/A
Character Information
Name: Kingdom of Sweden | Bengta Oxenstierna
Source Canon: Axis Powers Nyotalia
Age: 21
Role In Canon: Being from a canon that has no main character and having quite a lot of appearances in Hetalia main (reflected as she is one of the few nations that have canon Nyotalia versions), I would put her in group four of five, if one is "extremely minor" and five is "main-ish". Little has been revealed about her Nyotalia version, though, so she is essentially a canon OC.
History:
[Since Hetalia characters are always only to a certain extent historical, but also to a certain extent people with personalities, I will try to reflect personal as well as national circumstances/events in this history.]
Sweden was born a couple of decades BC, but she hardly remembers her earlier childhood today (most of it only remains as images, short moments, single senteces and disjointed faces, memories of that sort). The nation that she bonded with first was the girl that would later become Denmark, only a few decades afterwards. It only took them one night that was spent in the same tree, trying to not get eaten by some animal, for Denmark to decide that they were sisters, and of course Sweden would be the younger sister - and that was that. The line between blood relation or adoption was blurred from the start, and up until today Sweden will not swear an oath on either version. Maybe they are blood related, maybe not. It does not really matter, they have enough history together for that.
The two little girls soon became inseparable, or as much inseparable as nations can get since they both had their own people to look after. It helped that they were tribes loosely connected by a shared difference towards other tribal groups at that point and there was no boss that they would have had to listen to.
The second nation that Sweden met, beaten by Denmark only by a few days, was Germania who then became a distant mother figure for the girls. She raised them as boys, reasoning that that would make a lot of things easier, and up until they hit puberty (which happened some time during the 10th century AD), neither of them really thought of themselves as girls. They were aware of the fact that they weren't normal boys, but at least Sweden did not think much about that; they were not normal people either, after all, and she never thought further than that. But then puberty started to hit, a long time after Germania had left, and when her lands (aka Gotland and Svealand) finally unified, Denmark's teasing about her wearing the wrong clothes now she was “finally” a “real” real nation hahaha gross lateeeeee, her people's pressure and her own desire to do this correctly lead to her changing her hairstyle into that of a woman and finding some appropriate clothes. Ever the quiet observer, it didn't take her long to pick up what she needed to know about behaviour and similar things, but what remains to the day is a slight confusion about gender roles (thinking of herself as Finland's husband, for example; she has other reasons too for this - she just considers the dominant one in the relationship to be the husband).
A couple of centuries later, unhappy with her own king and intrigued by Denmark's female boss and the woman's strength, competence and willpower (and probably also simply by her accomplishments despite her gender), she asked her sister if she'd share. Denmark, thrilled by the thought of having the whole family under one roof for real, agreed. For well over a century, they now lived together: Denmark, Sweden, their friend/little sister Norway, Norway's little sister/everyone's little sister Iceland, and Finland, whom Sweden had picked up a while ago and taken home with her.
They were a big happy family and lived happily ever after - only not. Denmark, strong and possessive and very much the leader personality, tried to do just that, lead. And Sweden, proud and the strongest of the other nations in the house, started to make it clear soon that this was not what she had signed up for. They started to fight, and their fights got nastier and nastier until one November day in 1520, something broke and Denmark went too far. That day, in the Bloodbath of Stockholm, Denmark's king had ordered the execution of Sweden's most important nobles, after gathering them for what were essentially peace talks in which Denmark had the upper hand. And while Sweden still sat there in shock, trying to comprehend what had just happened and staring at her own injuries inflicted on her by her sister, another woman stepped into her life. She was the wife of one of the executed men, and led her country into and through the War of Liberation, giving her hope and the strength to believe in herself and her soldiers to believe in themselves and their nation. The union of Kalmar did start with Sweden's admiration of a human woman, and it did also end with it.
Three years later, that war was won and Sweden was her own, independent country. She had taken Finland with her when she left, but she was the only one: Norway and Iceland stayed with Denmark, and for the next three hundred years, the North would stay in two halves that would be at almost constant war with each other.
During those years, Sweden grew stronger and stronger, reaching her peak in the second half of the 17th century. She reached her moment of vastest expansion in 1658, at which point not only Finland, but also Latvia and Estonia lived with her, and she owned quite a lot of other nations' territory, too. Her imperial times ended with one of the biggest bangs in history: Russia, Poland-Lithuania in a personal union with Saxony, and Denmark-Norway agreed on attacking her at the same time. Sweden defeated her sister first (mostly because it was the closest to the mainland and thus most dangerous threat, but also because she had allies that could function as guarantee powers for the subsequent peace treaty and thus eliminate the Danish threat for a while) and then went to the East to take on Russia. After kicking her ass solidly, she made the mistake to not turn the tables and hunt the other down, instead leaving her to recover and rebuild her army while Sweden went down South to Livonia to take on Poland-Lithuania. A few years later found her thoroughly beaten by Russia (the second power who announced her rise by kicking Sweden's ass, btw, the first was Prussia in Fehrbellin) and returning to her homeland in shame to lick her wounds a few years later.
Then came the disaster that were the Napoleonic Wars.
It was 1808 when what had been crumbling already around Sweden finally imploded, and Finland had to leave her to live with Russia. Things had started to worsen between them long ago, with the taller woman trying to fix it and not understanding that everything that she did made it worse, that she was suffocating the other woman, threatening to steal everything from her that made her herself; and Finland trying to distance herself from Sweden, Russia's help and promises and her own weakened state speeding things up.
Finland left, and Sweden was alone. Her boss at that time didn't care much about those feelings, being much more interested in uniting the Scandinavian peninsula himself, disregarded them as the weakness of a woman, and finally tried to appease her by telling her to just go with his plans and find herself another “wife”. That was Norway, whom Sweden received five years later ...only that things did not go the way they had been planned, and a short but very decisive war was fought between the now independent Norway and Sweden, ending with an union of the latter's will but at the former's terms. This union would last almost a hundred years, but it always stayed strangely distant, though not necessarily uncomfortable - while the first years were tense, there also was a period of relative calm and getting-along-well, during about the reign of Oscar I. When the union broke, it was quietly, almost eerily so. There was no battle, no flashy, violent bouts of nationalism like the first time around, no real resistance from Sweden's side. They parted in as much peace as was possible between them.
Personality:
A lot of things can be said about Sweden, and some of them seem to contradict each other at first glance. She is very compassionate and loyal, thoughtful and caring, loves children and animals and can be fiercely protective. But she is also overthinking everything way too much, shy to a crippling level, proud to a level where it could be called arrogance, and can be practical to the point of being cruel. While changes are hard for her, she can sometimes be the (among the) most advanced of her time in certain areas. She is also very stubborn and can hold grudges for a long time.
• Once Sweden has set her heart on something, she will pursue it and do what she can for it to become reality, or, if it is a person, for them to be happy and well, and she will simply not stop, or if she stops, it will be a very slow and painful process. One example is Finland; she fell for her then-territory during the Kalmar Union time, and never fell out of love with her again - not even during the time when relations became strained and they were separated, not during the worst of times when they did not even talk. Another example, this time for something that ends slowly and painfully, is her love for Socialism. She has been through various stages and forms of it during the last fifty years, including a nearly Soviet phase, and is currently tries to change into a less Socialist system, because it just does not work the way it always did when facing the changed challenges of the modern world.
• Children: Sweden is not only one of the nations titled “mother” Svea by their citizens (as opposed to others picturing their nations as fathers, virgins, etc). She would also like to be that, not only as a metaphor but literally, yet ... She used to pick up young nations and try to be a mother or at least big sister for them for a while (the Rus siblings), but she did that away from home because they had their own places to tend to. And human children grow up, get old and die very fast by the standards of a nation her age. Yet a much more important reason against children in her own house* are social rules and her good name; raising a child alone, or, more correctly, without a husband at her side, would kill her socially and she cannot afford that. It's not so much other nations that would mind, or even other nations' people (Denmark is a lot more liberal about things like that at the point that I will be taking her from), but her own. And those are, in the end, the most important by far.
It will take her the many changes that modern times bring with them until she can adopt a child and have it live with her. Yet, if she gets the chance, she will take care of children and also small animals and everyonething that can be considered cute, even though at first glance she definitely does not look like that.
[*Latvia, at the time when she came to live with her, was already at an age where families sent their children away to work in other people's households, and also to old to logically have been hers.]
• Sweden barely, if ever at all, makes thoughtless comments. Some might credit this to the fact that she does not talk much at all, but in reality it is exactly the other way around; while most people only think about 30% of the things that they say, Sweden evaluates the pros and cons and the exact wording of every thing that she says beforehand. This leads to her being very sparse with her words. And even then, she is sometimes unsure about what she said and if she said it correctly, especially when the situation on itself is embarrassing or a lot is at stake. Instead of speaking faster, like most people would, her accent gets much stronger, making her speech nearly unintelligible. All of this is different when she is shouty angry - which really almost exclusively happens with Denmark. She's usually more of a calm angry kind, and she can be very unforgiving, and hold grudges for a long time. 300 years of wars with her former best friend and continued friendly animosity were certainly not the result of only Denmark being unable to let go of things and start over again.
• Part of the overthinking, or maybe the overthinking is rather part of this, is that she is very shy. Not the "doesn't speak up and lets others run the show" kind, but of the "can I do/say this /can I do this this way /won't this come out wrong /etc" way. Growing into one of Europe's major powers hasn't made that any better (as you would think because of gaining confidence etc), but rather made it worse instead (because now everything she does and says has even more weight, and more consequences). If for example she were asked to give congratulations for someone's birthday, she would try, resulting in minutes of her simply staring at the other in what seems to be a threatening fashion (her facial expression tends to do that when she is thinking hard), maybe flail and blush a bit, until she either comes out with two or three words or someone else helps her out of the situation by filling in the silence. She has a hard time with words and prefers silent actions by a a lot- instead of fussing over a sick child with many words and telling it stories to keep it entertained, she'll make sure that it stays in bed, gets a warm soup and sleeps a lot, preferably without her having to say a word.
• "Proud to a level where it could be called arrogance" - that they are very arrogant is a typical stereotype about Swedes that quite a few nations (most notably the Netherlands and Denmark) share. An example for how it shows in the nation would be when in 1814 she would not give in the slightest bit, demanding and fighting for her right on Norway despite everyone, including herself, not being too happy with the way all of this was going down. It was about a lot of things, but a big part was that she had been promised and earned to have the other woman come live with her. When it finally happened and she had gotten her will, it was like a thunderstorm suddenly having died. While before she wouldn't listen to Norway at all, now, at least for a little while, she gave the other almost everything she demanded, if she'd just stay with. Or invading Denmark and capturing her capital only to show that she could and to humiliate the other woman.
• A variety of people have called Sweden cruel over the years. Sure, there were instances when it was meant in a teasing or joking way, but there were also times when the meaning was just what the word implies. There are simple things, like finishing off a horse that is too deadly wounded to be able to walk ever again, but also larger ones - her staying neutral through WW2 is no perfect example of this, because she was also called a coward for it besides being accused of being cold and uncaring towards her neighbours, but it carries the essence of the accusation well enough. But she can also swing the exact opposite way and make everyone who looks at her tactics rationally want to bash their face into their palm, like when she put Latvia's safety over making sure that Russia would not recover from her defeat in the beginning of the Great Northern War.
• And she has a speed at which she adapts to new situations and inventions that can only be called strange, sometimes extremely fast and even earlier than her contemporaries, sometimes very far behind the last developments; sometimes very conservative, sometimes liberal and curious. For example: While Christianity as well as the Industrial Revolution took a lot longer to catch on in her place than in that of her closest independent neighbour, Denmark, Sweden was the first nation to rely solely on her own citizens in war instead of merchants and start to build a kind of retirement homes for merited veterans, and make a real, effective effort to spread ethanol cars.
I'll try to point out some key differences between her and the male version and some not-so-much-differences-and-just-facts in the following:
• Morals: As indicated above, morals play a huge role in Sweden's life. She feels the need to conform to them, to conform herself to them, much more strongly than male!Sweden, due to the fact that the backlash would be a lot harder for a woman.
• Speech: Sweden, as one of the very first nations who had any remarkable accent that got to say something in canon, was given a grunt speak in English by the translators (“'m brought flow'rs fer y'.”). To the day he is one of the very few that are shown with a strong accent in English, and thus I will reflect that. It will, however, be much weaker (“I brought flow'rs for you.”). While in Japanese, women of a higher standing may speak an regional accent (which Sweden's grunt speak is originally), too, most Western cultures expect women of a higher standing to speak a very clear, refined language. While I do not want to completely abandon the way Sweden speaks, I think it needs to be downsized a lot.
Sweden is very scarce with her words just like her male counterpart, but talks a bit more in total because she speaks more politely (like “Use th's please” instead of “Use 't.”)
• Weapon: A sword instead of a stick (ignoring some merch that provides male!Sweden with a sword, his typical weapon is a simple long fighting stick). To me, that mainly means two things: a) She knows how to handle it, and b) despite her being female, she was never out of touch with her military (which, for a nation who despite all odds being against it managed to be THE military power of Europe for decades, would be strange anyway). She would of course be less at the front lines and more (in the back) with the highest officers/king most of the time; not stay with her soldiers in battle but have a tent of her own, together with her territories; and she would not so much train with her men on Sundays, but spar with Finland and other private partners, if available. But she would not have bid her weapons farewell when she became a woman officially (though she most definitely ceased to use the battleaxe then in favour of the less strictly male weapon of the sword).
• Hobbies: Male!Sweden is a weekend carpenter and likes decorative arts. Bengta does the female version of it: Knitting, embroidering, and all other kinds of needlework and sewing.
• Denmark: The key difference here is that their fights are a lot more vicious and less on the physical level. Sure, they were fighting physically, too, but there was a lot more “psychological warfare”-y things going on, the emotions were less raw and more complicated. On the upside, they had an easier time reconciling on the surface to work together despite all the old bad feelings still being there. Everything else in their relationship is rather similar in the limitations that everything else in this section states.
• Touching: Bengta is a lot less awkward and nervous about touching others than Berwald, simply because touching is a lot easier and happens more often and naturally between women, and women and children, than between men. She has to think a lot less about how hugging, holding hands, etc, will be perceived. This also means that her face is not as scary as Berwald's when she hugs/etc others, simply because she is not as nervous.
• Appearance: Sweden is plain intimidating. In his canon, Berwald manages to intimidate the heck out of almost everyone without even trying (Russia being among the few exceptions), and there is no reason to believe that Bengta is any different. The main reasons for this are a) her sheer height (tall for a woman, even taller than almost all male nations in Hetalia Main), b) her face (she does not mean to make scary faces, but that is just her default expression, and it gets even scarier when she's thinking hard or embarrassed) and c) the way she talks (very direct and to the point, not much in general, and never cheerful).
Abilities: The typical nation “abilities”; near immortality, being connected to their people and soil in actions and health, being able to walk from one nation's house to another in a short amount of time, having to listen to her boss. She also is a strong warrior, knows how to handle most weapons and is quite strong in general for a human woman, but not superhumanly so.
Sample:
Note:
• While "Kalmar Unions" would be the more correct term (and also the correct translation from Swedish, Danish and Norwegian), since it was a multitude of unions between the three involved countries with changing members, legal forms and political foundations, the English term seems to be "Kalmar Union" and I stuck to that in this app and will stick with in while RPing.
Name: kira/narva
Personal Journal: whatisnarva
Contact Info: PM works best
Other Characters: N/A
Character Information
Name: Kingdom of Sweden | Bengta Oxenstierna
Source Canon: Axis Powers Nyotalia
Age: 21
Role In Canon: Being from a canon that has no main character and having quite a lot of appearances in Hetalia main (reflected as she is one of the few nations that have canon Nyotalia versions), I would put her in group four of five, if one is "extremely minor" and five is "main-ish". Little has been revealed about her Nyotalia version, though, so she is essentially a canon OC.
History:
[Since Hetalia characters are always only to a certain extent historical, but also to a certain extent people with personalities, I will try to reflect personal as well as national circumstances/events in this history.]
Sweden was born a couple of decades BC, but she hardly remembers her earlier childhood today (most of it only remains as images, short moments, single senteces and disjointed faces, memories of that sort). The nation that she bonded with first was the girl that would later become Denmark, only a few decades afterwards. It only took them one night that was spent in the same tree, trying to not get eaten by some animal, for Denmark to decide that they were sisters, and of course Sweden would be the younger sister - and that was that. The line between blood relation or adoption was blurred from the start, and up until today Sweden will not swear an oath on either version. Maybe they are blood related, maybe not. It does not really matter, they have enough history together for that.
The two little girls soon became inseparable, or as much inseparable as nations can get since they both had their own people to look after. It helped that they were tribes loosely connected by a shared difference towards other tribal groups at that point and there was no boss that they would have had to listen to.
The second nation that Sweden met, beaten by Denmark only by a few days, was Germania who then became a distant mother figure for the girls. She raised them as boys, reasoning that that would make a lot of things easier, and up until they hit puberty (which happened some time during the 10th century AD), neither of them really thought of themselves as girls. They were aware of the fact that they weren't normal boys, but at least Sweden did not think much about that; they were not normal people either, after all, and she never thought further than that. But then puberty started to hit, a long time after Germania had left, and when her lands (aka Gotland and Svealand) finally unified, Denmark's teasing about her wearing the wrong clothes now she was “finally” a “real” real nation hahaha gross lateeeeee, her people's pressure and her own desire to do this correctly lead to her changing her hairstyle into that of a woman and finding some appropriate clothes. Ever the quiet observer, it didn't take her long to pick up what she needed to know about behaviour and similar things, but what remains to the day is a slight confusion about gender roles (thinking of herself as Finland's husband, for example; she has other reasons too for this - she just considers the dominant one in the relationship to be the husband).
A couple of centuries later, unhappy with her own king and intrigued by Denmark's female boss and the woman's strength, competence and willpower (and probably also simply by her accomplishments despite her gender), she asked her sister if she'd share. Denmark, thrilled by the thought of having the whole family under one roof for real, agreed. For well over a century, they now lived together: Denmark, Sweden, their friend/little sister Norway, Norway's little sister/everyone's little sister Iceland, and Finland, whom Sweden had picked up a while ago and taken home with her.
They were a big happy family and lived happily ever after - only not. Denmark, strong and possessive and very much the leader personality, tried to do just that, lead. And Sweden, proud and the strongest of the other nations in the house, started to make it clear soon that this was not what she had signed up for. They started to fight, and their fights got nastier and nastier until one November day in 1520, something broke and Denmark went too far. That day, in the Bloodbath of Stockholm, Denmark's king had ordered the execution of Sweden's most important nobles, after gathering them for what were essentially peace talks in which Denmark had the upper hand. And while Sweden still sat there in shock, trying to comprehend what had just happened and staring at her own injuries inflicted on her by her sister, another woman stepped into her life. She was the wife of one of the executed men, and led her country into and through the War of Liberation, giving her hope and the strength to believe in herself and her soldiers to believe in themselves and their nation. The union of Kalmar did start with Sweden's admiration of a human woman, and it did also end with it.
Three years later, that war was won and Sweden was her own, independent country. She had taken Finland with her when she left, but she was the only one: Norway and Iceland stayed with Denmark, and for the next three hundred years, the North would stay in two halves that would be at almost constant war with each other.
During those years, Sweden grew stronger and stronger, reaching her peak in the second half of the 17th century. She reached her moment of vastest expansion in 1658, at which point not only Finland, but also Latvia and Estonia lived with her, and she owned quite a lot of other nations' territory, too. Her imperial times ended with one of the biggest bangs in history: Russia, Poland-Lithuania in a personal union with Saxony, and Denmark-Norway agreed on attacking her at the same time. Sweden defeated her sister first (mostly because it was the closest to the mainland and thus most dangerous threat, but also because she had allies that could function as guarantee powers for the subsequent peace treaty and thus eliminate the Danish threat for a while) and then went to the East to take on Russia. After kicking her ass solidly, she made the mistake to not turn the tables and hunt the other down, instead leaving her to recover and rebuild her army while Sweden went down South to Livonia to take on Poland-Lithuania. A few years later found her thoroughly beaten by Russia (the second power who announced her rise by kicking Sweden's ass, btw, the first was Prussia in Fehrbellin) and returning to her homeland in shame to lick her wounds a few years later.
Then came the disaster that were the Napoleonic Wars.
It was 1808 when what had been crumbling already around Sweden finally imploded, and Finland had to leave her to live with Russia. Things had started to worsen between them long ago, with the taller woman trying to fix it and not understanding that everything that she did made it worse, that she was suffocating the other woman, threatening to steal everything from her that made her herself; and Finland trying to distance herself from Sweden, Russia's help and promises and her own weakened state speeding things up.
Finland left, and Sweden was alone. Her boss at that time didn't care much about those feelings, being much more interested in uniting the Scandinavian peninsula himself, disregarded them as the weakness of a woman, and finally tried to appease her by telling her to just go with his plans and find herself another “wife”. That was Norway, whom Sweden received five years later ...only that things did not go the way they had been planned, and a short but very decisive war was fought between the now independent Norway and Sweden, ending with an union of the latter's will but at the former's terms. This union would last almost a hundred years, but it always stayed strangely distant, though not necessarily uncomfortable - while the first years were tense, there also was a period of relative calm and getting-along-well, during about the reign of Oscar I. When the union broke, it was quietly, almost eerily so. There was no battle, no flashy, violent bouts of nationalism like the first time around, no real resistance from Sweden's side. They parted in as much peace as was possible between them.
Personality:
A lot of things can be said about Sweden, and some of them seem to contradict each other at first glance. She is very compassionate and loyal, thoughtful and caring, loves children and animals and can be fiercely protective. But she is also overthinking everything way too much, shy to a crippling level, proud to a level where it could be called arrogance, and can be practical to the point of being cruel. While changes are hard for her, she can sometimes be the (among the) most advanced of her time in certain areas. She is also very stubborn and can hold grudges for a long time.
• Once Sweden has set her heart on something, she will pursue it and do what she can for it to become reality, or, if it is a person, for them to be happy and well, and she will simply not stop, or if she stops, it will be a very slow and painful process. One example is Finland; she fell for her then-territory during the Kalmar Union time, and never fell out of love with her again - not even during the time when relations became strained and they were separated, not during the worst of times when they did not even talk. Another example, this time for something that ends slowly and painfully, is her love for Socialism. She has been through various stages and forms of it during the last fifty years, including a nearly Soviet phase, and is currently tries to change into a less Socialist system, because it just does not work the way it always did when facing the changed challenges of the modern world.
• Children: Sweden is not only one of the nations titled “mother” Svea by their citizens (as opposed to others picturing their nations as fathers, virgins, etc). She would also like to be that, not only as a metaphor but literally, yet ... She used to pick up young nations and try to be a mother or at least big sister for them for a while (the Rus siblings), but she did that away from home because they had their own places to tend to. And human children grow up, get old and die very fast by the standards of a nation her age. Yet a much more important reason against children in her own house* are social rules and her good name; raising a child alone, or, more correctly, without a husband at her side, would kill her socially and she cannot afford that. It's not so much other nations that would mind, or even other nations' people (Denmark is a lot more liberal about things like that at the point that I will be taking her from), but her own. And those are, in the end, the most important by far.
It will take her the many changes that modern times bring with them until she can adopt a child and have it live with her. Yet, if she gets the chance, she will take care of children and also small animals and everyonething that can be considered cute, even though at first glance she definitely does not look like that.
[*Latvia, at the time when she came to live with her, was already at an age where families sent their children away to work in other people's households, and also to old to logically have been hers.]
• Sweden barely, if ever at all, makes thoughtless comments. Some might credit this to the fact that she does not talk much at all, but in reality it is exactly the other way around; while most people only think about 30% of the things that they say, Sweden evaluates the pros and cons and the exact wording of every thing that she says beforehand. This leads to her being very sparse with her words. And even then, she is sometimes unsure about what she said and if she said it correctly, especially when the situation on itself is embarrassing or a lot is at stake. Instead of speaking faster, like most people would, her accent gets much stronger, making her speech nearly unintelligible. All of this is different when she is shouty angry - which really almost exclusively happens with Denmark. She's usually more of a calm angry kind, and she can be very unforgiving, and hold grudges for a long time. 300 years of wars with her former best friend and continued friendly animosity were certainly not the result of only Denmark being unable to let go of things and start over again.
• Part of the overthinking, or maybe the overthinking is rather part of this, is that she is very shy. Not the "doesn't speak up and lets others run the show" kind, but of the "can I do/say this /can I do this this way /won't this come out wrong /etc" way. Growing into one of Europe's major powers hasn't made that any better (as you would think because of gaining confidence etc), but rather made it worse instead (because now everything she does and says has even more weight, and more consequences). If for example she were asked to give congratulations for someone's birthday, she would try, resulting in minutes of her simply staring at the other in what seems to be a threatening fashion (her facial expression tends to do that when she is thinking hard), maybe flail and blush a bit, until she either comes out with two or three words or someone else helps her out of the situation by filling in the silence. She has a hard time with words and prefers silent actions by a a lot- instead of fussing over a sick child with many words and telling it stories to keep it entertained, she'll make sure that it stays in bed, gets a warm soup and sleeps a lot, preferably without her having to say a word.
• "Proud to a level where it could be called arrogance" - that they are very arrogant is a typical stereotype about Swedes that quite a few nations (most notably the Netherlands and Denmark) share. An example for how it shows in the nation would be when in 1814 she would not give in the slightest bit, demanding and fighting for her right on Norway despite everyone, including herself, not being too happy with the way all of this was going down. It was about a lot of things, but a big part was that she had been promised and earned to have the other woman come live with her. When it finally happened and she had gotten her will, it was like a thunderstorm suddenly having died. While before she wouldn't listen to Norway at all, now, at least for a little while, she gave the other almost everything she demanded, if she'd just stay with. Or invading Denmark and capturing her capital only to show that she could and to humiliate the other woman.
• A variety of people have called Sweden cruel over the years. Sure, there were instances when it was meant in a teasing or joking way, but there were also times when the meaning was just what the word implies. There are simple things, like finishing off a horse that is too deadly wounded to be able to walk ever again, but also larger ones - her staying neutral through WW2 is no perfect example of this, because she was also called a coward for it besides being accused of being cold and uncaring towards her neighbours, but it carries the essence of the accusation well enough. But she can also swing the exact opposite way and make everyone who looks at her tactics rationally want to bash their face into their palm, like when she put Latvia's safety over making sure that Russia would not recover from her defeat in the beginning of the Great Northern War.
• And she has a speed at which she adapts to new situations and inventions that can only be called strange, sometimes extremely fast and even earlier than her contemporaries, sometimes very far behind the last developments; sometimes very conservative, sometimes liberal and curious. For example: While Christianity as well as the Industrial Revolution took a lot longer to catch on in her place than in that of her closest independent neighbour, Denmark, Sweden was the first nation to rely solely on her own citizens in war instead of merchants and start to build a kind of retirement homes for merited veterans, and make a real, effective effort to spread ethanol cars.
I'll try to point out some key differences between her and the male version and some not-so-much-differences-and-just-facts in the following:
• Morals: As indicated above, morals play a huge role in Sweden's life. She feels the need to conform to them, to conform herself to them, much more strongly than male!Sweden, due to the fact that the backlash would be a lot harder for a woman.
• Speech: Sweden, as one of the very first nations who had any remarkable accent that got to say something in canon, was given a grunt speak in English by the translators (“'m brought flow'rs fer y'.”). To the day he is one of the very few that are shown with a strong accent in English, and thus I will reflect that. It will, however, be much weaker (“I brought flow'rs for you.”). While in Japanese, women of a higher standing may speak an regional accent (which Sweden's grunt speak is originally), too, most Western cultures expect women of a higher standing to speak a very clear, refined language. While I do not want to completely abandon the way Sweden speaks, I think it needs to be downsized a lot.
Sweden is very scarce with her words just like her male counterpart, but talks a bit more in total because she speaks more politely (like “Use th's please” instead of “Use 't.”)
• Weapon: A sword instead of a stick (ignoring some merch that provides male!Sweden with a sword, his typical weapon is a simple long fighting stick). To me, that mainly means two things: a) She knows how to handle it, and b) despite her being female, she was never out of touch with her military (which, for a nation who despite all odds being against it managed to be THE military power of Europe for decades, would be strange anyway). She would of course be less at the front lines and more (in the back) with the highest officers/king most of the time; not stay with her soldiers in battle but have a tent of her own, together with her territories; and she would not so much train with her men on Sundays, but spar with Finland and other private partners, if available. But she would not have bid her weapons farewell when she became a woman officially (though she most definitely ceased to use the battleaxe then in favour of the less strictly male weapon of the sword).
• Hobbies: Male!Sweden is a weekend carpenter and likes decorative arts. Bengta does the female version of it: Knitting, embroidering, and all other kinds of needlework and sewing.
• Denmark: The key difference here is that their fights are a lot more vicious and less on the physical level. Sure, they were fighting physically, too, but there was a lot more “psychological warfare”-y things going on, the emotions were less raw and more complicated. On the upside, they had an easier time reconciling on the surface to work together despite all the old bad feelings still being there. Everything else in their relationship is rather similar in the limitations that everything else in this section states.
• Touching: Bengta is a lot less awkward and nervous about touching others than Berwald, simply because touching is a lot easier and happens more often and naturally between women, and women and children, than between men. She has to think a lot less about how hugging, holding hands, etc, will be perceived. This also means that her face is not as scary as Berwald's when she hugs/etc others, simply because she is not as nervous.
• Appearance: Sweden is plain intimidating. In his canon, Berwald manages to intimidate the heck out of almost everyone without even trying (Russia being among the few exceptions), and there is no reason to believe that Bengta is any different. The main reasons for this are a) her sheer height (tall for a woman, even taller than almost all male nations in Hetalia Main), b) her face (she does not mean to make scary faces, but that is just her default expression, and it gets even scarier when she's thinking hard or embarrassed) and c) the way she talks (very direct and to the point, not much in general, and never cheerful).
Abilities: The typical nation “abilities”; near immortality, being connected to their people and soil in actions and health, being able to walk from one nation's house to another in a short amount of time, having to listen to her boss. She also is a strong warrior, knows how to handle most weapons and is quite strong in general for a human woman, but not superhumanly so.
Sample:
Note:
• While "Kalmar Unions" would be the more correct term (and also the correct translation from Swedish, Danish and Norwegian), since it was a multitude of unions between the three involved countries with changing members, legal forms and political foundations, the English term seems to be "Kalmar Union" and I stuck to that in this app and will stick with in while RPing.