6 Queens You Should Know About for Women's History Month

Ever since March became Women's History Month in the U.S. in 1987, it has been a time to reflect on and share stories about influential women — of which queens are certainly obvious, colorful examples.
If the only queens you can name off the top of your head are Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria and "Queen Bey" then peruse this round-up of notable women in charge, presented in no particular order, who range from revered rulers to royal pains:
Olympias (on the throne 375–316 B.C.E.)
Alexander the Great's mother and queen to Philip II of Macedonia, she was perhaps history's most extreme, and certainly one of the earliest, examples of a helicopter mom. "After Philip was stabbed to death by his jealous male lover — an act that had Olympias’ fingerprints all over it — she arranged for the assassination of Alex’s two siblings from another mother," says Kris Waldherr, author of Doomed Queens: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends. In her spare time, she enjoyed worshiping the god Dionysus and dancing with snakes.
Njinga of Angola (1622-1663)
She was the queen of Ndongo, an area around the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo and is considered the "Cleopatra of central Africa" — whose political instincts rivaled those of Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great, according to the first full-length study in English of her life that was just published, Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen by Boston University historian Linda Heywood. According to the new PBS documentary Africa's Great Civilizations, she dressed like a man and insisting on be called "king" — and kept concubines — and yet was still discriminated against by rulers of other countries for being a woman. For example, she negotiated a treaty with the Portuguese on behalf of her brother while sitting on the back of her servant, who crouched on all fours so that she could look the Portuguese in the eye after they refused to get her a chair.

Yorumlar

Yorum Gönder

Bu blogdaki popüler yayınlar

Early American Colonists Had a Cash Problem. Here's How They Solved It

Resim
Money, or the lack thereof, was a persistent problem in colonial America. The colonists were under the control of Great Britain, where the legal tender was both gold and silver, known as a bimetallic system. Yet British coins circulated only rarely in the colonies. The colonists had an unfavorable balance of trade with the mother country, meaning that the value of the goods they imported from England greatly exceeded the value of the goods exported back. Most specie that flowed into the colonies through trade quickly flowed back to England in payment for these goods. Nor did the colonists have access to specie through any domestic gold or silver discoveries. In order to have a functioning economy, the colonists were forced to turn to other commodities for use as money. Spanish coins, from trade with the West Indies and Mexico, circulated freely in the colonies as legal tender. While goods were officially valued in British pounds, in their day-to-day transactions colonists more com...
Devamı

Colorized Photos From Early Suffrage Marches Bring Women's History to Life

Resim
Though the dedication of March to the topic of women's history is now observed in the U.S., it  grew out of  a week that grew out a day: International Women's Day, which is observed on March 8. On or around that day, for more than a century, women around the world have marched for what they believe in. In 1909, at the  original  such march, it was for better working conditions. This year, the day will be an occasion for the movement associated with January's post-Inauguration Women's March  protests  to  continue  to make its voice heard. But during the first decades of the 20th century, there was one particular cause that drew  many  American women to take to the streets: the right to vote. Images of  suffrage marches  from the decade before the  19th Amendment  enfranchised women, from the Library of Congress' collection of early news photographs, capture that important moment in time. For this year's Interna...
Devamı