War Queens

War Queens

Game of Thrones and Fast & Furious actor Nathalie Emmanuel presents: Every week father-daughter team Jon and Emily Jordan examine the incredible stories of history’s most powerful female battle leaders, the brilliant methods and maneuvers history’s "killer queens” used to defend themselves and their people from enemy forces—and both father and daughter find out something about each other and how each generation appreciates these incredible women. From ancient Persia to modern-day Britain, experience the daunting thresholds these exceptional women had to cross and the clever, sometimes violent ways in which they smashed obstacles in their paths. History’s killer queens come in all colors, ages, and leadership styles, and from countries and cultures around the world. Elizabeth Tudor and Golda Meir played the roles of high-stakes gamblers who studied maps with an unblinking, calculating eye. Angola’s Queen Njinga was willing to shed (and occasionally drink) blood to establish a stable kingdom in an Africa ravaged by the slave trade. Caterina Sforza defended her Italian holdings with cannon and scimitar, and Indira Gandhi launched a war to solve a refugee crisis.

Episodes

February 13, 2023 37 mins
Whipped, then forced to watch her daughters raped in her village center, Boudica, Celtic queen of the Iceni tribe of Britons, vowed revenge on the Romans who violated women and children. Leading a mass revolt of British peoples who had been driven from their lands by Emperor Nero’s invaders, Boudica fought three Roman legions and burned London to the ground. Cutting a swath of destruction across southern England, she chased down th...
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Queen Tomyris led her hard-riding, hard-fighting Massagetae horsemen one of the ancient world’s fiercest battles—against one of history’s greatest superpowers. Using quiet diplomacy and hardcore savagery, Queen Tomyris leads her people up against the might of the Persian Empire and its legendary founder, King Cyrus the Great. Her battle, documented by the Greek historian Herodotus, the “Father of History,” is one of the earliest re...
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Bride at 10, widow at 25, general, tyrant, cosmetologist, mother, countess, botanist, and war leader, Countess Caterina Sforza di Riario led the most interesting life of any woman of the Italian Renaissance. Trained to fight by a powerful Milanese warlord, she learned that a Renaissance woman’s duty is to support her husband – whether in the home, or by providing medicines to peasants during the plague, or galloping on horseback to...
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January 3, 2023 38 mins
On the dust-swept steppes of Mongolia, a young woman labors to rebuild the old empire of Genghis Khan. Surviving palace intrigues and the death of her husband the khan, Queen Manduhai teams up with a young boy of noble blood to resist threats from China, Central Asia and Mongol rivals to consolidate a kingdom of nomadic horse riders. War, diplomacy and marriage are the backdrop to this epic story of a wise queen who shed blood to b...
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In a scene out of “House of the Dragon,” an elderly king appoints his young daughter to rule his medieval realm after his death. But the beautiful, pious, and wise Queen Tamar would find her claim to the Kingdom of Georgia challenged by nobles, religious leaders, courtiers, sultans—and the most annoying ex-husband in history. Waging war on her borders while setting an example of mercy and restraint, Tamar’s armies fought with sword...
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December 20, 2022 32 mins
Queen Artemisia of Caria joins the world’s biggest empire in a legendary campaign to wipe out the rebellious cities of ancient Greece. In a council filled with men, she gives sound advice and strategic insight, which the men leading the coalition rejected. When Artemisia’s advice was not heeded, she dutifully led her fleet in the sea battle that would decide the fate of the world – and pulled off one of history’s most audacious esc...
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December 13, 2022 54 mins
In one of history’s delicious ironies, the abused wife of a psychotic drunkard turned into a tiger who destroyed her oppressor. Catherine the Great launched a palace coup from atop a war horse and wrested the throne of Imperial Russia from her incompetent husband. For 33 years, she shepherded the world’s largest empire through a time of enlightenment and revolution, a time when French philosophies she embraced brought down monarchs...
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"Margaret Thatcher takes the reins of Her Majesty’s Government and leads Britain through a time of economic depression, threats of nuclear annihilation, and political restlessness. Within months of her becoming Britain’s first woman prime minister, she faces down Irish Republican Army terrorists and stands up to Soviet communism. Her mettle meets it test of wills when Argentina launches a surprise invasion of the Falkland Islands, ...
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November 29, 2022 46 mins
At nearly 75, a Jewish grandma named Golda Meir made critical military decisions as she led the young nation of Israel through the Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack known as the Yom Kippur War. Brilliantly playing a three-dimensional game of diplomatic chess, Golda triangulated the battlefield, superpower détente, and long-term peace prospects to bring Israel out on top of a two-front war. Golda’s decisions not to strike first, to re...
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November 22, 2022 42 mins
Indira Gandhi led the world’s largest democracy when war broke out on two sides of her country in 1971. She climbed a slippery political ladder to become India’s first female prime minister as her homeland emerged from uncertain days of independence to take its place as a power in South Asia. Facing a humanitarian crisis on her border, confronted by enemies in Pakistan and China, and despised by an American president, the yoga prac...
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November 15, 2022 40 mins
A bastard child whose mother was beheaded by her father, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and threatened by her half-sister “Bloody Mary,” young Elizabeth Tudor was unlikely to survive long enough to sit on the English Throne. But when she took the crown, she skillfully navigated the shoals of a divided Europe. Determined to avoid her father’s mistakes of plunging England into war with France, she found herself forced into wars i...
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Conqueror. Drinker of blood. 17th century fashionista. Queen Njinga of Ndongo-Matamaba displayed unmatched ferocity as she fought the slave-trading Portuguese for control of modern Angola. One of the few women war leaders who was unafraid to get her hands really dirty, she arranged a "Red Wedding" and led men and women through arrow storms and musket fire over ravines, rivers, and fortress walls. Using religion to meld a coalition ...
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November 7, 2022 50 mins
There are a Great Pyramid of misconceptions about Cleopatra, last pharaoh of Egypt. One of the smartest, hardest working, and wealthiest women of the ancient world, Cleopatra leveraged Egypt’s resources and used personal diplomacy with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony to protect her kingdom. From her recruitment of a mercenary army to battle her brother for Egypt’s throne, to her star-crossed battle campaign with Marc Antony against R...
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October 25, 2022 3 mins
Actor Nathalie Emmanuel joins father plus daughter history team Jon & Emily Jordan to bring your riveting stories of history's great women war leaders. In history class, we were all taught the stories of great wartime leaders—but the stories have always been about men. Now, for the first time, listen to a new podcast that brings you the stories of the fearless, powerful women leaders: War Queens. History’s war queens come in all co...
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