Most of this miniseries will be biographical sketches of a few of the more daring power-grabbers in history. Generally speaking when we say queen, we mean the woman who happens to be married to the king who is the ruler. A queen who ruled in her own name and her own right, either solo or as the dominant figure in a marriage is a rare thing, but even so, everyone’s heard of at least a few. The current Queen Elizabeth II of England is one of these Queen Regnants, as they’re called.

A Queen Regnant is rare because in general, girls don’t inherit the throne. It does sometimes happen, and we’ll talk about why, but the women I’m going to feature in this series don’t fall into that category. Oh no, this time we’re talking about women who definitely didn’t inherit the throne. Women who looked at the top job, said, “I could do that,” and did.

Before we get going, though, I thought I’d talk about why there are so few women in power anyway. I mean, if I were to give biographical sketches of all the men who have successfully seized power we would be on this miniseries until doomsday. We don’t bother mentioning the regnant part of a King Regnant’s title because we just know that the king is in charge. Obviously.

Primogeniture is the system whereby everything goes to the oldest son. Younger sons are out of luck. Girls of any birth order are so far out of luck they often aren’t even worth mentioning. To those of us who grew up being fed European fairy tales and history, patrilineal primogeniture is so well embedded that it seems universal until modern times, but in fact such is not the case. Partly because even patriarchal societies don’t always use primogeniture, but also because once upon a time, women held power.

Women in Charge

A true matriarchy, corresponding with a true patriarchy, would mean a society where women held all the power and men held little to none, and we have no evidence that that has ever existed. The famous Amazons in the Greek stories seem to be based on their experience with fighting tribes from the Eurasian steppes, who sometimes had everyone, including women, in the battle, which seemed incomprehensibly strange to the Greeks. But the idea that they lived in women-only groups, killing any boys or men they came across is imaginary.

So much for the extreme definition of matriarchy. But if we use the term to mean something less drastic, then the answer is different. In early human societies, women had rights to the land they used. Your name, your clan, and your possessions derived from who your mother was, not your father. A married couple lived with or near the wife’s family, not the husband’s. If a marriage or partnership dissolved, the children stayed with the mother and her clan, and women had a great deal to say about how the clan was run.

All of this is guaranteed to warm the cockles of a feminist’s heart, but you may be thinking, “Yeah, uh-huh, and how do we actually know this?”

Well, from a strictly historical point of view, we don’t know this. History, by definition, is the study of the written records of the past, and all of this is well before the development of writing. To know anything about these people, we have to borrow from other fields, and there are a few basic lines of evidence which I will give you here and you can decide whether you think it’s sufficient proof.

Evidence from Anthropology and Archaeology

So, first line of evidence is from anthropology. There are very few hunter-gatherer societies left in existence, but there are some and there were more in the 19^th century when the science of anthropology was getting off the ground. In most of these societies, the workload is divided such that the men hunt and the women gather. Now arriving home at the end of a workday with a big hunk of venison probably made the men feel very macho and manly, but the fact is that the majority of a hunter-gatherer’s food comes from gathering, not hunting. I mean like 70-90% of the calories (French, 28). It’s to the extent that one of my ultra-feminist sources insists on calling these groups gatherer-hunters, rather than hunter-gatherers. Economics is a good bargaining chip, and in general women in these societies are not as downtrodden as they are in many of the so-called “civilized” societies. Women tend to have a strong say in who they marry, whether they stay married, where the family lives, and how their own property is handled, etc. All the things that most women of historical time periods could only dream of. Now, it’s true that we are just assuming that ancient societies looked more or less like these modern ones, and that is a big assumption, so let’s turn to archaeology and grave sites for more evidence.

Obviously, there’s a lot of variation over time and place, but in many places (such as the 4000 year old Indian Knoll in Kentucky (French, 36-37)) no significant difference is found in the gravesites of women vs. men. Since grave goods between rich and poor are often very different, this is assumed to be a symptom of equality. In Minoan graves, the women often have more grave goods than the men. Now I am not an expert archaeologist, so keep that in mind when I say that I don’t find this argument to be particularly convincing. If you studied the graves of a husband and wife in Victorian England, I don’t think you’d find a huge difference in the value of their coffin goods (different clothes, yes, but overall value of the goods, not so much), but if you used that to say that Victorian women had full equality, you’d be dead wrong.

What is more convincing is not the grave goods, but the actual bones. Archaeologists with a detailed knowledge of anatomy can study skeletons for occupational stress, indicating what kinds of activities the person spent large amounts of time doing. For example, in some communities, women were definitely breaking their backs over the quern grinding grain while the men were out and about throwing spears around in the sunshine. But in the earliest societies, work seems to have been shared equally between men and women (Bolger; French, 36). At first glance, that might seem to contradict my earlier statement about men as hunters, women as gatherers, but I think it doesn’t. As a gatherer, you won’t be putting as much repetitive stress because the actual nature of your work changes with the seasons. Some food requires digging in the ground. Other food requires climbing up the trees. It’s only when your food supply becomes significantly based on one and only one grain that we’re going to see the repetitive stress injuries from constant grinding day in and day out, but that last bit is only my own speculation, so take that for what’s it’s worth.

Evidence from Art

Then there is the evidence of art. Art bursts onto the scene in the Neolithic period, with the earliest known piece dating from a dizzying 230,000 years ago, as long as you accept that the Venus of Berekhat Ram is actually human made art and not just a pebble with some suggestive scratches on it. If you’re a skeptic that’s okay, because between 40,000 and 8000 BCE, art just explodes into existence, and you know what kind of art? Women. That’s what kind. Collectively known as Venus figurines, the earliest statues are exclusively figures of women, often with exaggerated breasts, hips, and vulvas. The earliest paintings include lots of bulls, deer, and other animals, but you know what is conspicuously lacking? Men. There is nary a man among them for a long, long time.

One interesting study looked at the depiction of dancing figures in art from the 8^th to the 4^th millennia BCE from the Near East (well after the earliest paintings found). It found that while 50% of the figures had no indication of gender at all, in the remaining 50% things change over time: males were uncommon at first, but increase over time, while the females decrease, suggesting women’s roles in the ritual dancing became less prominent over this period (Bolger).

These Neolithic peoples all failed to leave detailed explanations of their art for future museum-goers which means that it’s left to us to decide whether these statues were goddesses, fertility symbols, pornography, or what. Maybe some or all of the above, but it’s hard to escape the notion that men were just a side-show at this point, unworthy of depiction for any of those reasons.

So much for the general lines of argument for a female-dominated or at least a female-equal pre-history; make of them what you will. But if we accept that women did have a significant role in early societies, then it makes for some very interesting readings of early texts in the historical period. I will pick two societies to demonstrate, not because they are the only ones possible, but because there’s a good chance that they are somewhat familiar to you.

Evidence from Religion

If you remember your Greek mythology, you probably know that the king of the Gods is Zeus, the one with the lightning bolts and a serious need for family counseling. There is certainly nothing female-dominated about that hierarchy, but if you go back in the stories a little further, you find that Zeus is not a Creator god. He has parents (Kronos and Rhea) and he has a grandmother, Gaea, a personification of the earth, who rose from the primordial chaos and gave birth to pretty much everyone else in the whole pantheon. So it is possible to read this as an originally female-oriented religion with Gaea as the original mother/fertility goddess, and Zeus is just a johnny-come-lately when Greek society became more patriarchal. That same argument can be made about many mythologies, not just the Greek.

To move to a different culture, let’s talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition. The oldest books in the Bible were compiled and edited in the 5^th century BCE but have stories that had been handed down for generations before that. The book of Genesis is remarkable in many ways, not least because it has named women who play an active role in the story to a much greater extent than later in the Bible. Some verses suggest that the story might have originated in a time when a matrilineal society was transitioning to a patrilineal one. For example, father Abraham is married to Sarah, who is also his half-sister. They share a father, but not a mother (Genesis 20:12). In many matrilineal societies, that would not be considered incest because only the mother’s lineage matters. When their son Isaac needs a wife, Abraham sends a servant to the land he came from to bring back a wife. The servant is concerned that the woman might not be willing to come and perhaps Isaac should go to her instead (Genesis 24:5). In matrilineal societies, the man leaves his home to live with the wife’s family, but in patrilineal societies it is almost always the other way around. Here it appears there was some doubt. As it happens, Rebekah is willing to leave and marry a man she has never met, but while the servant deals with her father, her opinion is consulted and she could have said no (Genesis 24:58). When their son Jacob needs a wife, he actually does go himself. Far from requiring a dowry as is common in patrilineal societies, Jacob labors seven years to marry Rachel, gets tricked into marrying her older sister Leah instead, and then labors seven more years to marry Rachel as well, living all the time with his wife’s family, rather than his own (Genesis 29:20-30). Leah and Rachel name their own children, a privilege that often goes to the father in a patrilineal society (Genesis 29:32 through 30:24). When Jacob gets tired of getting cheated by his father-in-law, Leah and Rachel agree saying that the riches and money of the household should belong to them (Genesis 31:16), which is a far-cry from later societies where a husband or father always owns whatever property a woman might inherit. So they all pack up and sneak away in the middle of the night, and Rachel also takes the religious icons, clearly believing they belong to the women of the household. Her father disagrees and comes after them for those icons, but she succeeds in hiding them from him (Genesis 31:19-35). It is quite difficult to imagine later Biblical women like Ruth or Mary behaving quite like this.

So there’s a smattering of the evidence for women’s prominence in early societies. I admit it’s not quite as good as a treasure trove of detailed sociological records organized by year and reproduced in triplicate, but we have to work with what we’ve got.

If you accept that pre-history was all peace and harmony and women’s rights, it is fair to ask, what went wrong? Well, there’s this little thing called the Agricultural Revolution.

The Agricultural Revolution and Women’s Rights (or lack thereof)

The Agricultural Revolution has had a great PR team working for it, so you’ve probably heard of it as a positive development. But if you read some feminist history then you know that the Agricultural Revolution was bad, bad, and very bad. Here’s the problem: agriculture is hard physical labor, particularly when it’s done large scale with plows. Being bigger and stronger helps. Agriculture does not care if you are pregnant, nursing, PMSing, or actually giving birth at the moment. When the harvest is ready, it’s ready. It doesn’t wait for you. And if you miss it, you haven’t just missed the one day’s worth of gathering. You may have missed the entire year’s worth of food. Now make no mistake, women are still working and still making an economic contribution, as they have done in every human society. But it’s no longer 70-90% of the entire food supply. And their influence goes down correspondingly.

The big thing agriculture has going for it is food surpluses. When all goes well, you bring in the harvest and you keep it and eat away at it until the next harvest. The problem is that once you have something worth keeping, you also have something worth taking. And you can’t just pack up and move along to another field if you feel threatened. Your entire livelihood is fixed in one location. You protect it or you die. So right alongside the Agricultural Revolution we have increased military, where I’ve been told, it also helps to be bigger, stronger, and unencumbered with small children. As the first complex states form, their leaders are primarily war leaders (that is to say, mostly men). And the one thing that trumps economics is defense: if someone’s trying to kill you right now, it simply doesn’t matter how many buckets of quinoa and soybeans you’ve got stashed away.

Pretty much without exception, women’s voices are not dominant or even approaching equal in any society for which we have enough records to be sure. Power begets power. Lack of power begets lack of power. Over time, legal codes, religion, and customs all hem in women, and over time both men and women forget that it could ever have been organized differently. Admittedly, women are not the only sufferers. Economics and defense also tend to concentrate power into stronger and stronger rulers at the top of society, as these city-states also become more stratified than any hunter-gatherer society is known to be. The vast majority of men also lived without much power in society.

Having presented the case against agriculture, I should add that as a woman, I also appreciate food surpluses. I like art, architecture, theater, roads, sewers, clean water, and other public works which come along with more organized societies. The men in a woman’s family may not always treat her well, but history proves that a marauding army is unlikely to treat her any better. So yes, I also appreciate our defensive military, though I’m fortunate to live in a time and a place where I haven’t needed it on a super-personal level. My own view is that this civilization thing isn’t all bad, even for women. It’s mixed. Archaeology shows that women also spent more time bearing children, which in the view of some feminist historians is a bad thing, but the reason they had more children was that they had a better, more steady food supply, and I don’t know about you, but I just can’t get excited about malnutrition as an alternative method of birth control.  

A Few Powerful Women

So much for the general overview of the subjection of women. The question arises, though, that if women are so powerless and dominated, then why are there any queens at all? Obviously, they weren’t all suffering.

And this is true. Almost every society has some women who are doing very well for themselves, often because they are the daughter of, sister of, wife of, or girlfriend of some very important man. But let’s be honest, most of the men doing well also got there because of such relationships. And while we might call it nepotism today, the more inclusive word for it is networking. Either way it still comes down to who you know.

While some civilizations believe in a meritocracy for their rulers, it’s very likely some version of the king passing it on, usually to his son. Sometimes, the law permits the king to choose his heir. For example at the height of Rome’s rule, the five “good” emperors are given great credit for having chosen good successors instead of just installing whatever incompetent son they happened to have. They wail “How could Marcus Aurelius, who was so estimable in so many ways, have broken that trend and given it to his son Commodus, who was so obviously not a good choice?” Never mind that the previous four good emperors didn’t actually have sons, so who knows what they would have done if they had.

Giving the throne to your son is in some ways the best thing you can do, even if he’s not the sharpest sword in the armory. Because if you don’t give it to your son, there’s a good chance that he’ll take offense. Or some ambitious nobleman will tell him to take offense. And if he does, and if said nobleman has enough friends on his side, what you get is civil war. That isn’t good for anybody. Generally speaking, it’s safest to let him inherit anyway and hope he’s got good taste in advisors. Some societies dictate that the king pass the throne to a son, but not necessarily the oldest one. Such a policy doesn’t promote fraternal love, and it still passes over the girls.

Patrilineal primogeniture is not fair. But it is clear. If everybody knows the eldest son inherits, it is less likely that anyone else will get dangerous ideas. True, a younger son might decide to bump off his older brother, but even if that happens, the country may avoid a civil war by simply looking the other way, and tutting about unfortunate accidents in this cold hard world. There is an interesting study which cataloged all European monarchies from 1000 to 1800, and found that yes, indeed those countries which followed strict primogeniture laws had fewer assassinations, revolutions, and general succession uncertainties than those which did not.

Where you get into trouble with primogeniture is when the king doesn’t manage to get himself a son. All of Henry VIII’s notoriety would probably have been avoided if the first of six wives had just had a boy. And that is where a girl may get her chance, either as the daughter or sometimes the widow of the dead king. The nobility doesn’t really like women in charge, but sometimes they will accept her for the sake of stability. If her claim is good enough, she may be the best of limited options. This is true for Henry VIII’s daughter Mary, and then for his next daughter Elizabeth I as well. Ditto for Queen Victoria, and Queen Elizabeth II. It’s true of Isabella of Aragon. It’s true of Maria Theresa, the Holy Roman Empress. It’s true of Empress Suiko of Japan and Hatshepsut of Egypt.

In history, it’s always dangerous to speak in absolutes because as soon as you do, there will be an exception found. And sure enough, there are some exceptions. The ancient African kingdom of Kush passed the throne to the son of the king’s sister, making it matrilineal, thought it was still generally (but not always) a man who actually ruled. The Rain Queen of the Balobedu in South Africa is based on matrilineal primogeniture: only women inherit. But the Rain Queen is remarkable because it is so rare, while patrilineal primogeniture is not rare at all.

So we’ve established that basically the Queen Regnants you’ve heard of are those who had the good fortune not to have had a brother. (Many apologies to my own brother, who is quite a good one, as brothers go.) But on occasion, a queen finds another way. In this series, we’ll take a look at five women in history who successfully staged coups and ruled in their own names, by so doing flouting traditions that were invented along with the plow. We’ll look at how they did it and even more interesting is why they did it. First up is Cleopatra of Egypt. If you know a bit about her, you might be thinking, “Wait, wasn’t she the daughter of the king? And didn’t she inherit the throne?” Well, sort of, but you’ll see why she belongs in this series next week.

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Selected Sources

One of many sources for this week is the first volume of Marilyn French’s A History of Women. If you choose to pick it up, be warned, it’s the super angry version of feminist history, and some of her claims are definitely overstated. But it is a nice counterbalance to all those histories that don’t take women into account at all.

See also the links in the text above and:

Bolger, Diane. “The Dynamics of Gender in Early Agricultural Societies of the near East.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 35, no. 2, Jan. 2010, pp. 503–531, https://doi.org/10.1086/605512.

Feature Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay