'A breath-taking history of female sovereignty' -- Alison Weir
'Gripping and beautifully crafted' -- Tracy Borman
'Filled with fascinating figures from history' - Gareth Russell
These are the stories of the female kings: women who risked everything, sometimes unwillingly, to find their place in a man's world.
Female kings have always been a rarity, an oddity, or an undesirable outcome. In almost all places throughout the world a male ruler was preferred to a woman, with female inheritance vanishingly rare and frequently disputed. In spite of this, women have secured crowns - or fought for them - over several millennia.
From the lush oases of Ancient Egypt to the cherry blossomed lands of Japan, the machinations of the Tudor court to the far reaches of Pacific Island kingdoms, Women Who Ruled the World is an expansive and comprehensive history of female royal power.
Covering five millennia of global history, renowned historian Elizabeth Norton weaves together the stories of women rulers throughout the ages. Establishing beloved and already celebrated figures amongst those who have been left in the margins of history, Norton peels away the layers of time, geography and culture to reveal what it was to be a woman who ruled. Dr Elizabeth Norton is a historian and archaeologist. She has a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, another in European Archaeology from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Early Modern British History from King's College London. She has taught History at King's College London, and lectured and tutored in Archaeology at Oxford University. She is the author of several books, including The Lives of Tudor Women and England's Queens: The Biography, the first comprehensive study of English queenship from the Roman period to the present. She appears regularly on television documentaries and has experience as a historical consultant for both film and tv. A fascinating history of female rulers across time and across the world Books which focus on previously rarely discussed female history often do really well with a non-fiction audience. Similar titles include Femina and Normal Women. The thematic structure allows for a comprehensive look at many different Queens, drawing parallels across generations of monarchs
