livys:

some facts about historical ladies:

• you probably know antony and cleopatra, but mark antony’s (second?) wife was a woman named fulvia, who (among other things) supposedly taught mark antony to submit to women, raised an army in her husband’s defense, and stuck a silver pin in cicero’s tongue after he died because he talked so much shit about her husband. 
• speaking of roman women: livia drusilla, wife of octavian augustus, is often painted by historians as an evil scheming matriarch, but actually was her husband’s right hand woman and played a pretty instrumental role as his advisor and propaganda partner.
• rock on, ladies.
• and speaking of everyone’s favorite roman-egyptian power couple: julia domna, mother of the boy emperor alexander severus, was a direct descendent of antony and cleopatra vii through their daughter, queen cleopatra selene
• honestly i could talk about roman women all day, but:
• medieval women are pretty great too.
• hypatia of alexandria was an egyptian polymath, teacher and inventor, and headed up the neoplatonic school at the beginning of the fifth century.
• empress irene of byzantium was basically the definition of a historical hbic. among other things, she defeated a conspiracy against her by making the plotters priests so they couldn’t rule, almost married charlemagne, and reigned as empress while the carolingians in france bawled about a woman being on the roman throne.
• eleanor of aquitaine needs a separate post but she is so intense, please read about her
• on the subject of lesser known women: i love love love ladies from the margins of history and gemma donati, who married the famous poet dante alighieri, is really not as well known as she should be. she was a member of the house of donati, who are kind of like the borgias, if the borgias were medieval florentines. the head of the family, her cousin corso, was the leader of an authoritarian political party that opposed her husband’s, and when corso marched on florence at the head of a french army in 1301, gemma’s husband and her two sons were forced into exile. she was immensely strong, raised three kids in horrible family-wrecking circumstances, and without her keeping things sane her husband would have been even more of a trainwreck than he was. we don’t talk about her enough.
• moving on to the renaissance: all the women of the house of medici (especially catherine) are kickass, but in terms of dynasts i especially love
• lucrezia borgia, who was and is one of the coolest ladies ever. she was the daughter of pope alexander vi and a member of one of the most gloriously fucked-up families in history. rumored to have slept with her brother (although they were especially close, the whole family was, that probably wasn’t true) and poisoned anyone she didn’t like, she was basically the libertine of libertines when she was living in rome. later, she married alfonso d’este and became duchess of ferrara, and she was a great and popular governor. lucrezia was extremely intelligent, jawdroppingly beautiful, an excellent politician– generally the renaissance hbic. all kneel before the queen.
• caterina sforza, aka the tigress of forli (i mean, how badass do you have to be to get a nickname like that) was a member of the (murderous, slightly insane) ruling dynasty of milan, and famously defended her city against cesare borgia, personally commanding her forces. (she was beaten and taken in chains to the castel sant’angelo, but not without one hell of a fight.)