[Banestorm] Female Adventurers

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by starslayer

Also I have read several convincing thesis that gender inequality is a relatively new phenomenon which replaced social inequality only a few hundred years ago with only a few exceptions (most armies were of one gender, but not all armies were men); before a few hundred years ago the differentiation between peasant/surf and noble made up the inequality and a female noble was just as important as a male one, and a male surf just as abused and pigeon holed as a female. Documentation seeming to indicate a progressive male bias through the ages may be a result of the male bias of the record keepers, rather then the society at large. The most touted test cases for this idea lies in Cleopatra (a single, beautiful, well loved queen with no male counterpart leading an entire country unquestioned),

Cleopatra wasn't single and there was no particular reason to think she was all that popular with the Egyptians. She started out married to her twelve-year old brother, tried to overthrow him and rule alone and was removed fairly quickly by a cabal of courtiers. Then after Ptolemy made the mistake of killing Pompey, and a 21 year old Cleo seduced Caesar, (who was a middle-aged legendary horndog), Caesar killed her brother, married her to another of her little brothers and installed them as the rulers of Egypt...on behalf of Rome. Then after her new husband/brother died, she appointed her own son as her co-regent and heir. He was, at the time, two years old but she hoped that since he was Caesar's illegitimate son, that would shore up the Roman backing of her rule.

and countess Elizabeth Bathory - who owned land and estate before marriage, and after her husbands death kept and managed all of his land as well. Then went very crazy and started killing local peasants by the hundreds, even then, when everyone knew she was doing this it took them YEARS to finally go and charge her with anything, ultimately her punishment essentially consisted of house arrest (though a particularly brutal variant).

That's really...

Well let me put it this way. The first female ruler of England was Matilda...sort of. Because even though she was legitimate in every way except being female, the moment her father died, a whole bunch of nobles threw off the oaths they had sworn to accept her as Queen and she was never actually crowned over 9 years of civil war ended only when she agreed to step down in favour of her infant son who had that thing she lacked to be qualified to rule England. Masculinity.

One can not evaluate the status of women just by looking at the exceptions. All exceptions prove is that exceptions exist, and when it comes to human social behaviour, exceptions always exist.