In Women’s History Month we take a look back at a figure who has been misrepresented by successive generations of historians. Elizabeth Stuart, was the goddaughter of Elizabeth I and sister of the ill-starred Charles I of England. She was someone who played an active part on the times in which she lived. In this episode the Dutch historian Nadine Akkerman takes us back to meet a woman who was known as ‘The Queen of Hearts.’

In her riveting new book, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts, Nadine Akkerman draws back the curtain on centuries of hearsay and prejudice to reveal Elizabeth’s life in its full, extraordinary glory. This was a woman of great courage and intelligence, who ruled alongside her husband, guided their children after his death, played a vital role in contemporary politics, travelled extensively, wrote letters voraciously and hunted wild boar while eight months’ pregnant.

Who knows how the seventeenth century would have turned out if she had acceded to the throne of England in 1625 instead of her hapless brother Charles I. She was, in so many ways, the true successor of her namesake and godmother, Queen Elizabeth I.  

Show Notes

Scene One: Elizabeth all alone in Prague, refusing to abandon her subjects, while her husband is with the army.

Scene Two: The lunch before the battle of White Mountain. Her husband is in Prague and Elizabeth wants to visit the troops. They realize they are too late – battle has already begun.

Scene Three: Heavily pregnant, Elizabeth flees from Prague in search of a safe haven where she can give birth. 

Memento: Elizabeth’s ‘pacquet de nuit’; the one item the enemy (i.e. the Duke of Bavaria) managed to take from her during the flight. Ambassadors later try to get it back, so it must have been important to her. Previous biographers have translated it as ‘nightclothes’. I can’t imagine that to be correct, but I don’t know what it is either! 

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Nadine Akkerman

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Unseen Histories

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