The Reign Continues: 27 Captivating Facts about Queens – Part 2

Lady Jane Grey, also known as England’s Forgotten Queen was only the Queen of England for 9 days in 1553. She only ascended to the throne because Edward VI wanted to keep a Protestant as the sovereign of England. She was then deposed and executed the following year.

Empress Dowager Cixi was served 120 different dishes for each meal. She would eat only two or three bites of some of the dishes because of fear that they would be poisoned. Cixi usually gave permission for the other concubines, officials, and eunuchs to eat the unfinished dishes.

French queen Marie Antoinette was offered in 1787, a boy from Senegal as a servant but instead of taking him as a servant she adopted him as her son and baptized him as Jean. During the revolution, Jean was separated from the royal family and left by revolutionaries to die on the streets at the age of 10.

Iran's Queen Tadj ol-Molouk played an important part in the abolition of the veil in Iran during the reign of her husband. She was the first Iranian Queen to show herself in public when she attended a graduation ceremony in modern clothes with her two daughters, without veils.

Queen Elizabeth II once went for a walk near her Balmoral estate with one of her protection officers and met some American tourists who didn’t recognize her. They asked her if she’d ever met the Queen and she said “No”, then pointed to her officer and said, “he has”. They didn’t connect the dots.

In the 1700s, Queen Caroline of Great Britain had smallpox inoculation trialed on six prisoners in return for commuting their death sentences. When this was successful, she inoculated her own children, popularising the process.

Queen Teuta of Illyria was a warrior queen who oversaw a fleet of hardcore pirates, led armies and navies that conquered cities and islands along the Adriatic coast and forcefully challenged the Roman Republic by declaring piracy legitimate business and killing their diplomatic envoys.

19th Century Empress Elisabeth of Austria washed her hair with brandy, bathed in olive oil, and slept in a face mask lined with raw veal. She was supposedly considered one of the most beautiful women in Europe.

Queen Anne of England was pregnant 17 times. The first time at the age of 18, and the last at the age of 34. She either miscarried or gave birth to stillborn babies. One child died under a year, another at a year and a half, and the oldest died at the age of 11 in 1700.

Dowager Empress Marie, the mother to the last Russian Tsar, was moved from Denmark to St. Petersberg in 2006, 77 years after her death. During the reinterment ceremony, the crowding around the coffin caused a young danish diplomat to fall into the grave.