The Outrageous Queens

Book excerpt: The Outrageous Queens tells the stories of a dozen Royal women. All make fascinating psychological studies of women who wielded immense power in a world where liberty for women was an undreamed of concept. Yet they proved that when it came to intrigue - sometimes up to the point, of assassination - they were equal to any male monarch of their times. Some played the role of warrior queens - red-haired Boudicca whose vengeance cost over a hundred thousand lives, the evidence of which is still to be found beneath the City of London; Eleanor of Aquitaine who took her "Amazons" on a crusade to Outremer; Henrietta Maria, the "generalissima" who led an army in the Civil War.