4) Mademoiselle (Julie) Maupin

While travelling and performing swordfighting shows, Julie Maupin dressed in male clothing but did not conceal her gender. On arrival in Marseille, she joined the opera company run by Pierre Gaultier, singing under her maiden name. She then became involved with a young woman. When the girl’s parents put her away in the Visitandines convent in Avignon, Maupin followed, entering the convent as a postulant. In order to run away with her new love, she stole the body of a dead nun, placed it in the bed of her lover, and set the room on fire to cover their escape.

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5) Olga of Kiev

Went on a killing rampage that effectively massacred the Drevlians, a tribe that killed her husband Igor of Kiev. She didn’t just kill a few of them, she effectively assassinated all of their political leaders and ambassadors, burned their capital to the ground and leveled all of their towns. You could perhaps call her the Queen of the scorched-earth policy. A bad bitch indeed.

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6) Violette Morris

French athlete, boxer, endurance auto/motorcycle racer, WWI motorcycle messenger who fixed her bike in a firefight in no man’s land. She was barred from French athletics for knocking out opponents in soccer matches. To exact her vengeance on the French she turned Nazi interrogator & spy hunter during WWII. She’s the female version of the Jew hunter from Inglorious Basterds but fucking real. She died in a hail storm of machine gun fire.

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7) Queen Tamar of Georgia

Became ruler of medieval Georgia in her own right (very rare in the middle ages!). She survived multiple coup attempts, including some by her former husband after she divorced him (again very rare in the middle ages!) and expelled him from the empire so she could marry someone else. She also expanded the boundaries of her empire through military conflict, presided over a golden age of Georgian architecture and poetry, and eventually died peacefully before later being made a saint.

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8) Margaret of Anjou

She was the consort of King Henry the VI during the Wars of the Roses and, because Henry the VI alternated between being insane or incompetent, was basically the leader of the Lancastrian side until Henry and her son were killed. Even after the Lancasters were pushed out of England she led an invasion that almost succeeded.

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9) Brunhilda of Austrasia

Imagine a real-life Cersei Lannister. Now extend her career of seduction, manipulation, war-starting, murder, and obsessive control of her children’s lives up to the age of 70.Have her start a war between her own grandsons, culminating in one of them killing the other. Have her finally drive the warring nations of the Franks to unite against her and, when they finally capture her, blame her for the deaths of ten of their kings.

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10) Roseanne Barr

When she did her show she ended up taking full control after her asshole boss tried to take credit from her… She got him fired and turned it into one of the most important sitcoms in the history of television. What makes her run even more improbable is that at the time there weren’t any raw, accurate portrayals of working-class families in popular culture let alone one helmed by a woman who didn’t fit the Hollywood, good-looking woman archetype. She played by her own rules and won on every front.

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