She Didn't Wait for Permission
Biographies, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce Biographies, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

She Didn't Wait for Permission

‍International Women's Day asks us to celebrate the women who refused to accept the limits placed upon them. Who pushed back. Who led. Who endured. And every year, we tend to look to the recent past — to suffragettes, trailblazers, and glass-ceiling-breakers of the modern era.

‍But what about the women who did all of that eight hundred years before anyone thought to name it?

‍Meet Nicola de la Haye. Sheriff of Lincolnshire. Castellan of Lincoln Castle. The woman who, in 1217, successfully defended one of England's most strategically vital fortresses against a French-backed rebel army: at the age of approximately seventy. She didn't wait for permission, and she didn’t expect plaudits: because no one was going to give it.

‍ What the Twelfth Century Said Women Were

‍The medieval world had very clear ideas about women's place in society, and those ideas were enforced from pulpit, court, and custom alike. Women were considered intellectually weaker than men, legally subordinate to their fathers and husbands, and spiritually suspect - daughters of Eve, prone to temptation and manipulation(!!!). Church fathers and contemporary writers were emphatic on the subject. Women should be silent, obedient, and invisible in public life.

‍I've explored just how relentless and inventive that misogyny was in my medieval misogyny series, including a look at the men who competed, with some enthusiasm, for the title of Worst Villain to Women of the 12th Century. It's a crowded field.

‍What Nicola de la Haye Actually Did

Nicola inherited the hereditary castellanship of Lincoln Castle from her father, and she held it through two marriages, through political upheaval, through sieges and civil wars, and with a grip that no one could prise loose. She administered justice, she negotiated with kings, defied a rogue justiciar who threatened the kingdom whilst Richard the Lionheart was on crusade, and she commanded garrisons and organised castle defences - incredibly well.

When King John's reign collapsed into civil war and a French prince threatened to take the English throne, Nicola was the one defending Lincoln.

She was also, at various points, told she was too old, too female, and too inconvenient. She resigned her position as castellan (constable), but was promptly reappointed, because no one else could do it as well as she could.

And one of King John’s last acts was to make her the first female sheriff in England - Sheriff of Lincoln.

‍This is the woman at the heart of my novel Lady of Lincoln: not a fictional heroine invented to fit a modern template, but a real woman whose story has simply been waiting to be told.

Read More
Fastrada: Charlemagne’s Queen History Tried to Forget
HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Fastrada: Charlemagne’s Queen History Tried to Forget

Charlemagne is usually thought of as the iron-willed king, crowned Emperor of the Romans in 800, architect of a European empire and champion of learning and reform. What we never hear about, however, are the women who stood beside him: women whose influence shaped politics, justice, and the fragile stability of his realm.

One of the most controversial of these women was Fastrada, Charlemagne’s fourth wife and queen, a woman remembered less for what she did than for how male chroniclers chose to describe her.

A Frankish Noblewoman in a Dangerous Court

Fastrada was born into the high Frankish nobility around the mid-8th century, the daughter of Count Radulf. Her marriage to Charlemagne in 783 was not a romantic match but a strategic one, strengthening ties between powerful families within the Frankish heartlands. This was a period when Charlemagne’s empire was expanding rapidly through conquest, forced conversion, and ruthless suppression of revolt.

Queens in the Carolingian world were not crowned consorts in the later medieval sense, but they were far from ornamental. They managed households, acted as intermediaries, dispensed patronage, and, crucially, advised the king. Fastrada arrived at court at a moment when Charlemagne’s rule was under strain from internal rebellion, particularly in Saxony.

“Cruel” Queen or Convenient Scapegoat?

Our surviving sources paint Fastrada in dark colours. Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer, describes her as harsh and cruel, claiming that her influence made the king more severe in judgement. Later chroniclers echoed this, blaming her for brutal punishments meted out against rebels and dissenters.

But this raises an uncomfortable question: Was Fastrada truly cruel, or was she blamed for decisions Charlemagne himself made?

Early medieval queens were often held responsible when kings ruled harshly. Advising firmness could easily be reframed as bloodthirstiness, especially when the adviser was a woman. Fastrada’s reputation may tell us more about medieval anxieties over female influence than about her actual character.

It is worth noting that Charlemagne’s most notorious acts of brutality, including the mass executions of Saxons, predated and outlasted Fastrada’s life. Yet only she became a symbol of excessive severity.

Read More
Wu Zetian: The Woman Who Ruled an Empire
HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Wu Zetian: The Woman Who Ruled an Empire

When we think of medieval power, the mind rarely leaps to a woman occupying the highest throne in one of the world’s greatest empires. Yet in 7th-century China, one woman did precisely that. Wu Zetian (624–705 CE) rose from low-ranking concubine to become China’s only female emperor; not merely empress consort, nor regent, but sovereign ruler in her own right.

In a world shaped by Confucian ideals that explicitly declared women inferior and unfit for leadership, her ascent was nothing short of astonishing.

And like many powerful women in history, Wu Zetian has been remembered through a haze of scandal, propaganda, and deliberate distortion. It’s time to peel back the layers and re-examine the woman behind the legend.

From Concubine to Emperor: A Rise Unlike Any Other

Wu Zetian entered the palace of Emperor Taizong as a teenage concubine; one among hundreds, hardly expected to influence politics. After Taizong’s death she should, by custom, have been sent to a Buddhist convent. Instead, she returned to the palace of his successor, Emperor Gaozong, beginning her ascent through skill, cunning, and what later historians would call “unwomanly ambition.”

Smooth Operator

But ambition alone did not place her on the throne. She possessed a sharp intelligence and administrative brilliance; a talent for identifying capable officials, many of whom became her loyal supporters; and a capacity to counter, outmanoeuvre, or neutralise rival factions.

When Gaozong suffered debilitating strokes, Wu Zetian took charge of state affairs. After his death, she ruled first through her sons and eventually dispensed with that formality entirely, proclaiming her own dynasty: the Zhou, and naming herself Huangdi, the imperial title previously reserved for male rulers.

Read More
Empress Theodora of Byzantium: She Saved an Empire
HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Empress Theodora of Byzantium: She Saved an Empire

The latest in the blog series is a special treat for me. I’ve long been fascinated, but a bit in the dark, about the Byzantine Empire.

But it seems few women of the early Middle Ages rose as far—or have been judged as harshly—as Empress Theodora of Byzantium. Rising from the margins of Constantinople’s theatre world to become one of the most powerful women in imperial history, Theodora’s story is one of intelligence, ambition, resilience, and reinvention. And like so many extraordinary women, she was both celebrated and vilified by her contemporaries.

Who Was Empress Theodora?

Born around 500 CE, Theodora started life far from the purple. Her father was a bear trainer for the Hippodrome’s Blue faction, and after his death, Theodora and her sisters were pushed into the theatre—an environment that in Byzantium sat somewhere between entertainment, politics, and scandal. According to the hostile historian Procopius (more on him later), Theodora’s early life involved performance, satire, and possibly sex work—though his account is so malicious that modern historians tread carefully.

What we do know is that Theodora was:

  • Exceptionally intelligent, known for her quick wit and sharp political instincts

  • Socially mobile in a rigid society, rising from performer to respected mistress of the imperial court

  • Deeply religious, eventually embracing Monophysite Christianity

  • A political partner, not merely a wife, to Emperor Justinian I

When Justinian became emperor in 527 CE, Theodora ruled alongside him as Augusta, wielding extraordinary influence—sometimes surpassing that of her husband.

The Nika Riots: A Moment That Defined an Empress

Read More
Hypatia of Alexandria
HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Hypatia of Alexandria

Few figures from the ancient world deserve as much wonder, controversy, and myth-making as Hypatia of Alexandria. Renowned as a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician in a city often riven by political and religious turbulence, Hypatia has come to symbolise both the intellectual heights of late antiquity and the dangers faced by women who dared to wield knowledge and influence.

Who Was Hypatia?

Hypatia (c. 355–415 CE) was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, himself a respected scholar and the last recorded member of the Museum—the great scholarly institution associated with the Library of Alexandria (interesting fact of the day about the term ‘Museum’). Raised in this environment, Hypatia received an exceptional education in mathematics, astronomy, and Platonic philosophy. By adulthood she had surpassed her father’s reputation, becoming:

  • A leading lecturer in Neoplatonism, attracting Christian, pagan, and Jewish students alike;

  • An authority in mathematics, editing and refining works such as Diophantus’s Arithmetica and Apollonius’s Conics;

  • A public intellectual, known for her counsel to civic leaders, including the Roman prefect Orestes

She was, quite simply, quite a woman!

Murder Most Foul

Read More
Vibia Sabina: Empress, Wife of Hadrian
HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Vibia Sabina: Empress, Wife of Hadrian

I bet that if you think of Emperor Hadrian, you think about his great wall in the north of England. Possibly you might think of the Roman decadence of villas and statues made from marble. Yet beside him, often erased from the narrative, stood Vibia Sabina, his wife and Rome’s empress for more than four decades.

Her likeness survives on hundreds of coins, but her voice does not. She remains one of antiquity’s most silent women.

Read More
Claudia Procula, Pontius Pilate’s wife
HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Hedgehog Books Admin HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Hedgehog Books Admin

Claudia Procula, Pontius Pilate’s wife

Most of us know Pontius Pilate — the Roman governor who condemned Jesus to death. But how many of us know the woman who tried to stop him?

Claudia Procula (sometimes called Procula or Procla) appears only once in the New Testament, yet her brief act of conscience made her one of the most intriguing women in early Christian history, a woman caught between empire, superstition, and moral conviction.

Read More
Zipporah, the Wife of Moses
HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce HistoricalFiction, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Zipporah, the Wife of Moses

Most people, when they think of Moses, imagine him standing alone before Pharaoh or parting the Red Sea. Yet at his side was a woman—a wife, a foreigner, and a figure of quiet defiance: Zipporah, daughter of Jethro of Midian.

Who Was Zipporah?

Zipporah appears only briefly in the Book of Exodus, but her presence is unforgettable. She was one of seven daughters of a Midianite priest. When Moses fled Egypt after killing an overseer, he found refuge in Midian— and at a well, defended Jethro’s daughters from abusive shepherds. In gratitude, Jethro offered him hospitality and the hand of his daughter, Zipporah.

That is the story’s surface, but beneath it lies something far more intriguing: a woman who stepped outside her cultural boundaries to follow a fugitive foreigner; who raised children between two worlds; who faced the weight of Moses’s divine calling and still kept her own courage.

Read More
Geoffrey de Mandeville – The Terror of Widows and Nuns
CrimeAndJustice, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce CrimeAndJustice, WomeninHistory Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Geoffrey de Mandeville – The Terror of Widows and Nuns

It was in the chaos of the Anarchy that one man carved out a reputation so dark that even in an age of violence, his name stood out: Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex.

Geoffrey inherited immense lands and titles but he wanted even more, shifting loyalties between Stephen and Matilda whenever it suited him, extorting charters and privileges from both. When Stephen finally moved against him in 1143, Geoffrey unleashed a reign of terror across eastern England.

Chroniclers such as the Peterborough Chronicle and Orderic Vitalis described him as a robber baron, commanding brutal mercenaries who pillaged the countryside. Hardly chivalric, the man was a misogynist bully who preyed on the weak. For women, especially widows and nuns, he was the Devil’s own demon.

Read More