15 Fascinating Rulers You've Probably Never Heard Of - That Made History

The name Amanirenas might not be familiar to many, but this formidable woman was renowned in antiquity for being one of the few leaders to successfully oppose the seemingly invincible Romans. Ruling over the Kingdom of Kush, Amanirenas was one of a long line of Kandakes (sometimes spelled Candace) who had ruled this particular kingdom. Particularly notable is the fact her reign coincided with Cleopatra to the north in Egypt. It was her conflict with Rome, however, that guaranteed Amanirenas’s place in the history books. She had become queen upon the death of her husband in 25 BCE, and she led a significant force against the Romans, who had taken over Egypt after Cleopatra’s suicide and subsequently inflicted heavy taxes on the Kushites. The conflict with Rome was a long and bloody one and, though the Romans ultimately declared victory, they nevertheless granted Amanirenas and the people of Kush considerable concessions, including a tax exemption and territory. Considering how merciless the Romans could often be in their pursuit of conquest, this was no small thing.

Few imperial women have wielded as much power as Theodora, the wife of the Emperor Justinian. According to ancient historians, she was born to a bearkeeper, and Theodora actually took to the stage herself during her youth. This lower-class occupation, as well as its association with prostitution, left a mark on her reputation she would never entirely overcome. Nevertheless, Theodora was a woman with an eye for the main chance, and she eventually met and fell in love with Justinian, who was heir to his uncle’s throne. Justinian was equally smitten, and the two married in 525 CE, after the repealing of a law that forbade those of a certain class from marrying actresses. Theodora would go on to rule beside Justinian as his equal, as can be seen from the mosaics in the Basilica of San Vitale showing them as matched in power and prominence. In addition to advocating for the various subalterns of the Empire - including prostitutes and unorthodox Christians - she was also the one who stiffened her husband’s spine during the Nika Revolt, saving his throne in the process.

Though Queen Anne might not be as famous as, say, Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria, she still led an eventful life and was, all things considered, a remarkably effective monarch. She succeeded to the throne after her brother-in-law William III died. Her life was a remarkably tragic one and, despite several pregnancies, she did not produce a surviving heir, which led to the House of Hanover succeeding after her death. She was also notably in thrall to several female favorites, including both Sarah Churchill and Abigail Masham (the fraught relationship among the three women is the subject of the film The Favourite). In other ways, however, Queen Anne was a remarkably effective parliamentary monarch. During her reign the Acts of Union of 1707 was passed, which finally and formally united the kingdoms of Scotland and England into the Kingdom of Great Britain. What’s more, she was also quite involved in the politics of the realm. Not only did she attend the House of Lords on a regular basis; she also frequently met with her ministers. Given the many trials and tragedies she faced, as well as a lifetime of ill-health, these accomplishments are all the more remarkable.

Chandragupta Maurya may not be a household name in places like the United States, but he was one of the most important figures in the history of early India. In fact, he was the first to be able to forge the scattered states of the modern country into a single empire. He had an eventful childhood and youth, and he was even said to have met the conquering Alexander the Great. As he progressed into adulthood he set about various conquests, ultimately creating one of the largest empires in history. However, he wasn’t content to just conquer. He was an able administrator, and he built a firm state that helped to ensure the empire he built lasted for at least a couple of generations after his own death. He was also very committed to the well-being of his people. In fact, when a famine struck his lands he even went so far as to starve himself to death.

The Crisis of the Third Century was one of the bleakest in the history of the Roman Empire. Few emperors in this period lasted very long, as they were toppled from power and replaced by someone else who had been elevated by the legions. In fact, there were such a dizzying array of rulers in this period it’s very difficult to keep track of who was official and who a mere usurper. One exception to this is Aurelian, who came to the throne in 270 CE after the death of Quintillus. He proceeded to win a number of significant military victories over various invaders. Even more importantly, he also managed to reunite the Roman Empire, which had been fractured due to the secession of the Gallic Empire in the west and the Palmyrene Empire in the east, and he also oversaw the construction of the Aurelian Walls around Rome itself (portions of them still exist). Aurelian also oversaw a number of important domestic policies. Unfortunately, he was assassinated after only five years on the throne, but the brevity of his rule cannot negate his undeniable success as a ruler.

Alexander the Great is one of those figures from antiquity whom almost everyone has heard of. Less famous, however, is his father, Philip II, whose life was in its own way as eventful as his son’s and who, in fact, made his successor’s enormous triumphs possible. He succeeded to the throne after one brother was killed in battle and the other in a coup, and the realm over which he ruled was a tempestuous and dangerous one. Inspired by time spent in Greece, however, Philip worked hard to forge Macedonia into a powerful empire in its own right. He was particularly intent on creating a powerful military, and he made a point of always leading his men from the front rather than directing from the rear. He was a redoutable leader of men, and he suffered several major injuries, including a lost eye and a major leg wound. He even went so far as to defeat the many squabbling Greek city-states, going on to found a confederation known as the League of Corinth. He was poised to invade Persia when he was assassinated by a bodyguard, paving the way for his son’s meteoric rise to power.

The Sassanian Empire lasted for nearly four centuries, coming to power after the downfall of the preceding Parthians. Its rulers, known as kings of kings, ruled a vast domain that encompassed such far-flung modern countries as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan. The second ruler of the dynasty, Shapur I, was a remarkable ruler, one of the best warriors his dynasty ever produced. After ruling with his father, Ardashir, he came to the throne in his own right. Shapur is perhaps best known for his numerous conflicts with the neighboring Roman Empire, which experienced a remarkable period of unrest and strife during his reign. In fact, he is the first foreign ruler to defeat and capture a Roman Emperor in combat. Emperor Valerian would remain in captivity for the rest of his life, and Shapur's victory was widely celebrated in various rock carvings the monarch had commissioned. Shapur was also an effective ruler in his own domains, solidifying control of his various realms (often by appointing his sons as kings) and working to solidify the dominance of the Zoroastrian religion.

During his long reign (669-631 BCE), Ashurbanipal could feasibly claim to be the most powerful man in the world. As the ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, he held sway over one of the most significant states of the ancient world; indeed, it might well have been the largest empire of the time. As a result, Ashurbanipal had good reason to claim he was king of the world, even if such a boast sounds hyperbolic to modern ears. Ashurbanipal was a skilled leader in all of the ways that mattered to the ancients. He was a skilled spymaster during his time as a prince and, once he ascended to the throne, he was ruthless in his conquering and domination of his enemies. He repeatedly boasts in his inscriptions about how there were few lengths to which he would not go in order to prove his mastery, including over his own brother. Ashurbanipal also built a magnificent library which, upon its discovery, shed great light on the Assyrians. Despite this, however, his own death remains a mystery to this day.

Marie de Guise was one of a fascinating group of powerful women who wielded extraordinary influence during the Renaissance. She was born into one of the most powerful families in France and, in 1538, she married James V of Scotland (he was her second husband). They were married for six years and, though the union produced two sons, it was only their daughter, Mary, who lived past infancy. Upon James’s death, Marie became the Regent of Scotland, concentrating significant political influence in her own hands. She was fiercely protective of her baby daughter, and she even went so far as to send her to France, where she would grow up as part of the French court. Throughout the 1550s Marie showed herself to be a formidable ruler, but she faced stiff resistance from the Scottish nobility, particularly once the Protestant Reformation began to take hold in the country. She did a great deal to keep the English out of Scotland, and she also went to great lengths to ensure her daughter would one day be able to sit on the throne.

Few women in antiquity were quite as influential and powerful as Zenobia of Palmyra, who emerged during the 3rd century CE to become a true threat to Roman dominance in the east. When her husband, the king of Palmyra, died of poisoning after scoring a significant victory against the Persians, she declared herself regent on behalf of her son. Not content with this, she ordered an invasion of Egypt, and it wasn’t long before she had control of the country as well as other Roman territories. It quickly became clear she meant to establish an empire of her own, something Rome could not tolerate, and she was ultimately defeated by the Emperor Aurelian. Somewhat surprisingly, the fate of this extraordinary queen has never been established with any finality. It’s very likely she was forced to march in the triumph held by the Emperor Aurelian, but it remains unclear whether she was killed or whether, as some accounts state, she lived out the rest of her life in a sort of forced retirement near Hadrian’s villa.

Augustus is, arguably, one of the most famous of Romans. Regarded as the first true Roman emperor, he managed to remake the old Roman Republic in his own image. However, as important as Augustus was, he was matched in some regards by his wife, Livia, who would remain by his side until his death. Livia led an extraordinary life, even before she married the man who would one day run an empire. Married to a distant cousin, she found herself on the wrong side in one of the late Republic’s numerous civil wars. However, she was nothing if not a survivor, and when she married Augustus her path to power was assured. The ancient sources seem to agree the two were a love match, and Livia was well-known for providing advice to her husband (which he didn’t always follow). Her brilliance lay in her ability to wield power without appearing to do so; by all accounts she was the very exemplar of a proper Roman matron. She became much involved in Augustus’s cult after his death and deification. After Augustus’ death, she often feuded with her son, Tiberius, who had been adopted after the death of many of the first emperor’s appointed heirs died (hence Livia’s reputation as a poisoner, a possible myth made popular by Robert Graves’s novel I, Claudius and its BBC adaptation). Tiberius had far less patience for his mother’s meddling than did his stepfather, and he even refused to have her deified after her death. However, she was later granted this honor under the reign of her grandson, Claudius.

Caracalla has, for the most part, received a bad rap among historians. There are some good reasons for this. After his father’s death, he inherited the purple along with his brother, Geta. However, relations between the two had never been good, and it wasn’t long before the elder Caracalla had his brother killed, allegedly while he clung to their mother’s knees. However, though he apparently was no fan of correspondence - leaving this job to his mother, Julia Domna - he was an avid campaigner and scored several notable victories against various tribes. In addition, he was responsible for the monumental Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Arguably his most significant achievement, however, was the Edict of Caracalla, issued in 212 CE, which granted Roman citizenship to all free men in the Empire. This was a landmark piece of legislation and, whether it was passed to increase the amount of taxes the emperor could collect or for some other reason, it significantly swelled the number of citizens of the Roman Empire.

Even though he might not be as famous as some of the other notable figures of Egyptian history - such as Rameses II - Akhenaten is still a fascinating figure in his own right. He is particularly well-known for his desire to totally reshape Egyptian religion. His reign was relatively long (at about 17 years, starting in either 1353 or 1351 BCE), but in the time he sat on the throne he had a tremendous impact on the nation he ruled. Upon ascending to the throne, he attempted to replace almost all of Egypt's traditional gods and their worship with a practice centered on the sun disc, Aten. He even went so far as to persecute the priests of Amun and had various gods’ inscriptions destroyed. Not content with this, he also instituted changes to Egyptian art - the depictions of him and his family are remarkably strange to modern eyes - and he even founded a new capital city. The circumstances of his death are shrouded in mystery, but what is clear is the extent to which subsequent rulers and religious figures sought to erase him from memory. The eradication of Akhenaten’s name from much of Egyptian history was so complete it wasn’t until the 19th and 20th centuries that his tomb and the city of Amarna became widely known parts of ancient Egyptian history.

Roman history is filled with the deeds of great men, but the women are far more frequently relegated into the background. Sometimes, however, the sources provide a fascinating look at the many extraordinary female figures who wielded influence on the Roman world, and Julia Domna is one of these. As one of most notable figures of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries, she was the wife of the Emperor Septimius Severus. Hailing from a powerful priestly family in the Syrian city of Emesa, she married Septimius at a young age and even went with him on campaign. She bore two sons, Caracalla and Geta, the latter of whom was killed by the former soon after their father’s death. Though she was no doubt shocked and horrified by the death of one son at the other’s hands, she would continue to serve in Caracalla’s palace for the rest of her life. Moreover, she was also known for her patronage of a significant number of intellectuals and philosophers. She died shortly after Caracalla was himself assassinated, apparently by starving herself to death.

Most people are no doubt familiar with the fate of Louis XVI, the last king of France before the French Revolution. His execution by guillotine was one of the most remarkable events of the 18th century, and the death of his young son - often referred to as Louis XVII, was a sad end to a royal lineage that had ruled France for centuries. However, the House of Bourbon did not come to an end with Louis’s death. In fact, his brother, Louis Stanislaus Xavier, managed to escape his elder brother’s fate and fled into exile. Eventually, his time to reclaim the throne came once the Empire came crashing down. In 1814, he finally succeeded to his brother’s throne, declaring himself Louis XVIII. He briefly lost power when Napoleon returned from exile, only to once again assume the throne after the latter’s defeat at Waterloo. Unlike his brother, who had tried to rule as an absolute monarch, the younger Louis did try to rule as a constitutional monarch, though not always successfully. He was ultimately succeeded by his brother, Charles X.