Women make history every single day, and have been doing so for thousands of years.
Well before the modern feminist movements began in the 1800s, history is brimming with
inspiring women whose achievements broke down boundaries and paved the way for more women
to kick ass and do their thing.
To that end, OSP is partnering with The Woman Cards to create a deck of playing cards featuring
13 of the most remarkable women in history.
We’ve got scholars, saints, warriors, and queens from all across time and around the
world.
The artwork is spectacular, and you can get your very own History-Makers Deck via the
link below to the project’s kickstarter.
OSP will be donating our cut of the revenue to the Malala Fund, helping girls around the
world get the best education possible.
So, to celebrate the 13 incredible figures in this deck in rapid-fire fashion, Let’s
do some Women’s History.
We’ll start in Japan in the late 1100s, where rival families fought for military dominance.
Both the Taira and Minamoto clans commanded vast armies of Samurai, but fighting alongside
them were female warriors trained in swordfighting, horse-riding, and archery known as Onna-Musha,
the most famous of which was Tomoe Gozen.
Hailed as “a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god,” Tomoe was
among the most fearsome generals of the war, commanding 300 samurai in battle against the
Taira clan, and, later, against her master’s cousin, the future Shogun.
Bad news for Tomoe, but in centuries following, her valor became legendary.
Ancient India in the Vedic Period was a time when the core scriptures of Indian culture
were debated and codified.
And one contributor was Gargi Vachaknavi.
Herself the daughter of a sage, she was intellectually curious from a young age, and later wrote
hymns for the Rigveda, but she’s best known from a story in the Upanishads, where she
took part in a philosophical debate organized by the local King.
Yajnavalkya challenged his fellow sages on the subjects of Atman and the universe, and
not only was Gargi the only woman present, she was one of few brave enough to argue with
him, and the only one who could debate him to a draw, earning high praise for both her
brilliance and her tenacity.
In 267 AD, the widow of a local king became the most powerful woman in the world.
When Queen Zenobia of Palmyra took over from her assassinated husband, her once-small state
at the edge of Roman Syria was in charge of protecting the entire east of Rome from the
Sassanid Persians.
Despite the enormity of the task, Rome’s peril was Zenobia’s gain, as her rule was
stable, prosperous, and culturally rich, while her soft power over Egypt and Anatolia led
to full annexation in 270 and the creation of a Palmyrene Empire.
But soon, Rome got its act together, reconquering Palmyra and taking Zenobia to Rome as prisoner
where she spent the rest of her life, smug in the knowledge that, however briefly, she
beat Rome at its own game.
The most famous queen of Egypt’s New Kingdom began her reign as merely the regent to her
dead husband’s infant heir, but soon Queen Hatshepsut cited her own royal lineage to
justify proclaiming herself as Pharaoh.
From there, she wasted no time bringing Egypt to new heights.
After launching trade expeditions down the coast of Africa to the land of Punt and reestablishing
links with the Levant, her massive piles of gold found use in hundreds of construction
projects across Egypt, restoring and embellishing existing temples while building brand new
ones too, including the most ornate mortuary temple any pharaoh had yet built.
Although her successors tried to wipe all records of her reign, her accomplishments
were just so massive that they’d speak for themselves no matter what.
Medieval monasteries were often centers of scholarship, but few monks could compete with
the raw genius of the German Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen.
This turbo-polymath was a writer, philosopher, natural scientist, medical scientist, theologian,
and most famously, the most prolific composer of monophonic chant in the entire medieval
period.
Hildegard wrote treatises on whatever she could, and made three full illuminated manuscripts
depicting the divine visions she received throughout her life.
Beyond her immense work in the convent, Hildegard preached about church reform all across Germany.
Little surprise she was later canonized as a Saint.
In the centuries before the Golden age of Athens and the corresponding explosion of
classical Greek literature, the main genre of poetry was “Lyric”.
With an instrument in hand and a tune to sing, poets told stories about whatever they wanted,
and the greatest poet, named Sappho, wanted nothing more than to hang out with all the
pretty people.
Born on the Aegean island of Lesbos, Sappho grew to panhellenic prominence thanks to her
captivating poetry about the visceral experience of love.
Despite her being praised as the “Tenth Muse”, the cruel march of time and the fading
of collective memory left us with tragically little of her work or even the simplest details
of her life.
Still, what we do have is masterful.
In the Golden Age of Islam, the Andalusian city of Cordoba was the capital of a caliphate
and an unparalleled hub of culture.
Of the over 170 women working as scribes in the court of Al-Hakam II, the most remarkable
was his secretary Lubna of Cordoba.
Coming from humble origins as a Spanish slave, Lubna was renowned for her skill in mathematics
and the quality of her poetry, and the Caliph entrusted her with the creation of a library
in his royal palace, the Medina Azahara.
Her library was said to contain hundreds of thousands of manuscripts in Latin, Greek,
and Arabic, many sourced from her own travels across Iberia and the Mediterranean.
So not only was she brilliant, she had the coolest job ever.
In the early 1800s, the most fearsome pirate in the world was Ching Shih.
After a humble upbringing in the south of China, she married a pirate captain in 1801,
but when he died in a storm in 1807, she became the de facto ruler of his pirate confederation
the Red Flag Fleet, commanding 400 ships and tens of thousands of pirates.
Ching Shih plundered the British, Portuguese, and Qing Dynasty’s navies, fighting on the
open seas and breaking through fierce blockades.
Even when surrendering to the dynasty in 1810, she had enough negotiating leverage to keep
her wealth, her ships, and her freedom for an astoundingly cushy three decade retirement.
As the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos, princess Anna Komnene had access
to the very best education the Eastern Roman Empire could provide.
Even so, she broadened her curriculum by sneaking copies of the Iliad and Odyssey out of the
Royal Library of Constantinople.
With training fit for an empress, she administered a hospital in the city and attended her father’s
royal court, getting an up-close view of the politics of the First Crusade.
However, a late-coming younger brother took her place as heir, and he banished her to
a monastery for trying to supplant him.
Begrudgingly trading her crown for a quill, she spent her last decades composing The Alexiad,
a masterful epic poem recounting her father’s life and reign.
Just two decades after their arrival into Britannia, Queen Boudica of the Iceni tribe
had good reason to hate the Roman Empire.
After her husband died in 60 AD, leaving half his kingdom to Boudica and their two daughters,
Rome ignored his will entirely and confiscated the kingdom, brutalizing Boudica and her daughters
in the process.
In response to Rome’s abject depravity, Boudica lead over one hundred thousand warriors
in open revolt, burning Roman cities and killing their citizens as retribution.
Although the governor of Britannia defeated her in battle, suppressed her revolt, and
established full Roman authority in the province, Boudica has remained a symbol of revolutionary
spirit ever since.
After the death of her brother the King in 1891, Queen Lili’uokalani came to power
at a perilous time for the Kingdom of Hawaii.
The last king was forced to sign away the monarchy’s power to a league of white business
tycoons who only wanted Hawai’i for its crops.
And when the new queen set about restoring royal authority, these same white islanders
threw a coup, deposed the monarchy, and invited the United States to annex Hawai’i.
Though decades of legal challenges failed to give Lili’uokalani any part of her kingdom
back, she left a cultural legacy for her people via her earlier composition of the famous
song Aloha Oe and the defiantly-titled autobiography Hawai’i’s Story by Hawai’i’s Queen.
After marrying into the French Royal family in 1137, Eleanor of Aquitaine had a subpar
experience as queen, so she called a do-over and tried it again in England.
Having suffered through the failed Second Crusade and 15 years of heir-less marriage
to King Louis, Eleanor divorced him and married the soon-to-be King Henry II, combining their
territories to form the Angevin Empire.
She and Henry weren’t a great match either, as she started a revolt and he put her in
prison, but after she outlived him, Eleanor happily served as regent for her beloved son
Richard the Lionheart.
And that is how you play the long game — forget the husbands, just Be Queen!
And of course, we end with Cleopatra.
Raised in the cultural capital of the Greek-speaking world, she had the Library of Alexandria on
tap and knew all the classics we’d expect, but she differed from her royal Macedonian
predecessors by actually learning Egyptian and several other languages.
All these smarts and charisma went to good strategic use, as Cleopatra leveraged wider
Mediterranean conflicts for her own advantage and the good of her kingdom, resulting in
a prosperity Egypt hadn’t seen for centuries.
Unfortunately, her second husband was not a match for her brilliance, so she was outplayed
by Rome, losing her kingdom and her life, but not her glory.
And with that, our 13-stop whirlwind survey of Women’s History is complete.
Despite the vast differences in the times, places, and professions of these figures,
each found their own way to pursue excellence; sometimes uninhibited, sometimes working around
constraints, sometimes deliberately thwarted by outside circumstance.
But one way or another, the legacies of their genius and talent endured, influencing the
world around them and inspiring subsequent generations of women and men to follow their
lead.
My hope is that at least one of the amazing women in the HistoryMakers deck resonates
with you, so please consider getting a deck today.
The Kickstarter is live for the month of March, so don’t miss out — Link in the description.
Thank you for watching!
Working with the team at The Woman Cards to bring you this deck has been absolutely wonderful.
Having made videos on some of the women in this deck already, it was an extra-special
treat to see them come to life with these stunning artworks.
So thank you to The Woman Cards, and thank You our lovely viewers for supporting this
project.