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Ancient Queens, mostly Queens Regnant, made by Midjourney, in the style of Leonardo da Vinci. I'm pretty sure Midjourney got many of them horribly wrong. 1 Kubaba of Sumeria 2 Hatshepsut of Egypt 3 Nefertiti of Egypt 4 Elissa "Dido" of Carthage 5 Queen of Sheba 6 Semiramis of Assyria 7 Salomé Alexandra, Queen of Judea 8 Cleopatra VII of Egypt 9 Boudica of the Icenia, Britain 10 Zenobia of Palmyra 11 Medb of Connacht, Ireland 12 Empress Theodora

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Interesting note: "Only three women reigned in their own right between 476 and 1100, all in Byzantium, where there was much less emphasis on the military role. Irene (797–802), initially acted as regent for her son, Constantine VI (780–797), but usurped the crown, reigning for 5 years before her deposition.

In 1028 Zoe succeeded her father, Constantine VIII. She did not rule in isolation, but successively elevated three husbands and an adopted son to be her co-emperors.

5 From 1042 she was forced to recognise her sister, Theodora, as co-empress, and Theodora reigned briefly alone in 1055–1056"

"In medieval times a woman could not bear arms; therefore a woman could not take on a role which, even symbolically, required her to carry arms. In medieval times a woman who took on an overt military role was an aberration;"

"Stephen’s biographer, Donald Matthew, places the designation of Matilda in its immediate historical context.

Designating Matilda was a short-term measure designed to secure her a powerful husband who could defend England against the William Clito.

Huneycutt, considering contemporary writings in detail, concludes that Matilda’s supporters saw her primarily as the conduit through which hereditary right passed from Henry to his grandson, and that she deprived herself of considerable support by seeking the throne for herself.

Matthew suggests that her failure in 1141 was in no small measure due to her insisting ‘on her right to exercise power in person’ and inability because of her sex to act as a military commander, along with her unfortunate character traits of arrogance and disregard of advice."

Lyon, A. (2006). The place of women in European royal succession in the middle ages.

Those Women You Mention

Irene of Athens

This is all under the context of women not being seen as fit for rule--by the Pope, by councillors (men), by her son, etc->

About 6 weeks after her husband the emperor, Leo IV, death Irene was also faced a conspiracy to raise Caesar Nikephoros, (her husband's half-brother) to the throne. Irene had Bardas (a former strategos, Gregory (the logothete of the dromos), and a count of the excubitors) scourged, tonsured, and banished and replaced all of them with those she trusted or were who were loyal to her. Then she made Nikephoros and his other priests so they would be forever disqualified them from ruling. Immediately afterward, Irene returned the crown her husband had removed in a procession(Lynda Garland--1999--"Irene [769–802], Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527–1204). While her son was ruler, it was clear that she and she served as his regent, it's also clear that she acted more like his co-ruler than a regent. And when he tried to move away from her and establish himself (Brittanica):

As Constantine approached maturity, he grew resentful of his mother’s controlling influence in the empire. An attempt to seize power was crushed by the Empress, who demanded that the military oath of fidelity should recognize her as senior ruler. Anger at the demand prompted the themes (administrative divisions) of Asia Minor to open resistance in 790. Constantine VI was proclaimed sole ruler and his mother banished from court. In January 792, however, Irene was allowed to return to court and even to resume her position as co-ruler. By skillful intrigues with the bishops and courtiers she organized a conspiracy against Constantine, who was arrested and blinded at his mother’s orders (797).

She's also attributed to ending the First Iconoclasm.

*EDIT* Finally, she eventually became an "empress regnant" (a ruling empress with her own autonomous powers), or just "emperor", for 5 or so years after she had her son-emporer blinded. Until some conspirators ousted her into exile. *END OF EDIT*

Zoë Porphyrogenita

She herself was never the only empress regnant/Emporer and co-ruled with different people at a time. One of them was her former lover, Constantine (IX) Monomachos, who ruled from 1042 to 1055 at her own invitation/actions, and they married, but he also brought his mistress Maria Skleraina.

This woman, he eventually married after Zoë's death and was given the honorific of Sebastē "to render the Roman imperial title of Augustus", but before then, Constantine's clear favoritism for Maria lead to an uprising by Constantinople's citizens in 1044 that almost lead to his own harm while he lead a religious procession (John Julius Norwich--1993)--Byzantium: The Apogee).

She and her other co-ruling relative had to appear in front of the crowds so reassure them that they were safe from an assassination plot, so I think we can say they (or just her) were pretty popular.

Matilda (famous activity 1100-1150s)

All sorts of succession traditions existed simultaneously in Europe and in England. In France, it was traditional for the king to crown his successor while he was still alive, but in England a noble usually do was to identify a pool of legitimate heirs and left them to leaving them to challenge each other and dispute the inheritance after his death. (Fiona Tolhurst--2013--Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship). And in some parts of France, male primogeniture was becoming more popular.

Matilda was the daughter of Henry I of England. Matilda's younger and only full brother, William Adelin, died in the White Ship disaster. After her Holy Roman Emporer husband's death-- Henry V-- her father Henry I called her back to the Normandy court to marry Geoffrey of Anjou to an alliance so he could defend his southern borders. Despite his own second marriage to Adeliza of Louvain, Henry I had no further legitimate children and before he died, he made Matilda his heir, making the court swear an oath of loyalty to her and her successors. This decision wasn't favored in court, and later those Anglo-Norman barons would rise up against her and her husband.

Matilda's cousin Stephen of Blois (the same Stephen you talk about) took the throne (he was not and never considered heir) with some barons' and the English Church's support. This civil war is called the Anarchy, which also had several lords chose to support neither side. Stephen had to accrue

With her half-brother and uncle's armies, she captured Stephen and her coronation at Westminster failed when opposing London crowds interrupted it. So she was never made a Queen Regnant of England and instead was referred to as the "Lady of the English". Robert of Gloucester (the brother) was captured in 1141, and Matilda agreed to exchange him for Stephen. Her husband eventually won his war of conquest for Normandy, and she became a sort of resting Queen regent or at least administrative advisor for her son, Henry II, King of England.

Within this context, Matilda and her rise to power itself is obviously the inspiration for Rhaenyra, and all those women you mention, their stories clearly just emphasize how the misogyny removed clearly women regardless of their capability, support from the masses/nobles, or closer blood ties to eh previous ruler or official claims to the previous ruler. And when you bring up Donald Matthew and Stephen, isn't it very clear how Stephen--Matilda/Gregory/Henry II's political opponent--had to buttress himself by using the already sexist precedents against Matilda? So, of course, he'd use her sex and the historical sexism against her, just as Alicent and the greens did. And again, apparently, many lords refused to support him or Matilda.

Finally, she had plenty of support (husband, uncle, brother's forces, and those Anglo-Norman lords who did support her), but was ousted by crowds, but why were these crowds against her? Of course partially because of what you mention "a woman could not take on a role which, even symbolically, required her to carry arms. In medieval times a woman who took on an overt military role was an aberration", AND because some of the captured Stephen and his wife Queen Matilda's supporters were around and inside London (Marjorie Chibnall--1991--The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English). Their belief she wouldn't be able to handle it (b/c she was a woman) or protect the city, etc. lead to the hostility against her coronation.

So it's pretty narrow-minded and sexist for Donald Matthew to adopt the feudalist patriarchal interpretation of general women-rule and say "her failure in 1141 was in no small measure due to her insisting ‘on her right to exercise power in person’ and inability because of her sex to act as a military commander, along with her unfortunate character traits of arrogance and disregard of advice.", when like Rhaenyra, she is really just pressing for a claim that some precedents and her own father's word assured her. Plus, once again, several precedents and succession traditions existed in the EU and England simultaneously that preceded and existed with the burgeoning male primogeniture.

And before one tries to say "France and England are different!", well this asker just gave me women from two very different time periods and countries to bring up a particular point about MEDIEVAL societies and their views about female rulers:

Women I Would Like to Mention

Urraca de León (reigned 1109 – 1126)

The first ever autonomously reigning woman in European history.

Despite being called "the Reckless", apparently she was very pragmatic and was contemporaneously considered "prudent, modest, and with the good sense" in the Historia Compostelana (an anonymously-written historical document account by a writer in the circle of Diego Gelmírez, a bishop).

According to Bernard F. Reilly, writes in his 1982 The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126 (wiki):

the Historia Compostelana also attributes her "failings" to her gender, "the weakness and changeability of women, feminine perversity, and calls her a Jezebel" for her liaisons with her leading magnates, with at least one relationship producing an illegitimate son. These observations were hardly neutral or dispassionate, according to Reilly, who wrote: "[T]here is no question that the queen is in control, perhaps all too much in control, of events.""

Urraca claimed the title "Empress of All Spain" after she became Queen of León, Castile, and Galicia. Her father was Alfonso VI of León and Castile and her mother was Constance of Burgundy, Alfonso's second wife. Zaida of Seville (Bernard F. Reilly--1995--The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain) became his third, and together they had Sancho Alfónsez, their illegitimate but still-named-heir son since Zaida had was still Alfonso's concubine then and not his legal wife. Urraca and her first husband and "Count of Galicia", Raymond of Burgundy's, influence and power diminished further when Alfonso granted the Portugal "county" to his illegitimate daughter Theresa and her husband Henry of Burgundy.

Sancho died while Alfonso was still alive in the Battle of Uclés of 1108. Urraca had always been Alfonso's only legitimate child and had a better claim than her illegitimate sister (at least in this comparatively topsy-turvy world). Before he died, through several documents, Alfonso showed that he only wanted his son, despite his illegitimacy, to rule after him, but many clerics of the Church opposed the rise of an illegitimate man over legitimate children (Ángel G. Gordo Molina & Melo Carrasco, Diego Melo Carrasco--2018--La reina Urraca I (1109–1126): La práctica del concepto de imperium legionese en la primera mitad del siglo XII). The same sources have her coronated successfully as Alfonso's heir/Queen regnant in a gathering of "almost all nobles and counts of Spain" shortly before her father died. Despite her father considering her son by Raymund, Alfonso Raimúndez, hsi heir upon her remarriage, as Raymund had since died (Maria del Carmen Pallares & Portela, Ermelindo Portela--2006--La Reina Urraca). (The same source also tells us that she took a Castilian noble, Gómez González, as her lover not long during her husband's later life/after her husband's death and before her coronation.)

Earliest documents a day after her father's funeral, referred to her as "queen of whole Spain" and various powerful Leonese, Castilian, and Galician aristocrats and 12 bishops witnessed said documents, which show that the realm's elite acknowledged her as a lawful monarch. (Molina & Melo Carrasco). However, she was also forced to marry her cousin Alfonso I of Aragon and Navarre--different sources disagree on who exactly forced her-- and went under his "tutelage". One contemporary source reports that it was the Leonese nobles who saw her as unable to defend the realm against the Almoravids and were generally still unconvinced that a woman could rule to their own satisfaction and interests (Pallares & Portela). The usually accepted and alternative account written by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada says that her father started the negotiated her second marriage to prevent Urraca from marrying Gómez González. In the marriage document, Urraca stipulated that Alfonso should respect her "like a good husband his good wife" and he could not request an annulment using either their familial relationship or excommunication. The same document confirmed the right of Urraca's son by her first marriage to inherit León in case the couple died without kids (Pallares & Portela).

But Alfonso I was a reputed misogynist who hated her son and publicly shamed her and hit her in public. In a letter of grant to the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Siloss, we find the earliest evidence of her desire to get rid of her husband's authority and tutelage, while styling herself "queen of whole Spain and daughter of Emperor Alfonso". And several nobles of other regions protested her marriage with her cousin/abusive husband anyway (not bc of the abuse but in jealousy or suspicion of her husband's power over & through her), so she and her first son came out as the most desirable persons to rule by the time she officially left her husband in 1110, and in Galicia, there were several rebellions and two main factions formed: one headed by Archbishop Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (who defending Alfonso Raimúndez as Urraca's successor) and the other led by Count Pedro Fróilaz de Traba (the tutor of the young prince and wanting Galicia's independence) (Michael E. Gerli --2013--Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia).

Finally, there were open wars between the Leonese-Castilians (same side) and the Aragonese. Gómez González was killed and replaced in both roles of political supporter and lover by another noble, Pedro González de Lara, who fathered at least two more illegitimate children by her. In 1112, there was a truce was brokered between Urraca and Alfonso with their marriage annulled by virtue of their kinship, but Alfonso kept trying to accrue power from her and held control over Castile, where a lot of her support. Similar to Rhaenyra's situation and as Reilly states (wiki):

"the measure of success for Urraca’s rule was her ability to restore and protect the base of her claim/inheritance and transmit that inheritance in full to her own heir (Jacaerys to Rhaenyra) AND the circumstance of her gender added a distinctive role-reversal, since he assured her own right to rule by being her first legitimate male child.

And like Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, Urraca also had to contend with the her sister Theresa and her husband's machinations for the throne and their own son.

Margaret I (of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from 1387 to 1412)

She was queen consort of Norway from 1363 to 1380 and of Sweden from 1363 to 1364 through her marriage to Haakon VI of Norway (who controlled both). After her father, Valdemar IV of Denmark, died in 1375, she arranged an election for her infant son Olaf as king of Denmark. Meanwhile her older sister Ingeborg's husband the Duke Henry III of Mecklenburg pressed for their son Albert. Margaret thus became the queen regent de facto, but when Olaf died in 1387 at 17 she became so semi-de jure, and had already accrued respect and favor from many for several different diplomatic and otherwise actions.

She was called "King Breechless". One of several nicknames her rival Albert of Mecklenburg invented (Margareta Skantze's Drottning Margaretas historia) but was also known by her subjects as "Lady King", which became widely used in recognition of her capabilities. Knut Gjerset calls her "the first great ruling queen in European history."

For brevity's sake, the wiki:

Sweden, where mutinous nobles, led by Birger [...] were already in arms against their unpopular King Albert [the one that called her "breechless", or "pantless"]. Several of the powerful nobles wrote to Margaret that if she would help rid Sweden of Albert, she would become their regent. She quickly gathered an army and invaded Sweden. At a conference held at Dalaborg Castle in March 1388, the Swedes were compelled to accept all of Margaret's conditions, elected her "Sovereign Lady and Ruler", and committed themselves to accept any king she chose to appoint. Albert [...] returned from Mecklenburg with an army of mercenaries. On 24 February 1389, the decisive battle took place at either Aasle or Falan near Falköping. General Henrik Parow, the Mecklenburger commander of Margaret's forces, was killed in battle, but he managed to win it for her. Margaret was now the omnipotent mistress of three kingdoms.

Albert--the one who nicknamed her "pantless"--had also been previously elected by Swedish nobles following the 1364 deposition of Margaret's husband King Haakon from the Swedish throne and elected him as king of Sweden by virtue of him being the great-nephew of Magnus IV through his mother. He became very unpopular, though.

So she became de facto queen regnant of all three Scandanavian regions while also in 1389 she proclaimed her great-nephew, Eric of Pomerania the king of Norway, having adopted him and his sister Catherine before he came of age (to secure herself). Margaret again assumed the regency during his minority. And simultaneously, many Swedish lords expressed a willingness to to independent rule even without a male heir (Richard White--2010--These Stones Bear Witness).

Wu Zetian (reigned 690 to 705)

Though not European, similarly took complete control as a sort of "Empress Regnant" in a patriarchal imperial society. She first was Empress consort to Emperor Gaozong, then ruled de facto through other people: Emperors Zhongzong and Ruizong before establishing her own Wu Zhou dynasty, which was and still regarded as a true and legitimate dynasty. Even while her husband was alive and she was still one of his concubines, she displayed more decisiveness and advised him. Despite the coup that pushed her out, she is attributed to one of the best and most peaceful reigns of Chinese imperial history. Really, there is so much about her, and this post is getting too long, so I leave it to others to research her.

Conclusions

We get many examples of women ruling in contest with them being considered unfit or fit according to mainly other men/rival sisters and female relatives' own interests and thus several instances of them attempting to discredit them. Even forcing them into marriages. And from the women's POV, much of the legitimacy of their rule came from their ties to men: father, son, husband even (the two Catherine and the Elizabeth of Russia). While these women obviously displayed political acumen, they either also had to "prove" to have that before ruling with not-as-much impediment OR they were forced into positions of power and marriages for their fathers' benefit.

So you get a complex of what makes a woman "right" to rule in Europe and really any feudalist/imperial/absolutist territory because the issue has always centered around her being a woman and being one at the right place at the right time more than her just getting power autonomously because she is as much an heir as a male.

It's important to consider the tone AND interests of the historical writers--both contemporary and modern--and to have several to compare.

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Me and Queen Puabi. We go waaay back.

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Ancient Greek History: from the 4th to the 1st century BC

After more than a month, results came, and I aced this one. I am so glad I did, because I also submitted an assignment on Women in Hellenistic Monarchy - albeit 2 minutes before the deadline - and did tons of research.

I am a true perfectionist procrastinator, and I am really proud of my assignment. Word of advice: start your reading early, and your research earlier. Half my bibliography was gathered right at the start of quarantine, mostly through Google Scholar.

Contact me if you want resources on the subject!!

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