Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics

by Jason Porath

  So, at the end, what picture are we left with of Jezebel? She was a strong-willed, devout, surprisingly religiously tolerant woman who built ties with other cultures. If the story of her ham-fisted land grab is true, that’s about the worst thing you could say about her—which, let’s be honest, is pretty minor in the grand scheme of all the people in the Old Testament. Heck, one could even applaud her initiative in taking the reins while Ahab was being a gloomy gus.

  Her real crime, the one for which she has been labeled as the poster child for seduction, was to back the wrong god. Despite the fact that this description fit virtually every person on earth at the time, she was the one to receive punishment—because she dared to open up Ahab’s mind to other religions. In the millennia since, this politically pragmatic stance has been repainted as one of the grandest seductions in history. Despite it having brought a degree of peace, stability, and civility to the region unmatched for centuries on either side of Jezebel’s era. Arguably, all the way to today.

  Qiu Jin

  (1875–1907, CHINA)

  The Heroine Who Wrote Her Own Destiny

  For Qiu Jin,* it was not enough to garner the respect of intellectuals across the country in her fight for women’s rights. It was not enough for her to overthrow the Qing dynasty that controlled her country. It was not enough to be considered one of the great poets of the century. Qiu Jin had to carve a place for herself in history. She had to be like her legendary childhood idols, Hua Mulan and Princess Pingyang. She had to be a hero.

  And so, in 1907, she greeted the Qing government forces who’d come to arrest her with a hail of gunfire.

  It had been a long, winding road from upper-class beginnings to the executioner’s block. Instilled with a rebellious spirit from childhood, Qiu Jin moved toward all-out societal mayhem in her twenties, when the Boxer Rebellion shocked China. With her country on the brink of disaster, she could no longer stand by as a housewife. In a move that scandalized her social circles (but not her supportive family), she left behind her conservative husband and her two children to go study in Japan.

  In Japan, she radically transformed herself. She took on male clothing and a nickname meaning either “challenger of men” or “emulate male bravery” (depending on the translation). She joined numerous radical Chinese groups operating outside of Chinese borders, including the Triads and the Tongmenghui secret society (which would eventually prove instrumental in overthrowing the Qing dynasty). But most importantly, she became a voice for a new generation of women.

  Writing speeches and newsletters in a colloquial style,* she advocated for both women’s rights and the overthrow of the government. She spoke out against the practice of foot binding (of which she’d been a victim) and urged women to cease being illiterate slaves to their husbands and start becoming independent workers of their own volition. She tied this directly to her nationalistic jingoism: “Men can no longer protect [China], so how can we depend on them? If we fail to rouse ourselves, it will be too late after the nation perishes.”

  When Japan, under pressure from the Qing dynasty, expelled the Chinese dissidents, Qiu Jin became even more radicalized. Thrusting her ever-ready dagger into a podium, she shouted, “If I return to the motherland, surrender to the Manchu barbarians, and deceive the Han people, stab me with this dagger!” Before returning to China, she went to Yokohama to learn bomb-making from Russian anarchists—and almost blew up her room in Shanghai when she returned!

  Once in China, she began running a secret rural military training academy. While the secret organization kept up a front as a school for sports teachers, Qiu Jin was hardly low-key about its true nature. Flamboyant, outspoken, and even a bit elitist, she refused to ever again play the part of a submissive woman. This did not endear her to the neighboring country folk, or to her more socially conservative revolutionary comrades. Within months, the rebels’ plans for armed revolt had been leaked—her comrades’ premature assassination of a local governor certainly didn’t help—and government troops were on the way.

  But instead of running, Qiu Jin stood her ground. In the same mold as the folk heroes she idolized, she was determined to be a martyr for her cause. She was executed at age 32. Her last words were: “Autumn rain, autumn wind, they make one die of sorrow.”

  Qiu Jin’s death was widely criticized and marked a further decline in popular opinion on the Qing dynasty. The same year she died one of the Qing dynasty’s last princesses, Yoshiko Kawashima, was born. Once the Qing dynasty fell, Qiu Jin was elevated to the status of folk hero, as she’d always wanted.

  • ART NOTES AND TRIVIA •

  The setting is autumn, in reference to Qiu Jin’s final words—which, in turn, were a play on her surname Qiu, the Chinese character for “autumn.”

  She is seen here cutting a red string around her ankle. This is a reference to the Chinese legend of the red string of fate, which holds that an invisible red string binds two people fated to be together (in the Chinese legend, it’s by the ankle; in the Japanese, by the little finger). In cutting it, she’s divorcing herself from her husband.

  The undone bandages around her feet are a reference to her history with bound feet.

  Yoshiko Kawashima

  (1907–1948, CHINA/JAPAN)

  The Traitor Princess of Manchuria

  There are few women in modern history whose life story is more of a political hot potato than Yoshiko Kawashima’s. A princess of the Qing dynasty during its collapse, Kawashima—aka Aisin Gioro Xianyu, aka Dongzhen, aka Jin Bihui—was alternately a traitorous villain to her people and an iconoclastic heroine who fought for her beliefs, depending on whom you ask. Bottom line, she was a woman caught between many identities: Manchu, Chinese, and Japanese; female and male; soldier and royalty.

  All of which makes her biography, frankly, a complete disaster.

  The complication of Kawashima’s identity started early on. When she was six, the Qing dynasty, of which Kawashima herself was a part, collapsed and the emperor Pu Yi was forced to abdicate—thus ending 2,000 years of imperial rule in China and plunging the country into war between various warlord factions. Her father, in order to secure a Japanese alliance in restoring the Qing to power, sent her to live in Japan. It was there that she went from being known as Aisin Gioro Xianyu to Yoshiko Kawashima.

  Even this early on, her biography starts going off the rails. According to many articles and books—many of which inarguably focus on presenting her in the worst light possible—her foster grandfather raped her and she had an affair with her foster father. Subsequently, she married a Mongolian prince, but the union was short-lived. Afterwards, she spent several years in Tokyo in (what many paint as) an endless bacchanal of drinking, gambling, and affairs with partners both male and female.

  At some point in her twenties, Kawashima became involved with the Japanese military as a spy, working toward reinstating the Qing dynasty. The stories swirling around this part of her life are equally colorful. An oft-repeated tale is that she seduced a Japanese major at a party (through a shared fetish for boots!), thus gaining a foothold in the spy service. She secured her position as a spy soon thereafter when, disguised as a man, she demonstrated her abilities by sneaking into the offices of a Japanese colonel.*

  If the stories of Kawashima’s origins were nuts, they were nothing compared to those from her spy career:

  • She disguised herself as a rickshaw driver to sneak Pu Yi, the Qing emperor, out of the city. After several days of hiding him in alleys and stables, she managed to smuggle him to safety, all the while having an affair with his wife, Elizabeth (Empress Wanrong).

  • She entered a brothel and pretended to be a Korean prostitute to gather information.

  • She made money for herself by taking control of a number of gambling operations and blackmailing her ostensibly staggering number of lovers, one of whom attempted suicide because of her.

  • She placed a cobra in Pu Yi’s bed to make it look like someone was trying to assassinate him.


  • She delivered two camouflaged bombs to Pu Yi, under the pretense that they were from his enemies, and then “discovered” and defused them.

  • She married a number of provincial Chinese princes in order to solidify support for the Qing. Shortly after each wedding, she’d slip out and her husband would never see her again.

  • At the fourth of said wedding ceremonies, she was stabbed by a Chinese man dressed as a merchant.

  • She hired gangs of Chinese thugs to attack Japanese businesses in order to build support for the Japanese.

  • She led huge armies, commanding at various times over 5,000 “Rough Riders.”

  Part of the reason these stories took root was that they were all grounded in some amount of truth. Kawashima did dress like a man the majority of the time.* Japan did frame others for spy-manufactured incidents, thus giving the Japanese grounds to invade China.* As a highly visible supporter of Japan’s newly established and widely hated puppet government (Manchukuo), Kawashima was to be a lightning rod for such criticism.

  But was the criticism legitimate? Well, depends on whom you ask. The Chinese and Japanese articles are predictably one-sided, painting Kawashima as either a villain or a hero. The American press of the 1930s viewed her as a dashing heroine but by the 1940s described her as a debauched traitor. Various epithets for her used across the years include “Manchuria’s Joan of Arc,” “The Asian Mata Hari,”* and “Eastern Jewel.” As most of the contemporary writing on her was wartime propaganda to some degree, it’s hard to know what to take seriously.

  In 1945, Manchukuo fell to the Chinese, Kawashima was put on trial, and here we find some of the only insight into who she actually was. Traumatized by the poor treatment of her family after Pu Yi was ousted, she viewed her actions in reestablishing the Qing as for the good of China. While she declared herself a Japanese national, her loyalty, she proclaimed, was always to China.

  Her appeals fell on deaf ears, and she was sentenced to death. While most accounts agree that Kawashima was put before a firing squad, many describe her being beheaded by swordsmen, and some say she was killed by a mob of hammer-wielding assailants in “the Death of the Little Hammers,” an attack reserved for traitors.

  Her last line of defense for her reputation, a half-finished autobiography mentioned in death row interviews, seems to have been lost to the ages. One of her last summaries of her life, a quote given to a journalist in her last days, was simply: “Today I am like a flake of snow next to a hot stove.”

  • ART NOTES AND TRIVIA •

  Kawashima is here escaping with Pu Yi, after whipping off a Chinese bridal dress. She’s followed by a mob of enemies, some wielding hammers and some wielding knives.

  In front of the rickshaw is a cobra, a callback to the story of her attempt to poison Pu Yi with one.

  She was politically on the opposite end from Qiu Jin, also featured in this book. In fact, she was born two months before Qiu Jin’s death.

  Joan of Arc

  (1412–1431, FRANCE)

  The Maid of Orleans

  We nearly lived in a world without France.

  In 1429, France and England were nine decades into what would later be erroneously termed the Hundred Years’ War. (It actually went on for around 112.) Due to decades of infighting and generally not having its crap together, France was on the verge of joining Silla, Babylonia, and the Western Roman Empire in the Non-Existent States Club.

  This is not hyperbole. France had lost thousands of soldiers in humiliating battles with the English. At the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, despite outnumbering the British by up to six to one (depending on estimates), the French received one of the most severe drubbings in history, losing around 10,000 soldiers to England’s 112. Afterwards, many French nobles began supporting the English king, Henry V, to take the throne, which would have effectively reduced France to an English province. Possibly forever.

  Into the midst of this chaos strolled Joan (aka Jeanne) of Arc: an uneducated farm girl with a sharp tongue and a sharper sword. With the certainty that came from angelic voices guiding her every move, she led French forces in a string of miraculous victories over the En-glish, thus fulfilling a well-known prophecy. Soon thereafter, she was abandoned by the French king, Charles VII, betrayed to the English, put on trial for heresy, and burned at the stake.

  Or so goes the legend. But let’s be honest, the legend is total crazytown.

  How did a teenage peasant girl even get to the king—were his guards on a smoke break or something? Why did anyone think that the best choice for leading the army was a random pubescent girl who heard voices? And more importantly: how, in the nine hells and seven heavens, did this teenager actually manage to win?

  The answer to most of these questions: Yolande of Aragon.

  Who, you ask? Well, she would probably be glad you didn’t know. You see, Yolande of Aragon, mother-in-law of Charles VII, was one of the craftiest women in French history. Ruler of a great many provinces (she was known as the Queen of Four Kingdoms, although she ran more than that), she shaped Europe’s lines of succession for decades through her skillful, stealthy diplomacy. Because of her intense secrecy, even now her influence on events can often only be inferred. But make no mistake: this is the story of two women, one covert and one overt.

  Let’s start with the matter of getting the king’s ear. The prophecy stated that, unlikely as it may seem, a virgin girl from eastern France would rise up and lead the French forces to victory—a description that fit Joan perfectly. Problem is, it also fit a lot of other women perfectly. In the year 1428 alone, 20 people were recorded as having tried to deliver messages from God to the king. But only one was able to get an actual audience, because only one was saying what Yolande wanted him to hear.

  Interesting fact about that prophecy, which managed to stand out against the myriad other prophecies of the time: it originated from Yolande’s provinces. Provinces known for troubadours, minstrels, and storytellers. Many of whom were employed by Yolande herself.

  Expert fortune-telling or 15th-century “help wanted” ad? The world may never know.

  Joan’s ostensibly miraculous appearance before Charles VII succeeded in kicking the gloomy monarch into action against the English. With the backing of Yolande, Joan was given joint control of the armies Yolande had gathered months earlier. Armies that Charles had up to then been reluctant to use until he’d received word of his assured victory from God, by way of Joan.

  It’s easy, at this point, to dismiss Joan’s role as a mere symbol, a cheerleader recruited to kick-start France into action. In fact, many historians do just that, writing her off as a morale-booster who rallied the troops while operating under a series of possibly schizophrenic delusions. This view of things, however, overlooks the facts. And the facts are that she was a terrifyingly brutal warlord. (Also something the legend tends to leave out.)

  Joan started her military campaigns by screaming bloody murder at the English. Literally—from across a river, she’d bellow at them to surrender, lest she kill them. Although they laughed it off, she soon carried through on her threats. As an example, when she sacked the town of Jargeau, her troops went past the point of killing the 700 English troops and went on to kill an estimated 400 disloyal French citizens. Quickly, her reputation for both inspiring her troops and cowing her enemies into submission became her chief weapon. In all, she only fought in 13 battles, whereas upwards of 30 towns surrendered to her without a fight.

  But even this ruthlessness doesn’t answer the question of how, exactly, a teenage farm girl could be so successful in battle. Many historians assume that other generals did virtually all the work. She is, however, credited by a large number of sources with mastery of cannons, making it difficult to write her off so easily.

  How and where a seemingly ordinary teenager became a master of cannon warfare is a matter of much debate (and confusion). The best explanation out there seems to lie in the very fact that she was a commoner. Cannon warfare w
as relatively new at the time, and the weapons were manned by members of the lower class. In all likelihood, the aristocratic generals who planned out battles would have scarcely talked to such men, and thus would have had little idea of how to effectively utilize the new weaponry. Joan, however, occupied a gray area of being simultaneously a lower-class farm girl and an upper-class general. It makes sense that she would have talked to the cannoneers when no other general would and thus would know how to properly use the things. To be clear, this is speculation—nobody really knows!

  In any event, once Joan’s cannon-led warfare secured for Charles VII a significant foothold in France, he turned his back on her. Playing it safe after such huge historical losses, Charles VII and Yolande began to parlay diplomatic solutions to secure the English expulsion. Joan, on the other hand, charged forward with a rapidly diminishing amount of supplies and troops. Eventually, on the verge of being captured by the English, she jumped from a tall building, with the aim of dying instead of being taken alive. She survived, however, and was turned over to the (incredibly angry) English, who locked her in chains and proceeded to torture her.

  The political farce of a trial that followed showed that Joan was a sarcastic spitfire. The English priests, hell-bent on proving that God was on their side, sought to prove Joan a fraud. When they asked her if Saint Michael appeared to her naked, she replied, “Do you think that God cannot afford to clothe him?” When asked if the saint had hair, she said, “Why should it have been cut off?” Even just getting her to swear to tell the truth was an all-day affair: she refused to join them in even the slightest prayer until she was allowed to confess her sins—for which she would have received absolution, thus invalidating all need for a trial.