The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Fife’s forgotten princess is honoured with her own fusion malt whisky
Dram: Royal blend resurrects memory of historic Winter Queen
A forgotten Fife-born princess who lived a life of exile has been honoured.
Elizabeth Stuart, eldest daughter of King James VI and I and granddaughter of Mary Queen of Scots, lived for 40 years in The Hague and became a figurehead for thousands of Scottish mercenaries based in the Netherlands.
The goddaughter of Queen Elizabeth I, she was born in 1596 in either Falkland or Dunfermline Palace and is regarded as the little-known link between the Stuart and Hanoverian thrones thanks to her marriage to Elector Palatine Frederick V.
History has largely overlooked her but her memory has been resurrected by Edinburgh-based Fusion Whisky, which has come up with a blend of Scotch and Dutch single malt called Winter Queen.
After being married at 16 Elizabeth Stuart and her husband moved to Bohemia, where they reigned for only a year before being besieged and forced to flee to Prague, earning them the moniker, the Winter King and Queen.
Elizabeth spent the next four decades living in The Hague campaigning for her lost lands and establishing a royal court that became an artistic and diplomatic hub whose influence extended across Europe.
Dr Nadine Akkerman of Leiden University, a leading authority on the princess, said: “More politically cunning than her grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots, and more belligerent than her godmother, Elizabeth I, she never relinquished the title Queen of Bohemia, even though she spent upwards of 40 years in exile in The Hague after but a year in Prague.”
The Winter Queen is the third character-led blend of international whisky launched by Fusion Whisky.
Company director Graham Langley said: “Our Winter Queen whisky serves to honour this forgotten Scottish princess and to bring greater awareness to her remarkable life and influence.”
cwarrender@thecourier.co.uk