Queen mother of the west: Did you mean...?

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was an English poet, scholar, soldier, and courtier, one of the most prominent figures at the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603). During his lifetime, he was revered as the ideal Elizabethan...

Tiye (also known as Tiy, 1398-1338 BCE) was a queen of Egypt of the 18th dynasty, wife of the pharaoh Amenhotep III, mother of Akhenaten, and grandmother of both Tutankhamun and Ankhsenamun. She exerted an enormous influence at the courts...

The play Libation Bearers was written by one of the greatest of all Greek tragedians Aeschylus (c. 525-455 BCE). Winning first prize at the Dionysia competition in 458 BCE, Libation Bearers was the second play in the trilogy The Oresteia...

Boudicca (died 61 CE) was the Celtic Queen of the Iceni tribe who led a revolt against Roman occupation of what is now East Anglia, England. So charismatic was Boudicca that ancient sources record tribes joining her revolt which would not...

Queen Kubaba of Mesopotamia is known as the only queen who has been named on the Sumerian King List, which is unsurprisingly, a bit of a boy’s club. Kubaba is one of very few women who ruled Mesopotamia in her own right, and the surviving...

Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536 CE) was a Spanish princess who famously became the Queen of England and the first wife of Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547 CE). When the marriage did not produce a male heir, Henry VIII became desperate to...

Our Lady of Guadalupe, also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, is a title for a particular image of Mary, Mother of Jesus, as she appeared in the New World in the years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. A beloved symbol of mercy, acceptance...

Nitocris (2184-2181 BCE) is the Greek name for Nitiqret, the last monarch of the 6th Dynasty of Egypt which concluded the period of the Old Kingdom (c. 2613-2181 BCE). Nitocris is best known from the story told of her by Herodotus (484-425/413...

Electra is a play written by the 5th-century BCE Greek tragedian Sophocles. Similar to Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, Electra focuses on the return of Electra's brother Orestes from exile and the plot to murder their mother. Years earlier...

Charles the Simple (Charles III of France, l. 879-929, r. 893-923) was king of West Francia (roughly modern-day France) toward the end of the period of Viking raids in the region. His epithet `the simple' refers to his habit of being straightforward...