Portrait of Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia

A portrait of Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662) by Frederick Percy Graves.

Elizabeth was the second child of King James I (VI of Scotland) and Queen Anne, born in Scotland on 19th August 1596. She was named Elizabeth in honour of the then-ageing English Queen. James hoped for a dynastic marriage for his daughter and achieved that when on Valentine’s Day in 1613, aged 16, she married Frederick V - heir to the German Palatinate territories and titular head of the league of Protestant princes.

Frederick and Elizabeth were crowned King and Queen of Bohemia (today part of the Czech Republic) at the invitation of the Bohemian Confederacy, to prevent a Catholic incumbent ascending the throne - only to be driven from their court in Prague and deprived of all their Palatinate lands the following year by the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand.

She was often known as the ‘Winter Queen’ as she reigned for a single winter.