The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800

by William Monter

  Numismatics as a Litmus Test for Sovereignty

  Ever since the time of Cleopatra VII numismatic evidence has offered admirably clear and precise guidance for deciding whether or not to consider a woman as the reigning sovereign of a particular kingdom or major independent state, either alone or jointly with a man (two female co-sovereigns appear on the same coin only once, in eleventh-century Byzantium, and the arrangement lasted less than two months).2 Minting coins had become a prerogative of legitimate sovereigns throughout Europe long before women began acquiring thrones in significant numbers. As female sovereigns became less uncommon in late medieval Europe, their coins express their claims to possess exactly the same divine right status as their male counterparts; immediately following the ruler's name on the coin's face comes the phrase Dei Gratia Regina, “Monarch by the Grace of God.” The custom spread quickly to autonomous subroyal women rulers like Joanna of Brabant, who ruled a major duchy in the Low Countries for half a century after 1355; she even issued coins during her husband's lifetime calling her Duke (Dux) of Brabant by the Grace of God.3

  Between 1350 and 1800 almost two dozen European women, including several named jointly with their husbands, issued coins with some form of D.G. Reg. after their names. The small size of many of these coins required other abbreviations, particularly for joint reigns that used both names. One from early fifteenth-century Navarre used “J(uan) + B(lanca) Dei Gra(tia) Rex + R(e)g(in)a Navarra” only the name of their kingdom was spelled in full. Of course, a woman ruling alone also needed abbreviations if she held many possessions. Some small coins from the eighteenth-century Habsburg Netherlands are inscribed M.T.D.G.R.IMP.G.H.B.REG.A.A.D.BURG, for “Maria Theresa by the Grace of God Roman Empress in Germany, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Archduchess of Austria and Duchess of Burgundy” (those minted for use in Luxembourg end with D.LUX.). The only words even partially spelled out are “Empress,” “Queen,” and the location of her local mint, in this case “Burgundy.”

  In addition to providing thousands of pieces of evidence from many parts of Europe affirming that women sovereigns governed by divine right, coins offer both iconographic and diachronic advantages to political historians. Those made of noble metals, gold or silver, often provide metallic portraits of female rulers. Until the very end of the fifteenth century few of Europe's female monarchs put their effigies on their coins, and none seem as realistic as some of Cleopatra VII's effigies. Afterward, every European female sovereign did so, sometimes with husbands but more often alone. After 1550 coins usually carry dates, making it possible to pinpoint changes in the official status of such sovereigns as Mary Tudor and Mary of Scotland when they married during their reigns; in the case of Mary of Scotland they reveal even changes in her husband's legal status during their marriage.

  Even the most obscure and unfortunate late medieval royal heiresses, including very young women who were rapidly overthrown, have left numismatic testimony to the legitimacy of their claims. Only three known silver coins bear the name and effigy of the unfortunate princess Beatriz, a preadolescent Portuguese heiress totally dependent on Castilian aid who rarely saw her father's kingdom after his death in 1383. Ninety years later, more surviving coins bear the name of the equally unfortunate princess Juana, a juvenile Castilian heiress heavily dependent on Portuguese aid in her unsuccessful struggle against her now-famous aunt Isabel of Castile. Because coins faithfully reflect the official, but not necessarily the real, sovereigns, they occasionally send misleading messages. The most extreme example is Isabel's successor Juana the Mad, who never functioned as Castile's ruler during her last forty-nine years; however, because she remained Spain's official or ‘proprietary’ monarch, her name and titles and sometimes her effigy appeared on millions of Spanish coins. Since Juana's oldest son was Spain's de facto ruler for almost forty years, she also became the only female monarch in Europe whose name appears on millions of coins together with that of a man other than her husband.

  Numismatic evidence also helps clarify the complex status of two women in this sample, Mary of Burgundy and her great-great-granddaughter Isabel Clara Eugenia, who became sovereigns in the Low Countries, western Europe's most important nonroyal state. Through their marriages both women were archduchesses of Austria; but the first had inherited these possessions and governed them in 1477–82 as a duchess of Burgundy, while the second ruled from 1598 to 1621 as a Spanish infanta. In population and certainly in wealth, Mary's legacy in fifteenth-century Burgundy outranked all but the very greatest monarchies of the time. Her father had narrowly missed becoming a king in 1473; four years later his only child, a daughter, still unmarried at nineteen, inherited his vast possessions. His heiress soon married the son and heir of the Holy Roman emperor, but her numismatic privileges remained intact. One day after their wedding all provincial mintmasters were instructed to omit his name from her coins, and these guidelines were scrupulously observed until her death.4

  The other female sovereign of the Low Countries suffered from three major disadvantages compared to her great-great-grandmother. First, under the terms of her father's will, Isabel Clara Eugenia had to marry her Austrian archduke before claiming her inheritance in the Low Countries, and he could claim sovereign status only after marrying her; thus, as their coins confirm, they had to reign jointly. Second, the Archdukes, as they are still popularly known, governed barely half of Mary of Burgundy's possessions, essentially only present-day Belgium and Luxemburg. Third, both would lose sovereign status if either of them died childless. Numismatic evidence confirms that their names and images disappeared abruptly from regional coins after Isabel's husband died in 1621, although she continued to serve for twelve years as its governor general.5

  Not all of Europe's major female sovereigns between 1300 and 1800 who are listed in the preface were monarchs. If both archduchesses who issued coins in the Low Countries were one formal rank lower, four other women were one rank higher. Emperors of either sex outranked kings, and these eighteenth-century Russian women issued coins proclaiming them Imperatritsas, empresses, and autocrats. Numismatics thus offers a uniform criterion for identifying a total of thirty female sovereigns, including empresses and archduchesses, whose coins claimed that they ruled major European states “by the grace of God” between 1300 and 1800. Coins by themselves obviously reveal little about how or even if a sovereign actually governed, but the sample they provide seems sufficiently large to permit some meaningful observations about the evolution of female rule throughout Europe across these five centuries.

  There is even an exception to confirm the general usefulness of numismatic criteria for identifying de jure women sovereigns. Margaret of Denmark, who is generally accepted as having been monarch of two late medieval kingdoms, Denmark and Norway, for over a quarter century (1386–1412), never issued any coins bearing her name, although her adopted male successor was issuing coins even before her death.6 While it is always difficult to explain something that did not happen, it seems pertinent to note that Margaret, the younger daughter of a Danish king and the wife (and later, widow) of a Norwegian king, had no hereditary claim to either kingdom. In Denmark she usually referred to herself as “the king's daughter” or as the only living child of its previous king and thus the “rightful heir” instead of the son of her deceased older sister. After 1376 she became regent of Denmark for her young son, adding Norway after her husband, the boy's father, died in 1380. When her son died unmarried in 1386, Margaret received authority to continue governing both kingdoms alone, indefinitely, as a sort of permanent regent with the right to designate her successor. She neither called herself a monarch nor claimed to rule by divine right: thus, although functioning as a monarch for all practical purposes, she lacked the right to strike coins. Another peculiar late medieval female monarch—Catherine Cornaro, a Venetian noblewoman and widow of the previous king, nominally sovereign of the kingdom of Cyprus in 1474–89—had pseudodynastic silver coins calling her Catherine of Venice, with the usual D.G. Reg.


  Neither queens nor female regents—not even Margaret of Denmark—possessed this essential privilege of sovereignty. Unlike some Roman emperors, European kings never named their wives on their coins. Even Isabel of Castile, who enjoyed some unusual privileges in her husband Ferdinand's kingdom, is not named on coins from Aragon, while his name always appears on hers in Castile. As this example illustrates, joint rule posed numismatic problems for any married royal heiress. Only once, in mid-fifteenth-century Cyprus, did both the heiress and her husband issue separate silver coins after his coronation, and many more survive with his name than with hers. Joint effigies of husbands and wives rarely appear on the same coin before 1497, when Castile's new high-value excelentes depicted both Isabel and Ferdinand crowned and facing each other. This motif was copied immediately by the less famous joint monarchs of a small neighboring kingdom, Navarre. Until the eighteenth century, high-value coins of married female sovereigns provide many similar examples of joint effigies, always with the husband's name first and his face on the left. As late as 1689–94 England's high-value coins even half-conceal the face of Mary II behind that of her husband, William III.

  At the same time, numismatic evidence suggests an increasing degree of personal autonomy among early modern female monarchs, who as early as 1553 were shown enthroned majestically on gold coins called sovereigns. Thirteen years later, another woman put her name ahead of her husband's on coins called royals. In the mid-seventeenth century Christina of Sweden wore a laurel wreath instead of a crown on her coins. After 1700, starting with Mary II's younger sister Anne, the coins of European married royal heiresses no longer depict or name their husbands—except the last one. D. Pedro III of Portugal was a paternal uncle of his wife, Maria I, and had received an auxiliary coronation; they were thereafter depicted on Portugal's high-value coins, but, in an exact reversal of William III and Mary II, her profile overshadows his. Numismatic evidence illustrates how the role of prince consort became a royal institution, one which has lasted until the present.

  Female Sovereigns: When and Where?

  If one divides the list of Europe's thirty female sovereigns given in the preface at the chronological midpoint of these five centuries, 1550, it splits them into equal halves and reveals some significant differences between the earlier and later groups. Most of the first group were younger women who generally ruled in close association with and often politically subordinated to their husbands. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe contained approximately twenty autonomous kingdoms, although their numbers were gradually contracting. Female inheritance, previously rare in Latin Christendom, occurred frequently as fifteen women acquired sovereignty in twelve kingdoms. Most of them were youthful: two-thirds inherited before their twentieth birthday. Many had husbands who received joint coronations and inherited if their wives died childless, which happened on four occasions. However, by the late fourteenth century an older woman ruled a large kingdom alone for twenty years, while Margaret of Denmark governed two kingdoms even longer and became regent of a third. A century later the very active Isabel of Castile ruled a major European kingdom jointly with her husband for thirty years.

  In the second half of this period (1550–1800) relatively few monarchies that permitted female inheritance remained. The last small kingdoms in western Europe, Scotland and Navarre, lost their autonomy after a son of their final heiress also inherited a major neighboring kingdom. By 1620 Europe contained few separate kingdoms: England-Scotland, France-Navarre (which prohibited female inheritance), Denmark-Norway, Sweden (which prohibited female inheritance from 1654 until 1683 and after 1720), Poland-Lithuania (elective after 1572), Hungary, Bohemia (also theoretically elective), and Spain (Castile-Aragon, which also prohibited female succession after its acquisition by a French prince in 1700). Portugal lost its autonomy in 1580 but regained it in 1640. In 1713 Prussia, a Germanic state that excluded female rulers, became the first new monarchy in Europe since the Middle Ages.

  Despite such restrictions, after the midpoint of these five centuries eleven women claimed thrones in eight kingdoms (Maria Theresa had coronations in two kingdoms), and four more ruled the Russian Empire. Few women in this group inherited before the age of twenty, but they generally governed for longer periods than the previous group. After 1550 Europe saw fewer female figureheads than before, and each of its nine genuine royal heiresses governed her kingdom autonomously for at least part of her reign. After 1566 few of them had husbands as joint rulers, although it was still possible for a husband to succeed his wife as sole ruler as late as 1694. Three of them, including the last to inherit as a young girl (in 1632), preferred to avoid marriage.

  These examples reinforce clues from numismatic evidence that the political autonomy of Europe's royal heiresses increased between the late Middle Ages and the eighteenth century. At first, most of them inherited very young, married very early, and frequently played only minor roles in governmental records; by the end of the old regime, husbands played subordinate roles in western Europe and were completely absent in the Russian Empire. Even the styles of overthrowing an established ruler changed. In the late Middle Ages it was occasionally possible for illegitimate males to oust royal heiresses (Portugal 1385, Cyprus 1463); by the mid-eighteenth century it became possible for female usurpers to overthrow officially proclaimed male heirs (Russia 1741, 1762).

  Geographically, as the map of Europe circa 1400 shows (see preface), female monarchs were scattered very widely around today's European Union, from Scotland in the northwest to Cyprus in the southeast, and they even extended to Europe's eastern geographical limit in Russia. At the same time, despite the vast geographical area that acknowledged female monarchs, this map reveals that a large core zone of old Europe remained impermeable to female sovereignty. It included the three most prestigious parts of Latin Christendom: the temporal lands of the papacy, an elective office which claimed superiority over all secular powers; the equally elective Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, the only secular power in Christendom capable of creating new kingdoms, which it never did until 1713; and the kingdom of France, which by 1300 claimed preeminence over other kingdoms after acquiring the title of Very Christian King from the papacy. Curiously, while France remained the outstanding example of female exclusion from a hereditary monarchy, French remained the language most widely shared among Europe's female monarchs from the fourteenth century through the eighteenth.

  The corner of Europe with the richest tradition of women rulers before 1800 does not appear on this map because it never reached the formal status of a kingdom until 1815. Conventionally known as the Low Countries or Netherlands, it was located along the frontier between Europe's two most important female-exclusionist states, where the northernmost edges of France encountered the northwestern boundary of the Holy Roman Empire. In this region a series of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Burgundian dukes eventually shaped a network of duchies, counties, and minor polities into the richest and most important subroyal hereditary state of Europe. Some of these territories were vassals of the empire, others of France; parts of Flanders, its single richest unit, belonged to each. Although both overlords prohibited female inheritance themselves, women frequently governed the borderlands between them. When Mary of Burgundy inherited a vast collection of provinces in 1477, nearly all of those acknowledging French suzerainty were reclaimed by the French crown, but the rest remained loyal to her.

  After the Burgundian Netherlands became the Habsburg Netherlands, a tradition of female rule persisted in the region, beginning with Mary's daughter and continuing through five generations of female Habsburgs descending from Mary's son. Between 1507 and 1793, present-day Belgium and Luxemburg were governed for a total of 115 years by no fewer than six female regents, all appointed for indefinite terms because of their presumed governmental skills.7 Most of them died in office; the first to govern jointly with her husband outlived him and served alone until her death twelve years later. Only one, Margaret of Parma, who resigned i
n 1567, was not politically successful, but she was also the only one with male descendants, and her son soon governed the region extremely successfully for fourteen years. However, selective amnesia about previous experience of female rule seems far from uncommon in European history. Although no other region of Europe could match this long-term record, in 1831 the new kingdom of Belgium excluded women rulers by adopting France's Salic law.

  Female Inheritance and Its Discontents

  How did women establish legitimate claims to govern so many European kingdoms between 1300 and 1800? Regardless of their actual size, kingdoms outranked everything except empires in prestige; and, with the notable exception of France, they usually followed rules of dynastic succession that opened possibilities for women to become monarchs “by the Grace of God.” In reality, only four general principles governed dynastic successions to major states almost everywhere in Christian Europe. In order of descending importance, they were (1) legitimate birth, (2) masculine priority, (3) direct over collateral descent, and (4) primogeniture. All but the last came directly from Roman law. These fundamental guidelines seemed so obvious and uncontroversial that contemporaries rarely bothered to put them in writing. The most comprehensive discussion of female rule fills only a few pages of an obscure treatise, written in French by a Protestant Scot named David Chambers and printed at Paris in 1579. It asserts that in kingdoms and lesser hereditary governments “it is a general rule that women succeed in the absence of males,” adding with some exaggeration that “their government in such cases is universally received at all times and approved by all nations"—unless, as was the case in the place it was printed, “some great consideration by a special positive law orders the contrary.”8

  Useful information about how the rules of dynastic succession were actually applied must therefore be sought in evidence from a few unusually complex situations. These include royal prenuptial contracts involving succession rights of future children born to spouses from states with differing customs, for example, Elizabeth I's premarital agreement with a French crown prince; final testaments of monarchs with children from different marriages, especially Henry VIII of England, who had successively delegitimized and relegitimized his daughters; disputed successions like that of Portugal in 1580, where the three leading claimants were the son of an elder royal daughter, the daughter of a younger royal son, and an illegitimate son of a younger royal son; England's Glorious Revolution of 1688, when a legitimate royal son had to be bastardized and a usurping foreign prince learned that a royal daughter took precedence over a royal nephew; and Habsburg family compacts, among which the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 became exceptionally important because, by placing territorial unity above everything else, including gender, it made possible the amazing inheritance of the then-unborn Maria Theresa.