History has seen a fair number of queens come and go — some of them were powerful, some were benign,
and some were a total disaster. Occasionally, however, a queen took the throne who was fierce,
dangerous, and utterly ruthless. These are the queens that no one wanted to mess with.
Boadicea ruled the Iceni tribe of East Anglia with her husband Prasutagus in the first century A.D.
When the invading Romans took over southern England in A.D. 43, many of the other Brittonic
kings submitted. Prasutagus, on the other hand, became a reluctant ally to the Romans, and his
territory remained unmolested. When he died in A.D. 60, however, his kingdom was taken by force.
Boudicea was captured and flogged in public, while her daughters were violated by Roman soldiers.
Boudicea retaliated. She raised an army and led a coalition of Iceni and other
tribes in a war against the Romans. They attacked the city now known as Colchester,
killed everybody they could find and burned it down — and then, just for good measure,
they did the same to London and St. Albans. Eventually, the Romans mustered themselves
enough to launch a counterattack, and Boudicea was killed in the ensuing battle.
The only woman who ever reigned as an emperor of China, Wu Zetian held the
Tang dynasty together for over 50 years. That wasn't exactly an easy task, however,
and in order to do so she had several rival branches of the Tang dynasty killed.
Long before she took the throne, Wu Zetian had been a concubine of two different emperors.
After giving birth to several sons, she denounced the Emperor Gaozong's wife for
killing her daughter and so became empress herself. When her husband later suffered
a stroke, Wu Zetian created a secret police to keep herself informed, and through them,
she imprisoned or killed pretty much everybody who stood in her way. Then, when Gaozong died
in 683 A.D., she navigated her youngest son into power so that she could rule through him.
In 690, Wu Zetian's son gave up his office, and she became emperor in her own right.
And although she had fought fiercely for the throne, once Wu Zetian had it,
her rule was actually pretty calm, and even enlightened in some ways. She did her best
to improve the status of women and began the practice of scholars running the government,
appointing them to posts previously held by military personnel. Wu Zetian was eventually
convinced to give up her crown to another one of her sons. She died in 705 at the age of 81.
You might know Isabella of France as the love interest in the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart.
"Why do you help me?"
"Because of the way you are looking at me now."
Truth is, though, she was far more than that totally inaccurate movie version. Isabella was
married to Edward II of England in 1308. The two had four children together, but their marriage
didn't last long, as Edward had a habit of forming deep — and likely sexual — relationships with his
male favorites. In 1322, that favorite was Hugh Despenser the Younger, whom Isabella detested
— and it didn't help that Despenser had begun to turn the king against her. Then, in 1324, Edward
went to war against Isabella's brother, Charles IV of France, and even confiscated her lands.
Now living in France, Isabella negotiated a peace with Charles on Edward's order.
Later, he sent their son, Edward, to France to swear fealty to Charles,
meaning Isabella now had her son under her protection.
In 1326, Isabella invaded England, and Edward's support crumbled almost immediately.
Hugh Despenser was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and Edward himself
was imprisoned and later killed. Though her newly-crowned son had a regency council,
Isabella and her supposed lover Roger Mortimer ruled England in all but name for several years.
Unfortunately for her, Isabella soon found herself on the wrong side of the crown yet again;
Edward III launched a coup against his mother in 1330, and Isabella was forced to give up
most of her income and lands. She was allowed to settle down as a dowager queen and died in 1358.
Okay, so there's some good and there's some bad with Isabella of Castile. On the one hand,
by marrying Ferdinand of Aragon, she helped consolidate their two kingdoms,
and the two eventually became the first de facto rulers of a unified Spain.
On the other hand, their policies helped kick off the Spanish Inquisition — which was
great news for British comedians in the 70s, but bad news for basically everybody else.
"I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition."
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Isabella was also unpredictable from the start,
as she had married Ferdinand without permission of her half-brother Henry IV, the king of Castile.
When Henry died, a war of succession broke out. Eventually, both Isabella and Ferdinand managed to
take the thrones of their respective kingdoms, and the two then fought to unify Spain under
their rule. In the process, they also conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Spain.
But you can't really get around the whole Inquisition thing. Isabella and Ferdinand kicked
off that whole mess in 1478, and among countless other consequences, it led to the expulsion of
countless Jews from Spain in 1492, which had devastating economic consequences for the country.
In her efforts to return England to Catholicism, Mary I burned approximately 300 Protestants
at the stake. Mary's father, Henry VIII had split his kingdom from the Catholic
Church in order to annul his marriage with her mother, Catherine of Aragon.
After the annulment, Mary lost her place in the line of succession as well as her title
of princess. As such, Mary wasn't all that keen on England's new-found Protestant faith.
When she took the throne in the mid-16th century, Mary I revived the country's heresy laws in order
to justify her burning of Protestants at the stake. Among the men she had killed was Thomas
Cranmer, Henry VIII's archbishop of Canterbury, but many commoners were executed in the same way,
too. Others died in prison, while hundreds more fled to Geneva and Germany for protection.
In 1554, Mary married Phillip II of Spain, which ended up being about as unpopular
a move as she could possibly have made. That's because Spain was a Catholic country,
while England's new alliance also dragged them into a long and ultimately
unsuccessful war against France. Mary died in 1558, just five years into her reign.
Catherine de' Medici was a member of the legendary political dynasty known
as the House of Medici. Her father had been ruler of Florence for three years,
while her mother was a member of a noble French family.
Sadly, within a month of Catherine's birth, both of her parents were dead by way of illness.
She was married to the son of King Francis I of France, Henry II,
in 1533, and became the dauphine in 1536, after Henry's older brother caught a fever and died.
After Henry's death in 1559, Catherine proceeded to rule France for three of her young sons:
Francis II, who died a year into his reign; Charles IX, who died at age 23; and Henry III,
who eventually came into his own and took over as king. Perhaps the
most notable event of Catherine's tenure was the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572,
in which she instigated the killing of thousands of Protestant Huguenots.
Even into old age, Catherine continued to provide her sons with guidance,
and she became known in particular for her generous patronage of the arts.
She died a dowager queen in 1589, at the age of 69.
Elizabeth I outlived several other contenders for the English
throne — and she eventually proved more successful and ruthless than any of them.
Among her many accomplishments during her 45-year reign was the consolidation
of the Church of England in a country still recovering from decades of religious strife.
In fact, for much of her life, Elizabeth didn't really care whether her subjects
were Catholic or Protestant. After a number of conspiracies against her life began to emerge,
however, she passed strict laws against Catholicism. She also had her first cousin,
Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned and executed for supposedly plotting to take the throne.
Famously, Elizabeth also made the decision not to marry. This meant that no foreign bridegroom could
swoop in and control England for his own purposes, but it also meant that England also didn't have a
prince consort, as most people would have thought natural. The so-called Virgin Queen died in 1603,
and was succeeded by James I, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
In 1624, Ana Nzinga became ruler of Ndongo, a realm beset by half a dozen other African
kingdoms as well as Portuguese slave traders. At the time, Ndongo was situated east of
present-day Angola and was mainly made up of Mbundu peoples. In order to make sure her
people wouldn't be captured as slaves, Nzinga allied with Portugal, even allowing herself
to be baptized to finalize the alliance. What this did mean, though, is that Ndongo
successfully garnered some much-needed support in its fights with the other African states.
Unfortunately, Portugal betrayed Nzinga two years later. She and her people
migrated further west to Matamba, where they formed a new government.
Ndongo, meanwhile, was taken over by the Portuguese. Despite a brief alliance with
the Netherlands and the odd rebellion, Nzinga failed to ever retake her homeland.
Undeterred, Nzinga put all her efforts toward improving Matamba as a trading state. She was
incredibly successful, too, and by the time of her death in 1663, Matamba was a thriving economic
power. The kingdom subsequently resisted colonial rule right up until the late 19th century.
Born Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine the Great led a coup against her husband, Peter III,
in 1762, and ruled as empress of Russia for decades afterward.
Her marriage with Peter was an unhappy one indeed, with both parties engaging in their
own affairs — and some clues suggesting that none of Catherine's children were actually Peter's.
Her coup against her husband came less than a year into his reign,
and resulted in Peter's abdication. He died soon after under mysterious circumstances.
Catherine further proved her mettle by crushing an attempted rebellion and winning a war with Turkey.
Though she had previously considered serfdom unconscionable, after the rebellion, she focused
on strengthening it, essentially keeping the Russian crown and aristocracy afloat. Catherine's
machinations continued right up to her death, too: her relationship with her son, Paul, left a lot to
be desired, and she is said to have considered replacing him with her grandson, Alexander.
Before this could come to pass, however, Catherine died of a stroke. She at least got the last laugh,
though, as when Paul was assassinated five years later, Alexander stepped up and became tsar.
Ranavalona I of Madagascar came to power after her husband's death in 1828, and began her
reign by killing basically anyone else who could threaten her rule. But that's not all: just for
good measure, she also forced those she suspected of disobedience to undergo a test which involved
eating and vomiting pieces of chicken skin laced with poison. If they were able to regurgitate all
three pieces, they were declared innocent. Most died. Not a great start, all things considered.
During Ranavalona's reign, much of the progress earlier kings had made was rolled back,
including trade agreements with nations such as Great Britain.
The practice of putting the poor to work to settle their unpaid taxes, essentially
creating a caste of indentured servants, also increased during Ranavalona's reign.
Ranavalona forbade Christianity, too, and those Christians who didn't leave were persecuted and
tortured. All in all, Madagascar's population was reduced by half during the 33 years she
ruled the country. Eventually, her son, Radama II, attempted a coup against her, which failed.
Ranavalona died in 1861, though — and Radama took the throne anyway.
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