For almost all of written history, almost all times and places, men have held most of the top ruling positions. For a variety of reasons, there have been exceptions, a few women who held great power.

If you want to demonstrate basic historical literacy, you'll want to know about at least these powerful women rulers -- key queens, pharaohs, empresses, listed chronologically in the next pages, from earliest to latest..


http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/catherine-the-great
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/rulers/ss/Powerful-Women-Rulers-Everyone-Should-Know.htm#showall
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404706517.html


Cc lalasticlala Ishilove

Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
Cleopatra was the last Pharaoh of Egypt, and the last of the Ptolemy dynasty of Egyptian rulers. As she tried to keep power for her dynasty, she made famous (or infamous) connections with Roman rulers Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.

Empress Theodora
Theodora, empress of Byzantium from 527-548, was probably the most influential and powerful woman in the empire's history.

Amalasuntha
A real Queen of the Goths: Amalasuntha was Regent Queen of the Ostrogoths; her murder became the rationale for Justinian's invasion of Italy and defeat of the Goths. Unfortunately, we have only a few very biased sources for her life.

OLGA OF RUSSIA
A cruel and revengeful ruler as regent for her son, Olga was named the first Russian saint in the Orthodox Church, for her efforts in converting the nation to Christianity.

Queen Bae!

Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor ruled Aquitaine in her own right, and occasionally served as regent when her husbands (first the King of France then the King of England) or sons (kings of England Richard and John) were out of the country. Eleanor of Aquitaine certainly had a long and interesting life!

Freemanan:

u no get sense o.U create thread still come dey book space.Dats childish u know?

How far na, cause your oba n kings post enter front page, u wan get front page 2wice in 1 day? ImpossibRu.

Isabella, Queen of Castile and Aragon (Spain)
Isabella ruled Castile and Aragon jointly with her husband, Ferdinand. She's famous for supporting Columbus' voyage; she's also credited for her part in expelling the Muslims from Spain, expelling the Jews, instituting the Inquisition in Spain, insisting that the Native Americans be treated as persons, and her patronage of arts and education.

Elizabeth I of England
Queen Elizabeth I of England is one of the most fascinating women of history. Elizabeth I was able to rule when her long-before predecessor, Matilda, had not been able to secure the throne. Was it her personality? Was it that the times had changed, following such personalities as Queen Isabella?

Intelligent, ruthless, sexually insatiable: she was the most powerful woman in the world, dragging Russia 'out of her medieval stupor and into the modern world'.

Born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, the daughter of a German prince, she was related through her mother to the dukes of Holstein.

In 1744, she arrived in Russia, as the Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna, and married Peter, grandson of Peter the Great and heir to the throne. Russia at the time was ruled by Peter's mother, the empress Elizabeth.

The marriage was an unhappy one and on her arrival in Russia, Catherine suffered from a form of pleurisy, which causes sharp pains in the chest. She had to have her blood let by a doctor four times in one day, which she claimed saved her life.

Catherine was intelligent and ambitious. During her husband's lifetime, she had at least three lovers and, if her hints are to be believed, none of her children were his. It is thought that she had affairs with Alexander Vasilchikov, Sergei Saltykov and Stanislaw August Poniatowski, among others.

Her husband had a mistress called Elizabeth Vorontsova. When Catherine fell pregnant with her second child, a girl called Anna who died aged four months, Peter did not believe it was his baby, causing an argument which led Catherine to spend a lot of time in her private boudoir.

When Empress Elizabeth died in January 1762, Russia was engaged in the Seven Years' War against Prussia. Peter, now emperor, pulled Russia out of the war and allied with Frederick II of Prussia. Foolishly betraying his actions, Peter prepared to be rid of his wife.

Catherine, however, had the support of the public and the army, and was proclaimed empress on 9 July 1762. Peter III abdicated and was assassinated eight days later. She was soon crowned in Moscow, beginning a 34-year reign.

During her reign, she reduced the powers of the clergy, continued to preserve friendly relations with Prussia, France and Austria and, in 1764, she specified Poland's borders and installed one of her old lovers as king of Poland.

A follower of the Enlightenment in 1767, she assembled a group of delegates in order to determine the people's wishes and compose a constitution. Unfortunately, it was considered too liberal and came to nothing.

In 1768, she went to war with Turkey, so as to concentrate on the importance of national grandeur. The war inspired patriotism in Catherine's subjects but, in 1773, a former officer of the Don Cossacks inspired the greatest uprising in Russia prior to 1917.

The movement spread rapidly and, in June 1774, Cossack troops prepared to march on Moscow. At this point, Russia won the war with Turkey and Catherine crushed the rebellion.

Catherine now realised that she needed to exercise more control over the people and that serf liberation would be intolerable to the owners, on whom she depended, and who would throw the country into chaos once they lost their income. Catherine thus focused on strengthening a system that she had labelled as inhuman.

She also enjoyed a reputation for being a patron of the arts, education and culture, writing a guide for the education of young noble women in 1764, as well as establishing the Smolny Institute the same year.

Catherine also wrote fictions, comedies and memoirs while cultivating the talents of French intellectuals including Diderot, D'Alembart and Voltaire, with whom she corresponded for over 15 years.

She became the most-renowned and longest-serving female monarchs of Russia, with her reign seen by many as the Golden Age of Russia.

Catherine died in 1796 from a stroke which caused her to fall into a coma, from which she never recovered. She was buried in a gold coffin at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

She was succeeded by her eldest son Paul, who was thought to be the son of Peter as he resembled the late emperor. Catherine had three other children with different lovers.

QUEEN VICTORIA

Alexandrina Victoria was the only child of the fourth son of King George III, and when her uncle William IV died childless in 1837, she became Queen of Great Britain. She's known for her marriage to Prince Albert, her traditional ideas on the roles of wife and mother which often conflicted with her actual exercise of power, and for her waxing and waning popularity and influence.

good to know.

Tz'u-hsi
Tz'u-hsi (1835-1908), concubine to the Hsien-feng emperor and later empress dowager, was the power behind the throne in China from 1860 to 1908.

Tz'u-hsi, who is also known as Yehonala, Empress Hsiao-ch'in, or "The Old Buddha, " was born on Nov. 29, 1835. At the age of 16 she became a low-ranking concubine to the Hsienfeng emperor (reigned 1851-1861), but in 1856, when she gave birth to the Emperor's only son and heir, she was made a second-class concubine. When the Emperor died on Aug. 22, 1861, in Jehol, where he had fled before the allied British and French advance on Peking in 1860, Tz'u-hsi's son became the T'ung-chih emperor (1862-1875). During his minority the new emperor, according to his father's will, would rule through a regency, but all decrees had to be approved by the two empress dowagers—his mother and the senior consort, Empress Tz'u-an.

Three Decades of Regency
The ensuing power struggle between the regents and the two empress dowagers, with the aid of Prince Kung (the deceased emperor's half brother), was resolved in favor of the two women when the court returned to Peking in October 1861. The regents were arrested, and the two empress dowagers formed a joint regency. Prince Kung was made prince counselor and head of the Grand Council.

Of the two dowager empresses, Tz'u-hsi was the more able and ambitious and gradually gained control of the state. She entrusted military power to Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang, and Tso Tsung-t'ang and in international affairs relied on Prince Kung and Wen-hsiang in the Tsungli Yamen. She loved money and power, had tremendous physical vitality, used the weaknesses of her officials for her own ends, and in matters of state was extremely realistic. When Prince Kung appeared to be acquiring too much power in 1865, she had him removed from all his offices on a pretext. He was later restored to power but was no longer prince counselor. Tz'u-hsi was strongly anti-Western and conservative but permitted a limited amount of Westernization in order to preserve her own power and the dynasty.

When the T'ung-chih emperor died in 1875, from excesses, which his mother seems to have encouraged, Tz'uhsi placed her 3-year-old nephew on the throne as the Kuang-hsü emperor (1875-1908), with Empress Dowager Tz'u-an and herself once again acting as regents. This was a direct violation of the dynastic law of succession, as the new emperor should have been chosen from the next generation, but Tz'u-hsi was able to crush all opposition. When Tz'u-an died suddenly in 1881, Tz'u-hsi became the sole regent and autocrat.

Usurpation of Power
The Emperor reached his majority in 1889, and Tz'uhsi relinquished nominal control of China. She retired to the Summer Palace, which had been rebuilt at the expense of a much-needed navy, but through her own niece, who had recently been married to the Emperor, she kept a watchful eye on palace and state affairs. Under the influence of his tutor Weng T'ung-ho and the reformer K'ang Yu-wei, the Emperor began to put through a series of much-needed Western-style reforms early in the summer of 1898. As these reforms would have been a threat to her power position, on Sept. 22, 1898, Tz'u-hsi, through a coup d'etat, once more assumed full powers as regent and placed the Emperor in confinement—where he remained until his death in 1908.

The Boxer Uprising in the summer of 1900, which forced Tz'u-hsi to flee to Sian when an eight-nation allied force occupied Peking, resulted in Tz'u-hsi's final acceptance of the need for reforms, the same reforms that her nephew had tried to implement 2 years earlier. The most far-reaching of these was the abolition of the old-style examinations in 1905.

Tz'u-hsi died on Nov. 15, 1908—one day after the Kuang-hsü emperor. The closeness of their deaths occasioned rumors of foul play, but whether he died a natural death or was murdered has never been determined.

Good to know

kossyablaze:
u no get sense o.U create thread still come dey book space.Dats childish u know?

Awaiting apologies

Omotayor123:
Good to know

Fine girl make I talk to you na. I get plenty money, I like spend for you na. I'm an importer, exporter, transporter, reporter, etc etc. So what is your name.

Educative

/

Amina (also Aminatu; d. 1610) was a Hausa Muslim Warrior Queen of Zazzau (now Zaria), in what is now north central Nigeria.[1] She is the subject of many legends, but is widely believed by historians to have been a real ruler, though contemporary evidence about her is limited. There is controversy among scholars as to the date of her reign, one school placing her in the mid-15th century, and a second placing her reign in the mid to late 16th century.

The Arabic female name Amina means truthful, trustworthy and honest.

History and sourcesEdit

The earliest source to mention Amina is Muhammed Bello's history Ifaq al-Maysur, composed around 1836. He claims that she was "the first to establish government among them," and she forced Katsina, Kano and other regions to pay tribute to her.[2] Bello, unfortunately provided no chronological details about her. She is also mentioned in the Kano Chronicle, a well-regarded and detailed history of the city of Kano, composed in the late 19th century, but incorporating earlier documentary material. According to this chronicle, she was a contemporary of Muhammad Dauda, who ruled from 1421–38, and Amina conquered as far as Nupe and Kwarafa, collected tribute from far and wide and ruled for 34 years.[3] A number of scholars accept this information and date her reign to the early to mid-15th century.[4][5]

There is also a local chronicle of Zaria itself, written in the 19th century (it goes up to 1902) and published in 1910 that gives a list of the rulers and the duration of their reigns.[6] Amina is not mentioned in this chronicle, but oral tradition in the early 20th century held her to be the daughter of Bakwa Turunku, whose reign is dated by the chronicle from 1492–1522, and on this basis some scholars date her reign to the early 16th century.[7] Abdullahi Smith, using similar discripancies places her reign after 1576.[8] [9]

Legendary exploitsEdit

More recent oral tradition has a series of lively stories about the queen, and these have found their way into popular culture. Among them were: Amina was a fierce warrior and loved fighting. As a child, her grandmother Marka, the favorite wife of her grandfather Sarkin Nohir, once caught her holding a dagger. Amina holding the dagger did not shock Martha, rather it was that Amina held it exactly as a warrior would. As an adult, she refused to marry like Elizabeth the First of England for the fear of losing power. She helped Zazzau (Zaria) become the center of trade and to gain more land. Her mother, Bakwa, died when Amina was 36 years old, leaving her to rule over Zaria. She was also said to have taken a lover from among the conquered people after each battle, and to have killed or castrated him in the morning following their night together.[10]

Wao! Women like men, even more courageous than some men.
For Nigerian histories, culture and traditions, legends, places and lifestyle in the 70s: visit www.oldnaija. and thank me later.

Hee my name is not there am also a queen.Dont u Know AM D OF EWU LAND so by not mentioning my name ur thread is CLOSE.

Idiataqueen:
Hee my name is not there am also a queen.Dont u Know AM D OF EWU LAND so by not mentioning my name ur thread is CLOSE.

Apologies love

Freemanan:
Apologies love

apologies accepted.