- You know, in grade school I had this vicious old woman
teacher named Ms. McClellan, and she'd be like, "Did you finish your homework?" And if there was a number 11
on this list, she'd be it. Generally when we think of the most vicious rulers in history, we think of names like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, or Vlad the Impaler. However, although those
men were brutal rulers, it might surprise you that
some of the most ruthless and fearworthy rulers
were actually female. Here are the 10 most vicious
female rulers in history. Number 10 is Empress
Julia Agrippina of Rome. Julia Agrippina, the Empress of Poison, was the sister of Emperor Caligula and mother of Emperor Nero. She outmaneuvered all
of the men in her life, beginning with her second
husband whom she poisoned, so that she could marry her
uncle, Emperor Claudius, poisoning countless other women
competing for his attention. But before poisoning Claudius, Agrippina convinced her pushover uncle, as well as her husband, to adopt her son Nero
from her first marriage and name him his successor. Nero took the throne as a teenager, but Agrippina ruled on his behalf, intervening in his salacious affairs, which led Nero to banish her. And after many failed
attempts on her life, including a boat designed to sink, he finally executed his
mommy dearest in 59 AD. Ha okay, let's just back
that up for a second. Did she really have to marry her uncle? I mean okay, this is kind of gross. Let's go onto number nine. Number nine is Queen Zenobia,
the Warrior Queen of Palmyra. Septimia Zenobia challenged
the Roman Empire's global rule by personally leading
her army into battle. In 258 AD, she became second wife to King Septimius of Palmyra, but he was assassinated
along with his first wife, leaving her young son heir to the throne. She was his regent, but really just ruled
herself as the Warrior Queen, sacking Egypt in 270, claiming Alexandria was her ancestral city and Cleopatra her distant ancestor. Zenobia went on to conquer what is modern-day Syria,
Lebanon, and Palestine, dominating Asia Minor's trade that created bread shortages in Rome, and even printed coins with her likeness. Rome's leader Aurelius destroyed
Zenobia's army at Antioch and later paraded her
around Rome as his prisoner, before she later committed
suicide in 274 AD. Dang, that's quite the reign, and you gotta be especially confident to print your face on coins. That's just some badassery. Number eight is Empress
Wu Zetian of China. Imperial China had only one female ruler in the 4,000 years before Chairman Mao
and his little red book wiped it out with the Cultural Revolution. Wu Zetian's rise is
all the more impressive because she was the daughter
of a low-ranking general, who began as a consort. She was Machiavellian in her rise through the Tang Dynasty court, and is said to have killed her sister, older brothers, her ineffectual
lover Emperor Gaozong, and even her infant daughter
on her way to the throne. Wu also banished and executed anyone who threatened her rule, including her children and grandchildren, the irony being the
consort of her exiled son convinced him to depose
his mother at 80 years old and become emperor. Here's a safe little check to
see if you're power-hungry. If you feel the need to off your kids, you might be a little out
of control with the power. Number seven is Queen Tamar of Georgia. Queen Tamar of Georgia is sainted in the
Georgian Orthodox Church, appears on the Georgian 50 lira note, and helped create Georgia's golden age. But she did some rather
unsaintly things along the way. She was the apple of her
father's eye, King George III, who she co-ruled with
until his death in 1184 AD. She ascended to the throne after ruthlessly vanquishing the noblemen who dared to question
the rule of a female. Tamar later murdered all clergymen in the Georgian Orthodox Church hierarchy who questioned her rule, and replaced them with lawyer sycophants. Later she married Russian Prince Yuri, who was an excellent military commander, who helped expand the Georgian territory. But he was too much of a ladies man, so the pious queen banished him and later married the
Honorable David Solsan, Prince of Ilan. I know that all sounds
like a crazy love puzzle, but all you really need to know
is she was tired of her man. ♪ And she don't want no scrubs ♪ So she moved on. Number six is Queen Isabella I of Spain. Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, except for Queen Isabella I of Castile, the wicked queen of Spain who started the campaign
to purify her country. Isabella is also known for financing Christopher
Columbus's famed voyage of 1492, but is best known for
her famous mean streak, beginning with her four-year
war of Castilian succession against her niece Joanna. Queen Isabella and her husband Ferdinand expanded the monarchy's power by purging the noble's influence and reinstalling Catholicism as the supreme religion of Spain. Pope Alexander VI declared
them the Catholic monarchs, in part because of the Spanish Inquisition that oppressed the Jewish
and Muslim minorities that were murdered or banished
if they did not convert. Number five is Queen Mary I of England. Mary was the daughter of the
infamous King Henry VIII, who sent her away at the
age of nine to Wales, where she suffered bad
health, failed courtships, and daddy issues while
her brother Edward VI became king at only nine. Mary took the throne after the boy king Edward died at only 15, and embarked on a cruel campaign to reverse her father's
Protestant reforms. A devout Roman Catholic, Mary had 300 Protestants
burned at the stake and another 800 exiled while she attempted to return England to a Catholic majority. But history has a way
of carrying out karma, because despite marrying
Prince Philip of Spain Mary was unable to produce an heir and died of ovarian carcinoma
at only 42 years old. Okay, that is truly savage. Your 15-year-old brother
dies and all you can say is, "Oh yeah, that's terrible. "So is this where I sit for the crown? "Okay, that's great." Number four is Countess
Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary. The 16th century Hungarian
countess Elizabeth Bathory may have been a vampire because she was born
in Transylvania in 1560 and consumed the blood and flesh of at least one of her victims. "You know what? "You kind of ticked me off. "I'm just gonna have a
little nibble of you." The countess was untouchable
for most of her life because she was from
a distinguished family and married the local ruler Count Nadasdy, who built her a torture chamber
to use on peasant girls. But her bloodlust evolved beyond torture to killing some 650 young females, whose blood she drained and bathed in, believing that she could
maintain her own youth by consuming theirs. But justice did not catch
up to Bathory until 1610, when she started kidnapping, torturing, and killing the daughters of noblemen. It was that that led to her prosecution and eventual imprisonment in a castle, where she was found
dead in August of 1614. Oh, so nobody cared that she bathed in the
blood of her victims and drank it as well. I'm sure that wasn't
a warning sign at all, nor was her only going out at night and sleeping upside down from the roof. Yeah, it's all good. Number three is Queen Ranavalona I, the Mad Monarch of Madagascar. Queen Ranavalona, the Mad
Monarch of Madagascar, decimated the population that she ruled from five million to 2.5 million by the end of her 33-year rule. When the king died in 1828, Ranavalona named herself queen, claiming the gods intended her to rule, and proceeded to murder her rivals. Yeah, but that wasn't all. She also sold her subjects into slavery, beheaded French and British missionaries, and boiled Madagascan Christians alive. Well, at least she didn't eat them like the previous one, so you know, that's a step up. Number two is Queen Rani
Lakshmi Bai of India. Queen Rani Lakshmi Bai
enjoys mythic status for leading the 1857
Great Indian Rebellion against Imperial British rule. She grew up mastering martial arts before finally being married off young to a man who died just
a year-and-a-half later. The 26-year-old refused
to abdicate her throne to the East India Company
that controlled India and launched a rebellion. According to historians, she charged onto the battlefield
with reins in her teeth and two swords in her hands, and laid siege to the fort where they slaughtered every
British man, woman, and child. Sir Hugh Rose, commander
of the British Army, used artillery to thwart the rebellion, but remained in awe of her, calling her the Indian Joan of Arc. See, kids? Never give up on what you believe, unless that involves slaughtering people, in which case you should just... You should just give up. And number one is Jiang
Qing, the Madam of China. Jiang Qing was not royalty, but became Chairman Mao
Zedong's fourth wife in 1938, and was one of the architects and executioners of the
Cultural Revolution. Prior to marrying Mao, she was an actress with
many failed marriages, and later purged all embarrassing
information about herself to maintain her power. Jiang Qing was a member
of the Gang of Four at the top of the
Communist Party food chain, and oversaw the destruction
of ancient Chinese culture, literature, art, and architecture. She referred to herself as Mao's dog and would bite whomever he commanded, which included a large portion
of the Chinese population. Oh okay, she thought
she was a little doggy. (barking) That's mental illness. Their rule led to the
return of agrarian roots, which led to famine and the deaths of as many as 500,000
people from 1966 to 1969. So yeah, like I said, vicious. So those were the 10 most
vicious female rulers in history. And if you enjoyed this, remember to give it a big thumb's up. And also, be sure to
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