The question of whether a woman has ever started a war challenges centuries of historical narrative that frames conflict as an exclusively male endeavor. Here's the thing — while history books are dominated by kings, emperors, and generals who happen to be men, the historical record reveals numerous instances where women held the ultimate authority to declare war, initiate invasions, or provoke conflicts that reshaped nations. The answer is a definitive yes; women have started wars, though their motivations, methods, and historical portrayals often differ significantly from their male counterparts.
The Distinction Between Ruling and Waging
To understand female agency in warfare, one must first distinguish between starting a war and fighting in one. In hereditary monarchies, queens regnant—women who ruled in their own right rather than as consorts—possessed the same constitutional authority as kings to declare war, negotiate treaties, and command armies. In real terms, for millennia, the physical act of combat was socially coded as masculine, yet the political decision to mobilize armies rested with the sovereign. Their gender did not legally diminish their imperium, though it frequently colored the chroniclers' accounts of their decisions.
When a queen regnant ordered an invasion, she was exercising statecraft. That said, patriarchal historiography often reframed these decisions. Consider this: a king launching a campaign was viewed as asserting dynastic rights or securing borders; a queen doing the same was frequently dismissed as acting on emotion, caprice, or the influence of male advisors. This bias obscures the calculated geopolitical reasoning behind many female-led declarations of war.
Antiquity and the Classical World
In the ancient world, several formidable women initiated major conflicts. Artemisia I of Caria (5th century BCE), a queen and naval commander under the Persian Empire, is a prime example. While she fought for Xerxes, her independent command of a fleet at the Battle of Salamis and her strategic counsel demonstrate sovereign military agency. On the flip side, a clearer example of initiating conflict comes from Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae (6th century BCE). Think about it: when Cyrus the Great of Persia sought to conquer her territory through a deceptive marriage proposal and subsequent invasion, Tomyris rejected the offer, warned him to rule his own people, and ultimately led her armies to a decisive victory that killed Cyrus. She did not start the war in the sense of aggression, but she dictated the terms of engagement and annihilated the aggressor.
Counterintuitive, but true.
Moving to the Hellenistic period, Cleopatra VII of Egypt actively engineered military alliances and conflicts to preserve her dynasty. In real terms, her involvement in the Roman civil wars—first supporting Julius Caesar, then Mark Antony—was a calculated gamble to expand Egyptian territory and independence. Her decision to commit the Egyptian fleet to the Battle of Actium against Octavian was a sovereign act of war that determined the fate of the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
In the East, the Trưng Sisters of Vietnam (Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị) led a rebellion against the Han Dynasty in 40 CE. They did not inherit a throne; they seized one, raising an army of 80,000 and liberating 65 citadels. They declared themselves queens and ruled for three years, initiating a war of national liberation that remains a cornerstone of Vietnamese identity That's the part that actually makes a difference..
Medieval and Early Modern Europe: The Warrior Queens
The Middle Ages and Renaissance offer the densest concentration of female war-starters in Western history, largely due to the prevalence of hereditary monarchy It's one of those things that adds up. Took long enough..
Empress Matilda (Empress Maud) of England plunged the realm into The Anarchy (1135–1153), a devastating civil war, by pressing her claim to the throne against her cousin Stephen of Blois. While Stephen usurped the crown, Matilda’s refusal to accept the status quo and her invasion of England in 1139 transformed a succession dispute into a nineteen-year conflict that shattered royal authority.
Isabella I of Castile is often remembered for sponsoring Columbus, but she was a relentless military strategist. She co-ruled with Ferdinand of Aragon, yet she was the driving force behind the Granada War (1482–1492), the final phase of the Reconquista. She organized logistics, raised funds, established field hospitals, and appeared at sieges to boost morale. Her decision to pursue total victory over the Emirate of Granada was a deliberate act of state policy that unified Spain under Catholic rule.
Perhaps the most dramatic example is Queen Elizabeth I of England. Also, while she famously hesitated to execute Mary, Queen of Scots, and sought to avoid open war with Spain, her foreign policy—supporting Dutch rebels against Spain, authorizing privateers like Francis Drake to raid Spanish treasure fleets, and executing Mary—inevitably provoked Philip II of Spain to launch the Spanish Armada in 1588. Elizabeth’s calculated aggression in the Low Countries and the Atlantic constituted a de facto declaration of economic and naval war years before the Armada sailed That's the part that actually makes a difference..
Christina of Sweden (reigned 1632–1654) provides a unique case. Ascending the throne as a child during the Thirty Years' War, she took active control of Swedish foreign policy as an adult. She aggressively pursued Swedish territorial gains in the Torstenson War (1643–1645) against Denmark, securing dominance over the Baltic trade routes. Her decisions were driven by Realpolitik and a desire to elevate Sweden as a great power The details matter here..
The 18th Century: The Age of Enlightened Despots
The 18th century saw women wielding the levers of great power politics with ruthless efficiency.
Maria Theresa of Austria inherited the Habsburg lands in 1740. Immediately, Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded Silesia, sparking the War of the Austrian Succession. While Frederick fired the first shot, Maria Theresa’s refusal to cede Silesia—viewing it as the patrimony of her house—turned a border grab into a global conflict involving nearly every European power. She reformed the Austrian military, centralized the bureaucracy, and fought two more major wars (Seven Years' War, War of the Bavarian Succession) to reclaim or defend her territories. She started the latter conflict by contesting the Bavarian succession, demonstrating that she viewed war as a standard instrument of policy That alone is useful..
Catherine the Great of Russia (reigned 1762–1796) seized power in a coup against her husband, Peter III. Once secure, she embarked on an aggressive expansionist agenda. She initiated the Russo-Turkish Wars (1768–1774 and 1787–1792), the Russo-Polish War (1792), and the partitions of Poland. Catherine viewed warfare as essential to securing Russia’s "natural borders" (access to the Black Sea) and projecting Enlightenment ideals—on her terms. Her correspondence with Voltaire and Diderot masked a shrewd, calculating militarism that added 200,000 square miles to the Russian Empire.
Beyond Europe: Global Perspectives
The phenomenon is not limited to Europe. In practice, after her brother’s suicide, she negotiated a treaty, but when the Portuguese violated it, she fled, formed a new kingdom (Matamba), and waged a guerrilla war that halted Portuguese expansion for a generation. Queen Nzinga Mbande of Ndongo and Matamba (modern-day Angola) fought the Portuguese for decades in the 17th century. She initiated raids, formed alliances with the Dutch, and personally led troops into her sixties.
In India, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi became a leading figure in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. While the rebellion had many leaders, her decision to join the revolt, seize the fort at Jhansi, and lead her forces
into battle herself after the British annexed her kingdom under the Doctrine of Lapse, cemented her legacy as a symbol of resistance. Her initiation of armed conflict was a direct response to imperial policy, demonstrating that the calculus of war was not confined to European palaces.
This is where a lot of people lose the thread.
The pattern is consistent: these women did not see war as an aberration or a last resort, but as a primary and legitimate tool of statecraft. In real terms, they initiated conflicts, negotiated from positions of strength achieved through military take advantage of, and redefined the very boundaries of their realms. Their leadership challenges the enduring myth that warfare is an exclusively male domain, revealing instead a history where power, pragmatism, and the will to rule often transcended gender. In the archives of empire and nation-building, their strategies, whether for conquest or resistance, stand as stark reminders that the decision to go to war has always been a sovereign function, wielded with decisive effect by those who held the crown.
