This book follows the lives of six princesses of the House of Stuart who lived in England and Europe during the war and peace of the 17th century. The first was Elizabeth, daughter of King James VI and I of England and Scotland, who became the ‘Winter Queen' of Bohemia all too briefly, until she and her husband were driven out of their kingdom after defeat in the Thirty Years' War.
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Of the daughters of her brother King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, Mary left England when still young to go to Holland and marry the Prince of Orange. He died while she was expecting their first child, a baby who later became King William III. Elizabeth fell into the hands of the parliamentary party during the English Civil War and died of fever after being held prisoner for several years. The youngest, Henrietta Anne, was smuggled out of England disguised as a boy, brought up at the French court, and married the brother of King Louis XIV of France.
The last two Stuart princesses, Mary and Anne, the daughters of King James II. Mary married her cousin King William III, and both became joint English sovereigns, to be succeeded by Anne as Queen, but both sisters suffered poor health, and neither left any surviving children to inherit the throne.
The review of this Book prepared by John Van der Kiste
