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Author Topic: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen  (Read 19174 times)

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Offline Kimberly

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #30 on: September 03, 2005, 04:33:52 PM »
Hey don't forget Queen Brittney ;D
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Offline Prince_Lieven

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #31 on: September 03, 2005, 04:42:12 PM »
Or Virginia. Or Georgia. Or Dakota. Or Carolina. Still, this is way off topic - tsaria will string me up and throw things at me (not that she's mean - I'd deserve it  ;)) so back to the Winter Queen please!
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Offline LenelorMiksi

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #32 on: September 04, 2005, 01:45:38 AM »
To get back to topic (interesting offroads, though!)  A picture of the Winter Queen that probably everybody has seen, but you get to see it again:

Dang it! I keep pasting the image into the subject box ! >:(

OOOh, this is called something...come back to me, knowledge from art classes.  A lithograph?  A print of some kind.  Whatever, I'm not looking it up.  I always thought she had blond hair from this...this...picture.  Of course the miniature shows her with red hair and the painting with brown.  So what color was her hair?  Maybe she had some sort of dyeing technique!  So unlikely...
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Offline Prince_Lieven

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #33 on: September 04, 2005, 07:15:50 AM »
Thank Lenelor! I've actually never seen that image . . . I think Elizabeth had 'auburn' hair, at least as a child - it was a stuart characteristic, and as she aged, it darkened, not unlike that of her brother Charles.
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Offline Prince_Lieven

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #34 on: September 06, 2005, 02:03:54 PM »
Some more Elizabeth info!!

When her brother Charles was executed in 1649, Elizabeth had not seen him since he was 13. Nevertheless, she was furious and distraught, and said that anyone with the remotest connection with the Commonwealth government had better not come to her house, or they would be thrown down the stairs!

Up until Charles's execution she had tried to keep on reasonably good terms with the Commonwealth government, since they were paying her pension, she now severed all ties with them completely.

Her realtions with her children suffered during this period - Charles Louis had given Charles I no support and rumour said he had hoped to be offered the English throne. Rupert and Maurice were expelled from England and became smugglers, but Maurice vanished at sea in 1652, never to be seen again.

Another son, Edward, converted to Rome and married a French heiress. At first the Queen was furious, but eventually came round, not least because she realised Edward would never need to borrow money off her again.

A young French man, Jacques d'Epinay, had been paying Elizabeth and her daughter Louise attentions, and though Elizabeth saw no harm in it, her son Philip did, and challenged Jacques to a duel. When the authorities prevented this happening, Philip stabbed and killed the Frenchman in a tavern brawl, and fled to Germany.

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"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
-Sherlock Holmes

"Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget."

Offline Prince_Lieven

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #35 on: September 06, 2005, 02:09:01 PM »
Around this time, Sophie, the Winter Queen's youngest child, described her sisters in detail.

Elizabeth, the younger, had black hair, a lovely complexion and brown eyes, with a long nose. Sophie teased that Elizabeth's nose was 'rather apt to turn red'. Sophie also said Elizabeth 'knew every language and science under the sun.'

Louise, Sophie said, was lively and unaffected, and 'devoted herself to painting. According to Sophie, though, Louise neglected her appearence.

Henriette was apprently the beauty, golden haired and a complexion 'without exaggeration like lillies and roses'.

Since she no longer had the English pension, Elizabeth was in dire straits for money now, and though Charles Louis had been restored to the Palatinate in 1648, it was so ravaged by the 30 Years War he could barely pay her anything.
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"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
-Sherlock Holmes

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Offline umigon

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #36 on: September 06, 2005, 02:09:26 PM »


What did Elizabeth think of her brother's marriage to a Catholic? And what was her relation with her Catholic and extravagant mother like?
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Offline Prince_Lieven

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #37 on: September 06, 2005, 02:13:17 PM »
Anne seems to have regarded neither Elizabeth nor Charles with any particular affection - she lavished attention on Henry. Still, Elizabeth was very upset when she died.

As for Henrietta Maria, she seems to have gotten on well with Elizabeth. When Henrietta accompanied her daughter to the Hague, she met Elizabeth frequently and they were on good terms.

Elizabeth was very close to her nice Mary, the Princess Royal, whom she called 'my best neece.' In fact, most people seem to think she was closer to Mary than she was to her own children . . .
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"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
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Offline Prince_Lieven

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #38 on: September 07, 2005, 10:33:56 AM »
I just read Plowden's description of Elizabeth's death, and I think it is so moving that I will type it here (hope you all like it):

What memories crowded in on the Winter Queen as the shadows closer round her? Did she see the little girl in the palace at Linlithgow, listening enthralled to her nurses tales of her fabulous grandmother the Queen of Scots; or the schoolroom at Combe Abbey, its ordered routine disturbed by the southern alarm of the Gunpowder Plot? Was she riding again with Henry in the Surrey Woods, or standing beside her mother in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, wathcing under her lashes at the dark, good-looking boy who was to be her husband approached from the crowd? Perhaps she was back at Heidelberg, the happy-go-luck young bride out hunting all day in the hills above the castle, overspending her dress allowance and driving poor Colonel Schomberg to distraction. Or was she reliving that amazing day when she had been crowned queen in the Cathedral at Prague? It had been a very long journey uphill which was ending now with a tired old woman gasping for breath in a rented house in Leicester Fields.

Elizabeth died soon after midnight on 13 February 1662, the eve of her forty-ninth wedding anniversary.

A fitting tribute to a wonderful woman, IMHO.
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"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
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Offline umigon

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #39 on: September 07, 2005, 10:47:54 AM »

It is moving! I'd like to see those books published here in Spain!
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Offline Prince_Lieven

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #40 on: September 07, 2005, 10:54:41 AM »
Yes, the Stuart Princesses is a jewel of a book -try amazon.co.uk or ebay, umigon and you might bag a bargain!

It's really opened my eyes to the Winter Queen - if I made a new Top 10 list of my favourite royals, she would certainly be in the running . . .

Ironically, after about 30-35 years of being virtually ignored by the ruling elite of England, when Charles II was restored to the throne everyone wanted to be the Queen of Bohemia's best friend.

Elizabeth's 'best neece' Mary, the Princess of Orange, took great pleasure in smugly informing the States General that the English Parliament had come to her brother begging him to return to England. Mary now found herself been treating very respectfully, and when Charles had a celebratory banquet in the Hague, the Queen of Bohemia occupied a place of honour next to him.
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Offline Prince_Lieven

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #41 on: September 07, 2005, 03:26:59 PM »
Frederick V, the Winter King, Elizabeth's husband:

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-Sherlock Holmes

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palatine

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #42 on: September 08, 2005, 06:24:16 PM »
Coming out of lurkdom...

It is far easier for her often sympathetic biographers to describe Elizabeth as spunky, funny and charming (which she was) than to admit she was also treacherous, less than politically astute, extravagant, and a dreadful mother.  

In Elizabeth's early biographies, her behavior was largely whitewashed.  It was not until the discovery of Sophia's Memoirs, and the publication of biographies of Sophia, Rupert, and the younger Elizabeth, that her behavior was questioned or re-appraised.  Unfortunately, despite the new evidence, even Elizabeth's best modern biographer, Carola Oman, continued the Victorian tradition of making excuses for the so-called Queen of Hearts, minimizing or ignoring her failures and mistakes, and usually deriding Elizabeth's children, particularly those who did not marry.

For what it's worth, I think Elizabeth should be admired for her impressive lobbying skills, and for the fact that she understood the value of good public relations, a concept her brother could never grasp.  She refused to take no for an answer when her brother King Charles refused to raise an army on her behalf, and kept herself and her children's plight before the eyes of the world by welcoming visitors to her Court at The Hague and by building up a vast network of correspondents.  "I am on show here like any Fat Lady or Dancing Bear," she once wrote to a supporter.  Unfortunately, as a mother, her best-known nickname, the Winter Queen, sums her up perfectly.

Incidentally, her sons Rupert and Maurice were not smugglers, but were in charge of a small fleet of ships that defected to the Stuart cause in 1648.  After the execution of their uncle Charles I, their cousin Charles II made Rupert his Lord High Admiral.  Rupert and Maurice led a mission to blockade an Irish port from being used as a point of entry by Cromwell, and when that proved impossible, moved on to their secondary goals of disrupting English shipping and capturing prizes to finance the exiled Stuart court, operating without a base for three years, an amazing achievement.  
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by palatine »
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Offline bell_the_cat

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #43 on: September 09, 2005, 01:33:29 AM »
Great stuff, and welcome to the forum, Madame (Monsieur?).

It does sound as if she was a naturally charming lady - even Pepys was charmed.

The adventures of Rupert and Maurice sound fascinating, was the Irish port you mentioned Kinsale? I was there a couple of summers ago, and I seem to remember reading about this in the guide book.

As with Henrietta Maria (see her thread), all these civil war characters went through ups an downs in their reputations (especially under Charles II) so it is difficult to make a fair assessment.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by bell_the_cat »
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Offline umigon

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Re: Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
« Reply #44 on: September 09, 2005, 04:21:04 AM »


Wow, an impressive account! Do you know more about Elizabeth's relationship with her other children? Was she really that cold?
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