Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (1596 -1662)

Elizabeth Stuart was born in 1596 at Falkland Palace, Fife, the daughter of James VI of Scotland, and his wife Anne of Denmark. She was brought up at Linlithgow Palace until 1603, when her father succeeded to the thrones of England and Ireland. Part of the intent of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was to kidnap the nine-year-old Elizabeth and put her onto the throne as a Catholic monarch, after assassinating her father and the Protestant English aristocracy. On 14 February 1613, at the age of sixteen, she married Frederick V, then Elector of the Palatinate in Germany, and took her place at court in Heidelberg. Frederick was the leader of the association of Protestant princes in the Holy Roman Empire known as the Protestant Union. In 1619, Frederick accepted the Protestant crown of Bohemia, and Elizabeth’s was crowned Queen. Frederick's rule lasted only one year, hence Elizabeth became known as the "Winter Queen". The end of his reign marked the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. Driven into exile, the couple took up residence in The Hague, where Frederick died in 1632, aged 36. Elizabeth remained in Holland even after her son, Charles I Louis, regained his father's electorship at the close of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. In 1662, following the Restoration of the English and Scottish monarchies, she travelled to London to visit her nephew, Charles II, and died while there. Elizabeth's youngest daughter, Sophia of Hanover, had in 1658 married Ernest Augustus, the future Elector of Hanover. As Sophia was the nearest Protestant relative to the British crown, under the English Act of Settlement, the succession was settled on Sophia and her issue, so that all monarchs of Great Britain from George I are descendants of Elizabeth.