Nonetheless, he perhaps owed most of what shaped him during his early education to the poet and historian Olof von Dalin.

State interference with his education as a young child caused significant political disruptions within the royal family. Gustav's parents taught him to despise the governors imposed upon him by the Riksdag, and the atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity in which he grew up made him precociously experienced in the art of dissimulation.Even his most hostile teachers were amazed by