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Elisabeth, Electress Palatine and Queen of Bohemia (born Princess Elizabeth Stuart of Scotland; 19 August 1596 – 13 February 1662) was the eldest daughter to King James VI of Scotland and his Queen consort Anne of Denmark. She was thus sister to Charles I of England, Ireland and Scotland. With the demise of the Stuart dynasty in 1714, her direct descendants, the Hanoverian rulers, succeeded to the British throne.
At the time of Elizabeth's birth at Falkland Palace, Fife, her father was still the King of Scots only. She was named in honor of the Queen of England, in an attempt by her father to flatter the old queen, whose kingdom he hoped to inherit. When the younger Elizabeth was six years old, in 1603, her namesake died and James succeeded to the thrones of England and Ireland, making his daughter a much more attractive bride.
Part of the intent of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was to put the nine year old Elizabeth onto the throne of England (and, presumably, Scotland) as a Catholic monarch, after assassinating her father and the Protestant English aristocracy. At the time of the plot she was staying at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire, from where the conspirators planned to kidnap her.
On February 14, 1613, she married Frederick V, then Elector of the Palatinate, and took up her place in the court at Heidelberg. Frederick was the leader of the association of Protestant princes in the Holy Roman Empire known as the Evangelical Union, and Elizabeth was married to him in an effort to increase James's ties to these princes. In 1619, Frederick was offered and accepted the crown of Bohemia, but his rule was brief, and Elizabeth became known as the "Winter Queen". She was also sometimes called "Queen of Hearts" because of her popularity.
Driven into exile, the couple took up residence in The Hague, and Frederick died in 1632. Elizabeth remained in Holland even after her son, Charles I Louis, regained his father's electorship in 1648. Following the Restoration of the British monarchy, she travelled to London to visit her nephew, King Charles II, and died while there. Her daughter was known later as Sophia of Hanover; pursuant to the English Act of Settlement 1701, the Electress Sophia and her issue were made heirs to the English (later British) throne, so that all monarchs of Great Britain from George I are descendants of Elizabeth's.
In WG Sebald's novel Vertigo (1990), a woman appears whom the narrator, travelling through Heidelberg by train in 1987, recognizes instantly "without a shadow of a doubt" as Elizabeth when she enters his carriage.
Books about the Winter Queen include: