Queens and empresses have shaped history through ambition, courage, political power, personal tragedy, and some surprisingly unusual decisions. These 30 stories reveal more remarkable moments from the lives of royal women across different eras and empires.
Marie’s Final Reinterment
1. Dowager Empress Marie, the mother of the last Russian Tsar, was transferred from Denmark to St. Petersberg in 2006, 77 years after her death. At the reinterment ceremony, crowding around the coffin caused a young danish diplomat to fall into the grave.
2. Empress Irene of the Byzantine Empire, among other things, became empress by winning a beauty contest, became the first empress to rule in her own right in Byzantine History after her husband died, and blinded her own son in order to keep power.
3. A Russian queen named Olga buried Nobles alive, burned the royalty, killed everyone at her husband’s funeral, and set their remaining town on fire with birds, because they killed her king.
4. Lady Jane Grey, also known as England’s Forgotten Queen, was only the Queen of England for 9 days in 1553. She rose to the throne only because Edward VI wanted to keep a Protestant as the sovereign of England. She was then removed from power and executed the following year.
5. Velu Nachiyar was the first queen to fight against the British colonial power in India. After her husband was killed by British soldiers, she gathered an army and drove back the British in 1780. She is one of the few rulers who won back her kingdom and ruled it for 10 more years.
6. Sibylla, the Queen of Jerusalem agreed to annul her marriage to Guy de Lusignan in order to satisfy the High Court, on the condition that after her coronation she would have free rein to choose her next husband. Once she was crowned queen, Sibylla immediately declared that she had chosen Guy as her husband.
7. Queen Isabella of France, frustrated, humiliated, and weary of her husband, fled England, deceived him into sending their son, invaded England with her lover, who was her husband’s enemy and a fugitive, and defeated him.
8. Isabel Ingram (Right from image) was an American tutor to Wanrong, the Empress Consort of Puyi, the Last Emperor of China. Starting at age 20, she lived in the Forbidden City, where she taught Wanrong the speech, modes, and manners of the West. The two also tried to resemble each other and exchanged clothes.
9. Queen Anne of England was pregnant 17 times. The first time was at age 18, and the last was at age 34. She either miscarried or gave birth to stillborn babies. One child died before reaching a year, another at a year and a half, and the oldest died at age 11 in 1700.
10. In the 1700s, Queen Caroline of Great Britain had smallpox inoculation tested on six prisoners in exchange for commuting their death sentences. After this worked, she inoculated her own children, making the process popular.
Queen Breaks Veil Tradition
11. Iran’s Queen Tadj ol-Molouk played a major role in ending the veil in Iran during her husband’s reign. She was the first Iranian Queen to appear in public when she went to a graduation ceremony in modern clothes with her two daughters, without veils.
12. Hatshepsut was the most successful female pharaoh of ancient Egypt. However, after her death, her successor destroyed her statues in order to wipe out her memory.
13. In 1787, French queen Marie Antoinette was offered a boy from Senegal as a servant, but instead of accepting him in that role, she adopted him as her son and baptized him as Jean. During the revolution, Jean was cut off from the royal family and left by revolutionaries to die on the streets at the age of 10.
14. Wu Zetian is the only reigning Empress of China who was the wife of two different emperors. She later usurped the throne and ruled through the brutal use of murder, betrayal, and secret police forces.
15. Empress Dowager Lüi of the Han Dynasty tortured one of her husband’s concubines by cutting off her hands and feet, putting out her eyes, deafening her, and forcing her to live in a pigpen sty.
16. China’s Empress Longyu agreed to sign the abdication for the six-year-old Emperor if they were allowed to keep their titles and receive 4,000,000 silver yuan each year. The Qing dynasty ended, and she died only a few months later.
17. Queen Soraya Tarzi of Afghanistan worked intensely to advance women’s rights in the 1920’s. She also served as Afghanistan’s minister of education and was the first Muslim consort to appear in public with her husband. In 1929, her husband was deposed, and all their reforms were undone.
18. Elizabeth of Russia had very little education, nobody wanted to marry her because her mother was a peasant, and her fiancé was murdered. Even so, after becoming Empress of Russia, she built the University of Moscow and the Winter Palace, and she would pay the dowry of future brides.
19. Queen Teuta of Illyria was a warrior queen who commanded a fleet of ruthless pirates, led armies and navies that captured cities and islands along the Adriatic coast, and forcefully opposed the Roman Republic by declaring piracy to be a legitimate business and killing their diplomatic envoys.
20. Queen Elizabeth II once took a walk near her Balmoral estate with one of her protection officers and met some American tourists who did not recognize her. They asked if she had ever met the Queen, and she replied, “No”, then pointed to her officer and said, “he has”. They did not connect the dots.
Mary Seeks England’s Refuge
21. Mary, Queen of Scots, who was suspected of murdering her husband, fled to England for help. Her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, who was threatened by Mary’s claim to her throne, kept her imprisoned for 19 years and then beheaded her. Because Elizabeth had no children, Mary’s son ironically became the first king over England, Scotland, and Ireland.
22. The 17th century Swedish Queen Christina unexpectedly gave up her throne. Extremely intelligent and devoted to the arts, she nearly bankrupted Sweden through her extravagance. Speculators suggest her abdication came from her tendency toward “men’s pursuits,” including wearing men’s clothing and refusing to marry.
23. Lili’uokalani, the last Queen of Hawaii, was named after an eye infection.
24. Cleopatra, though born Egyptian, traced her roots to Greece and may have been better known for her intellect than for her looks. She spoke as many as a dozen languages, was highly educated, and was later described as a ruler “who elevated the ranks of scholars and enjoyed their company.”
25. In 1632, a year after the death of Mumtaz Mahal, the Empress consort of the Mughal Empire, her husband emperor Shah Jahan had her body exhumed and taken to Agra. He then began building her mausoleum. 22 years later the Taj Mahal was completed.
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