Historian Williams examines the role of sexism in a thorough look at 3,000 years of female rulers whose power, she writes, is often “erased, compromised and twisted by words and images.” Royal women are either “feted beyond measure as warrior queens, saints or fairy princesses or castigated as monsters, sexual obsessives, feminine failures.” Williams considers dozens of reigns, discerning a common, demeaning conclusion drawn about female monarchs across continents and centuries: “They must be sleeping with any male advisor or supporter. For why else would a man assist or support a woman?” Over time, she argues, queens have often come to be known for the “worst or most lurid thing that one satirist or critic on the enemy side says about them”—whether it’s that Cleopatra was a “sex-mad failure” or that Catherine the Great “had sex with a horse.” It’s not just these familiar names that have come under fire from male historians, the author notes. She examines the assorted histories of lesser-known female royals from around the world, including Ranavalonas I of Madagascar, called “the female Caligula,” and Queen Lili‘uokalani of Hawaii, who, denied pen and paper in prison but allowed the more feminine tools of needle and thread, wove her narrative into a quilt now housed in a museum. “It is not just about sexism,” Williams writes. “Queens are written about more harshly than other women; in the end queens are attacked with words and pictures to try to seize their power.”
