Daisy von Pless: The English princess you’ve never heard of

Książ is perhaps the finest castle you’ve never heard of. Set atop a slab of rock, the fortress rises over the surrounding woodland in south-west Poland like a galleon cast adrift on an emerald-green ocean. The Silesian duke Bolko I the Strict built it in the 13th Century, but each subsequent owner left their mark, embellishing it in a rich Rubik’s Cube of styles: Gothic, Baroque and Rococo flourishes give way to stone turrets, while salmon-coloured walls support patina-clad cupolas high above the gorge of the Pełcznica river below.

Yet despite its location in the heart of Central Europe, this “impossibly photogenic” castle has become inexorably linked with an English aristocrat named Mary Theresa Olivia Cornwallis-West (better known as Daisy von Pless). Lauded by Victorian gossip magazines as one of Europe’s most beautiful women, she transformed the region with her visionary social reforms, and even tried to stop World War One. Now, 80 years after her death, this once-forgotten princess is being remembered anew.

“Her memory was erased by the communists,” explained Matt Mykytyszyn, founder of the Daisy von Pless Foundation that aims to promote her legacy. “However, through a combination of factors, I think we can call her ‘the Silesian Princess Diana’.”