female ruler

While North Koreans — who have been told from birth that the Kim family hails from a vaunted blood line and that it is only right that the family should rule — might accept a fourth-generation ruler, it remained to be seen whether the highly patriarchal system would accept a female ruler, Cheong said.

A figurine showing a female ruler that was found in Tut’s tomb bolsters Hawass’s belief.

Another female ruler, Hatshepsut, also changed her name to take on a male persona as pharaoh more than 100 years before Nefertiti, Hawass said.

Queen Mary, whom Elizabeth I succeeded, had more need to legitimize herself because, as Dr. Cleland noted in an interview, “there was so little precedent for a single female ruler.”

But a new analysis of a richly adorned female ruler buried in a Bronze Age palace suggests women could also occupy the throne.