2 Mark - Frederick I 1st portrait

Frederick I came to the Swedish throne in 1720 following the forced abdication of Ulrika Eleonora, his wife, who had herself replaced the dead Charles XII. The succession was a political arrangement, not a dynastic inevitability — the Riksdag handed Frederick the crown while simultaneously stripping the monarchy of most executive power, inaugurating the Age of Liberty. This coinage was struck against that backdrop of deliberate royal diminishment.

The three-year window of this issue corresponds exactly to the early consolidation of the new constitutional order, after which Swedish silver coinage underwent revision as the state's post-Great Northern War finances were slowly stabilized.