Elizabeth Norton is the author of ‘Women Who Ruled the World: 5000 Years of Female Monarchy’ which was published earlier this month.
Elizabeth’s previous works include ‘The Lives of Tudor Women’ and ‘The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor.’
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Elizabeth Norton – historian
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Many thanks to Elizabeth for answering my questions.
Why did you choose this subject for your book?
I have always been interested in female power and was very struck by how recent female elected power is. The first female prime ministers (so, heads of government) only begin to appear from the 1960s, while the very first woman directly elected as a head of state (president) is still alive. This is Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who was elected as President of Iceland in 1980 and remains an iconic, if not widely known, figure in women’s history. Obviously, there are many more female presidents now, but men still occupy approximately 90% of the world’s presidencies. Since female elected power is so recent, if we want to look at women being powerful in their own right we really have to look to the reigning queens or female kings of history. I wanted to look particularly at these women because, unlike consorts, queen mothers or regents, all of whom could be very powerful, these women did not wield power through a man. The reigning queens/female kings were heads of state in their own right and stood alone. I wanted to analyse how they gained or took power, how they acted and what pressures affected them. It was fascinating to see the same patterns repeated time and again.
What does your book add to previous works covering these women?
No one has ever looked solely at reigning queens/female kings before and they certainly haven’t looked at them globally and across all eras. I think this is something that makes the book very unique indeed. By comparing queens from Ancient Egypt with, say, Maria Theresia in the eighteenth century there are of course very significant differences, but there are also startling similarities. In no era or place was a woman welcomed as a ruler – almost all of the women in the book had to fight for what they achieved.
I think I have also added to understanding of what a reigning queen or a female king is. I was very surprised at how many people really struggled to identify what I meant by the term ‘reigning queen’ and I think this is a problem of language. Camilla is Queen of the UK and so was Elizabeth II, but the role they filled is very different. I’ve had people online insisting that I should have included Byzantine consorts – but that goes against the whole point of the book. Consorts, such as Theodora or Eleanor of Aquitaine could be very powerful, but they were still able to act, effectively, in the shadow of a man. Zenobia of Palmyra or Lili‘uokalani of Hawaii, amongst many others, did not have that luxury. They were, effectively, the face on the coins. In the book I make a case for calling these women female kings, a term which I think is much clearer. It probably won’t catch on in western Europe, although in some parts of the world, such as Georgia or Hungary the women they crowned were always kings and not queens.
How did you decide who to include?
This was really hard! There were so many women that I would have loved to include. It could easily have been four times as long. The book is thematic, so I was looking for a good geographical spread, as well as queens from different eras. There were some queens, such as Victoria, Elizabeth I, Isabel I of Castile and Cleopatra VII who are so well known that they had to be included. Others I felt had really interesting stories that deserved to be given more attention – Blanca II of Navarre is a case in point. Her story is actually quite similar to her niece, Juana ‘la Loca’ of Castile, who is much better known, but I decided to go with Blanca because I felt her life really illustrated the difficulties could be faced by a reigning queen. In Blanca’s case, she was imprisoned and probably murdered by her father, the king consort, who wished to remain in power and she was an incredibly strong example of the threat that many reigning queens faced from their male relatives.
What surprised you most researching this book?
My research was absolutely full of surprises. My most interesting find was probably the autobiographical works written by Japanese noblewomen in the tenth and eleventh centuries – long before the Norman conquest we know of a teenaged girl who was devoted to romance novels. This was interesting in itself, but it was also tied to the work carried out by Empress Suiko in promoting writing in Japanese.
I was also surprised by just how important the aura of royalty was. If you were royal, you were very much in an exclusive club. Lili‘uokalani of Hawaii, for example, could visit Queen Victoria in Britain and sit with the future Kaiser Wilhelm II at dinner, while she entertained Prince Alfred of Edinburgh in Hawaii. Even the monarchs of very small states were accepted, at least superficially, on equal terms. Pomare IV of Tahiti could appeal directly to Queen Victoria when threatened by French incursions, even if she only received drawing room furniture as a gift in response. The Queens of Tahiti, Hawaii and the United Kingdom very much recognised the commonality of their experience as monarchs.
Who was your favourite ‘female king’ to write about?
I want to say Elizabeth I, and it almost is. But, actually it is Tamar of Georgia, who was just the most remarkable ruler. Tamar was crowned as a junior king during her father’s lifetime, but found her accession as an independent monarch in 1184 very challenging. Almost no one was prepared to accept a reigning queen, with Tamar forced to cede power to her council and very nearly faced the end of her reign. She was also required to marry a Russian prince who quickly proved himself to be highly unsuitable. What I like about Tamar is that she is so representative of the struggles that reigning queens faced. She was entirely unwanted and only slowly managed to claw her way back to power. Eventually, she was able to take control of her court and divorce her husband and she is remembered as presiding over a golden age of Georgian culture, but it was at considerable personal cost. To paraphrase Ginger Rogers, she did everything a male ruler had to do, but she did it backwards and in high heels. She is absolutely fascinating and so little known in the west. I encourage everyone to go out and read more about Tamar.
