£10 / £7 Livestreamed

From Cleopatra to Catherine the Great, Boudicca to Elizabeth I, ancient Japan to 19th century Madagascar, female kings have always been a rarity, an oddity, or an undesirable outcome. In almost all places on the globe 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. Acclaimed historian Elizabeth Norton tells the scintillating story of the female kings: women who risked everything, sometimes unwillingly, to find a place in a man’s world.