About this book:

*Queens and Queen-Makers: Women, Power, and Dynastic Survival* explores how women navigated and mastered monarchical systems designed to exclude them. By examining the diverse roles of queens regnant, consorts, queen-mothers, and regents, the text argues that female agency was not an exceptional anomaly but a structural necessity for dynastic continuity. Across cultures—from the Asantehemaa of West Africa and the Valide Sultans of the Ottoman Empire to European sovereigns like Isabella of Castile—royal women utilized a consistent toolkit of marriage statecraft, economic autonomy through dower and dowry, and the cultivation of sophisticated patronage networks.

The book details the practical "infrastructure of rule," demonstrating how women converted domestic spaces, such as the household and the nursery, into centers of administrative and political power. Through the management of education, medical politics, and communication networks, queens influenced the next generation of rulers and gathered vital intelligence to navigate factional court politics. Furthermore, the text highlights how royal women used ritual, pageantry, and architectural patronage to manufacture legitimacy and anchor their authority in the public imagination, often performing the functions of sovereignty even when they did not hold the formal title of monarch.

Expanding its scope beyond Europe, the narrative analyzes the unique configurations of female power in the Islamic world, Asia, and the indigenous Americas. It illustrates how women in these regions leveraged religious law, matrilineal traditions, and maritime trade to protect their realms from internal collapse and external colonial threats. Whether through the direct military leadership of figures like Rani Lakshmibai or the "soft power" of diplomatic correspondence, these women acted as "queen-makers" who stabilized regimes during successional crises and interregnums.

Ultimately, the book examines the long-term legacies and "afterlives" of these women, showing how their reputations have been curated, mythologized, or erased by subsequent historical narratives. By recovering the financial ledgers, legal petitions, and architectural footprints they left behind, the text asserts that the survival of monarchies depended on the adaptability and resourcefulness of women. Their history serves as a recalibrated map of power, placing queens at the heart of political history as indispensable architects of statecraft and dynastic survival.