Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: History Unplugged Podcast
Episode: The Most Powerful Women in the Middle Ages, Part 1: Queens, Empresses, and Viking Slayers
Description: The idea of a powerful woman in the Middle Ages seems like an oxymoron. Females in this time are imagined to be damsels in distress, trapped in a high tower, and waiting for knights to rescue them, all while wearing traffic-cones for a hat. After rescue, their lives improved little. Their career choices were to be either a docile queen, housewife, or be burned at the stake for witchcraft.Β But what if this image of medieval women is a complete fiction?Β It turns out that it is. Powerful female rulers fill the Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxon queen Ae...