Elizabeth, Electress Palatine and Queen of Bohemia

Elizabeth of Bohemia is remembered as the English Protestant princess forced into ruinous exile. The daughter of King James I of England, Elizabeth Stuart married fellow Protestant Frederick V of The Palatinate (in today’s Germany) in 1613.

Frederick accepted the throne of Bohemia, despite a politically dangerous situation. Frederick and Elizabeth were crowned King and Queen in Prague in 1619, but in 1620 they were ousted after a military defeat by the Catholic Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years War. Exiled the rest of her life in The Hague, Elizabeth was known as the “Winter Queen” for the single season of her reign as Queen of Bohemia.