Brutal queens in world history

12. Let’s start with a story of eye-gouging because every ancient tale of kings and queens should include someone getting their eyes torn out.

This queen in question was Irene of Athens. She was born sometime around the year 750.

We don’t know too much about her early days, but we do know she came from a family that could greatly influence politics. That meant she was always destined to be involved in all that violent malarkey that came with politics back then.

It seems as though she might have been an orphan who was adopted into this family, with the head of the family being a guy named Constantine Sarantapechos. He was either her uncle or cousin but what’s important is that he was a patrician, a part of the ruling class in the great city of Athens. Irene ended up getting hitched to the son of the Byzantine ruler Emperor Constantine V. This son, Leo, may have picked her from a bride show. Irene was apparently easy on the eyes. In short, they had a son, and then when the emperor died, Leo became the new emperor. That made Irene the empress.

So, things were now looking fine and dandy for Irene, although things were never really fine in the Byzantine royal back rooms. That was where all the talk of skullduggery took place and it is where people spread vicious rumors after Irene’s Leo kicked the bucket.

She was made regent and her son, now nine, was in a precarious position being so young and there being many people from the family thinking they should be the next emperor. This young boy may have been a kind of emperor, but a lot of powerful people didn’t think that was right.

This was a tricky time for Irene, so she did what any queen would do and called in for some backup.

That backup was mainly a bunch of Byzantine-era special forces called the Excubitors.

It seems she got busy banishing folks from the city of Constantinople, and she may also have had the whip brought out now and again for anyone thinking about making a fuss in the royal court. If you were loyal to Irene, you stayed. If you were not loyal, you were banished, or whipped until you had a change of mind. But it seems as a regent she was quite power-hungry, loving to see her face on coins which was normally a privilege reserved for the emperor. Let’s remember here that being a female regent wasn’t easy. There were just too many people who wanted you dead. Take, for instance, Empress Martina.

Martina was the last woman to become regent prior to Irene and guess what happened to her?

After about one year in the big seat, she was accused of poisoning folks and being power-hungry. So, they cut out her tongue. Her sons were then paraded in front of her, and their noses were cut off. Her youngest sons were castrated. Then the lot of them were banished to a small island.

Make no mistake, Irene knew all about that story. She ruled well, making just the right friendships, but her son started getting a bit peeved with her as he turned into a man. This ended with an open rebellion, but Irene came out on top, and it seems she forgave her son at first. He tried again to topple her, and again he failed, this time running away to the provinces.

But, Irene’s army caught up with him and dragged him back to the palace. He pleaded with his mother but she was having none of it. She told her men to rip out his eyes, which they did, leaving the young man screaming on the floor. He may actually have not survived the ordeal.

Losing your eyes or nose in those days was serious business, given that they had no skilled surgeons as we do now or medications for infections. So, was Irene a brutal ruler? Well, let’s be honest, she was almost always surrounded by potential enemies. We know that a mother watching on as her son’s eyes are ripped out is what you might call a tad brutal, but back then it wasn’t all that strange. Irene was deposed after a while and sent to an island where she lived for about one year and died. She apparently became a wool spinner during that last year, which is quite a fall for a former queen. She was probably in her mid to late 40s at the time of her death. Ok, now for someone downright crazy, and we mean in the maniac sense of the word.

11. Maria Eleonora is such a wonderful-sounding name, but Maria the Monster also has a ring to it. Her story starts at the beginning of the 17th century when the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, was looking for a wife. One day he’d become an accomplished military leader, but in his early 20s,

he did what his mother told him. He actually wanted to marry a woman named Ebba Brahe, but his mother wouldn’t allow that. They still wrote to each other often, but it seems nothing really came of the relationship. Then the king got wind of a 17-year old girl who many said was the most beautiful person around. This was Maria Eleonora.

They eventually married, although its said Maria could have gotten married to any number of rich and powerful men including the king of England. She was generally well-liked by most people, although historians say she liked to party a bit too much. Her favorite pastime was watching shows which consisted of actors who were severe mental problems. She also loved shows where the actors had dwarfism. So, in general, she liked mocking people who were let’s say a bit different from her. Then something went wrong. She had a miscarriage, and it seems this sent her over the edge.

She walked around using foul language, screaming at anyone close by using the most obscene words. She also became paranoid and violent, which is never a good mix.

She later had a child, and that kid died after about one year. Remember that the King needed a son, too, but most of the time he was risking life and limb in battles. That could mean no male heir if he died while fighting, and this put a lot of pressure on Maria.

Then they finally had a baby girl, although Maria was horrified at what she saw. The baby, to be named Christina, had a certain genetic condition which meant she was covered in hair.

Having a baby that resembled bigfoot seems to have finally sent her fully over the edge.

Her first words when the baby was handed to her were, “Instead of a son, I am given a daughter, dark and ugly, with a great nose and black eyes. Take her from me, I will not have such a monster!" She had good moments, but many bad ones. She got pregnant again and with a bump in her stomach had a boating accident.

She then shouted to her friends, “Jesus, I cannot feel my child!” This became yet another miscarriage. She really wanted a baby boy, of course.

But what she ended up with was a girl that she’d hated from day one. It’s suspicious then that Christina kept having strange accidents throughout her young life like falling down the stairs multiple times, which was probably her tumbling down after being pushed by her mom. So, while her husband was away fighting in wars, she was at home torturing her kid.

On various occasions, Christina should have died in those accidents, so we are going to call that attempted murder. Then, when Christina was seven, her father died.

Guess who Maria blamed for the death? She blamed the daughter she so much detested. For about one year, Maria forced Christina to stay in a dark room alone. There were candles, but Maria expressly told the servants that not one beam of light should enter that room. But here’s the kicker, for a while the dead body of the king was placed in an open casket on the bed and Maria told Christina she had to sleep next to it. Yes, she had lost the plot, so much so that she had Christina taken away from her. She was the mother from hell, although we think she had some serious mental health issues.

Ok, now for arguably the most hated queen of all time.

10. This is the story of Marie-Antoinette.

A beautiful and cruel queen is living the high life in France, where countless people are starving to death. Life is so unfair and unequal that one of the greatest revolutions is about to happen and it’s going to lead to a lot of rich folks losing their heads. When we say living standards were unequal, we are talking about the obscene wealth of people living in lavishly opulent 50-bedroom country houses and poor people who could not even afford a piece of bread each day.

As a certain story goes, one day in 1789 a servant was brushing the queen’s hair when someone came into the room and announced something along the lines of, “Your majesty. The harvest has been a terrible one and people are dying from famine. There is no bread to eat.” Marie replied, “Let them eat cake.” She was so out of touch with reality

that she really thought her people could all eat expensive cakes.

Historians tell us she never actually said that, or probably didn’t. The story might have been told time and again just to show how selfish the nobility was. Marie spent money on unbelievable luxuries when the people of France could not eat, and she was taking her money from public funds. It didn’t help her case that she was also said to be a bit of a Libertine. So, when she appeared in the Place de la Révolution on her execution day you can bet that it was a huge celebration. She was, without doubt, the most hated woman in France. At about 12.15 pm her head was placed on the block of the guillotine and whoosh; the queen was dead. Was she really that brutal? Maybe not so much compared to the other women you’ll hear about today, but let’s be honest, to enjoy living in insane luxury while not caring at all about mass death from starvation going on around you isn’t exactly a nice thing.

Right, let’s now talk about one of history’s most infamous serial killer.

9. Her name was Elizabeth Báthory, and while

she was a countess and not a queen, her story is too outstanding to not include on this list.

The records show that this woman was almost inhuman in regard to the utter sadism she inflicted on people.

For one, she seems to have hated her servants and she would torture and kill them over the smallest matters. She even had a special torture room built for her brutal daily activities. In the late 1500s and early 1600s, she used her power to lure peasants back to her abode. She preferred good-looking young women, whose blood she thought would help her retain her beauty in old age. She would sometimes tear at the woman with her teeth, like a savage animal. But, after 100s of peasants had died some people became suspicious, especially as it was getting harder to get rid of the dead bodies.

Bathory got older and became convinced that drinking her victim’s blood wasn’t working, so she told her servants to go out and find her women and girls with noble blood. These were hard to come by, so her servants ended up dressing peasants up in fine clothes and telling them they had to pretend to be noble. To cut a long story short, the authorities were finally pushed into starting an investigation, even if Bathory was supremely powerful. They ended up finding mutilated bodies around her massive house, including folks who’d obviously been chewed on by Bathory. As you can imagine, this became a great scandal. About 300 people came forward and explained just how sadistic Bathory was, and how one day they’d sent their child to see her, and the child never came back.

The servants who’d helped Bathory pick up the victims were all beheaded, but Bathory, being so rich, was just told she’d have to spend the rest of her life locked in a rather luxurious castle. We’ll never know the exact number of her victims, but it could have been as many as 650.

Let’s now go over to Asia.

8. Wu Zetian was a Chinese woman who historians have from time to time called a tyrant ruler.

Born on February 17, 624, for a time she took over what was known as the Tang Dynasty. She might have had some tyrannical leanings, but back in those days getting blood on your hands was part and parcel of being a ruler. It must be said, though, that she lessened corruption and was behind some positive economic reforms. She was a good leader, in some respects.

It’s what she did to get to power that you could call a little bit sketchy. For instance, when she was just starting out she joined the harem of Emperor Gaozong. Once there, she went about killing others in the harem to ensure that one day she would become the empress.

Some historians have written that to stay in power she was absolutely ruthless, and may even have murdered two of her own children, although that is still up for debate. It should be said that this particular rumor surfaced long after she had died. Then after she secured her position, she kept it by coming down hard on anyone that criticized her. Some of those that did, were either sent into exile or executed. It seems this kind of thing went on all throughout her life, although as we said, those days, in general, could be brutal. Next up is another person who it seems lost her mind.

7. Her name was Maria I,

known for being for the first Queen of Portugal and often called Maria the Pious there. But in

Brazil, a country where she was also the monarch, she got the name “Maria the Mad”.

She was the eldest daughter of King Dom José. When he passed away in 1777, Maria took the throne. She had a husband who became king, King Dom Pedro III, but it was her who was the lineal heir to the throne and so she wielded all the power. It seems at the start she did a pretty good job, but something wasn’t quite right in her mind, and she often suffered from debilitating bouts of melancholia.

When these came on she would often became delirious and then end up having to be carried home. Her husband died, and let’s just say things didn’t get much better for her after that. Like the Roman Emperor Caligula had once done after the death of his sister, Maria made sure everyone under her mourned for this great man. She made life miserable for normal people because of her own loss, not allowing regular festivities to take place.

But she wasn’t only a party pooper. It wasn’t long until she couldn’t rule at all, and spent much of her time alone in her room. This was a place from where people would often hear wild screams.

She was later taken to Brazil, but things didn’t get any better there. She spent all of her time alone in bed, half-mad, hence that’s why in Brazil they called her “Maria the Mad”. She stayed like that until she died in 1816. So, while Maria might not be the most brutal woman on this list, she was certainly a terrible queen once her madness kicked in.