Frederick V, Elector Palatine

Frederick V, Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia (August 16, 1596 – November 29, 1632) was son and heir of Frederick IV, Elector Palatine and of Louise Juliana von Orange-Nassau. Louise Juliana was the daughter of William I of Orange and Charlotte de Bourbon-Monpensier.

Frederick V succeeded his father as Elector of the Rhine Palatinate in the Holy Roman Empire in 1610. In 1619 the Protestant estates of Bohemia rebelled against the Roman Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and offered the crown of Bohemia to Frederick as an influential member of the Evangelical Union, an organisation founded by his father for the protection of Protestants in the Empire.

After Frederick accepted the crown his allies in the Union abandoned him, and his brief reign as the King of Bohemia ended with his defeat at the Battle of White Mountain (8 November 1620) - only two months after his coronation - and earned him the derisive nickname of 'the Winter King'. After this battle Imperial forces invaded Frederick's Palatinate lands and he had flee to Holland in 1622. An Imperial edict formally deprived him of the Palatinate in 1623. He lived the rest of his life in exile with his wife and family at the Hague.

He married Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James I of England and of Anne of Denmark and had three surviving sons and one daughter:

• Karl Ludwig von Simmern(1610-1680), or Charles I Louis, Elector Count Palatine , who gained a new title of Elector Count Palatine of the Rhine, Archtreasurer of the Empire, as well as most of his father's lands as part of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 at the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War.
• Rupert von Simmern (1619-1682), otherwise known as Prince Rupert of the Rhine, of English Civil War fame.
• Maurice von Simmern (1620-1652) who also served in the English Civil War.
• Sophia of Hanover (1630-1714), who married Ernst August, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, afterwards elector of Hanover, and became the mother of George I of Great Britain.