Doomed Queens (13 page)

Centuries after her defeat, Boudicca’s very distant successor Queen Victoria channeled strength from her namesake—“Boudicca” was Old Welsh for “victorious.” The Celtic warrior queen even inspired verse from Tennyson, Victoria’s poet laureate. He wrote:

So the Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,

Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like,

Yell’d and shriek’d between her daughters in her fierce volubility.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

Have an exit strategy.

274

ike Boudicca, Queen Zenobia of Palmyra chose to lead her people into battle rather than suffer the indignities of Roman dominance. Zenobia lived two hundred years after Boudicca had met her unfortunate end. Presumably she learned from the warrior queen’s tragic example, since she wrangled a happier fate.

Zenobia was famed for her sultry beauty, keen intelligence, and athletic prowess. Though she was of Arabian descent, she boasted of being related to Cleopatra through her Egyptian mother, who taught her to speak Egyptian fluently. Zenobia became queen through marriage to Odaenathus, the king of Palmyra. Now part of Syria, the wealthy merchant city of Palmyra served as the rallying point of the Palmyrene Empire and had splintered off from the mighty Roman Empire. Zenobia proved herself her husband’s equal on hunting trips but, like the goddess Diana, refused to sleep with him save for the purpose of conception.

After Odaenathus was assassinated in 267, Zenobia decided her personal loss was an opportunity for professional growth—she took charge of the Palmyrene Empire as regent for her young son, Vaballathus. Greedy for power and territory, the queen ambitiously invaded and conquered Egypt, Syria, and beyond, greatly expanding her empire—and treading on the Roman Empire’s toes. Rome took notice and decided to welcome Palmyra back into the fold.

Zenobia in chains.

Zenobia’s vision for her empire did not include Roman rule. Though an oracle warned that her army would be picked off by Rome like doves by hawks, Zenobia was too stubborn to back down. She personally led her forces into battle on horseback, her beautiful long dark hair rippling behind her on the wind as she charged forward…toward disaster.

Palmyra was captured. The Palmyrenes who refused to surrender were executed; those who remained were brought to trial, including the queen.

Ever wily, Zenobia batted her lush eyelashes and testified that she had been led astray by her advisers and didn’t know a thing about waging war. The Roman emperor Aurelian didn’t buy her story but decided she was worth more alive than dead. In Syria, the queen was shackled to a camel and paraded through the streets as a symbol of Roman victory; in Rome, she was forced to walk in front of Aurelian’s triumphal car, her comely body adorned in gold chains weighed down by lustrous jewels.

The
Historia Augusta
, a less-than-reliable third-century document, claims that after this humiliation Zenobia committed suicide in tribute to her ancestress Cleopatra. Another story states she succumbed to disease en route to Rome. However, the most credible accounts suggest that Zenobia’s only injury was to her pride. Unlike the queen of the Nile, she wanted to live—even if it was without a throne.

These accounts report that the rest of Zenobia’s life was most bourgeois. Aurelian freed her and, as a consolation prize, gave her a villa in Tivoli. The former queen decided that if you can’t beat them, join them: She married a Roman senator and spent her remaining years in considerable luxury. In time, she won renown as a philosopher and socialite.

Since nothing more is known of Zenobia, it is assumed that she died peacefully in her sleep after living to a ripe old age and surrounded by her loved ones, like that old lady in
Titanic
.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

It’s better to be alive without a crown
than dead with one.

528

he life of Empress Dowager Hu was decorated with mind-twisting contradictions. As the concubine of an emperor, she was willing to risk death to bring forth an heir; yet she willingly participated in her son’s murder. Despite considering herself a devout Buddhist, she rubbed out those who displeased her without a qualm. One story relates that to eliminate a female competitor, Hu forced her to enter a Buddhist convent where she was welcomed by an assassin; the assassin had been hired by the empress to do her dirty work.

Hu’s blood-soaked rise to power began in the early part of sixth-century China, when she was a not so sweet young thing. Her beauty and sharp intelligence gained the appreciative notice of Emperor Xuanwu, who took Hu as one of his concubine consorts. Tradition held that consorts who had given birth to crown princes were executed to avoid future power struggles.

But Hu bucked tradition. When she discovered she was ripe with the heirless emperor’s child, she ignored those who warned her to end the pregnancy. Instead, she altruistically argued that it was more important for Xuanwu to have a successor than for her to live.

A BRIEF DIGRESSION

Empress dowager was the official title given to the mother of an underage emperor. Many empress dowagers ruled the nation until their sons reached maturity. Some of them gained so much power that they refused to cede control, leading to unstable political environments. For example, the Empress Dowager Cixi was so skillful with her political machinations that she was able to rule China for four decades during the early twentieth century. Others were content to merely bully their sons’ brides into submission—they were the stereotypical mothers-in-law from hell.

Hu’s big gamble paid off. After she gave birth to a son named Xiaoming, the emperor spared her life, perhaps out of appreciation for the risk she’d assumed to pass on his genes. However, the power struggles that many feared came to pass five years later, after Xuanwu suddenly died. Five-year-old Xiaoming was crowned emperor and Hu became empress dowager, ruling on behalf of her son.

Empress Dowager Hu was a mixed bag as a regent. She could be extraordinarily generous and progressive—as well as extraordinarily cruel. She set up regional offices where her subjects could safely air their complaints about governmental misdeeds; she also gave away tons of money to build magnificent Buddhist temples. On the other hand, her hair-trigger temper often snapped homicidal over the most piddling offenses.