I am slightly digressing from my usual focus on genealogy and family history to discuss another of my favourite topics: royal history. And if you like quizzes and riddles, please stay put!

I want to discuss what yesterday started off as a riddle between me and my father (whose love of history I have inherited). The question is very simple: when was the last time that European monarchs were all men? Or to put it a different way: on which date did Europe lack a female ruler?

The question arose following the unexpected abdication of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II, which was announced during her New Year’s Eve address on 31 December 2023 and came into force yesterday, 14 January 2024. This means that today, 15 January 2024, all ten incumbent European hereditary monarchies – Belgium, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom – are headed by men (I am not counting the Principality of Andorra nor the Vatican, as neither is a hereditary monarchy).

Of course, the situation is set to be only temporary. Four of those men (King Philippe of the Belgians, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, King Felipe of Spain and King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden) are all due to be succeeded one day by a woman, and two further women (Princess Ingrid-Alexandra of Norway and Princess Estelle of Sweden) are expected to inherit the throne in the next generation, as second-in-line.

While trying to work out the last date on which Europe lacked any ruling female monarchs whatsoever (not necessarily queens – empresses or sovereign grand duchesses would also count, of course), I found myself going back decades and even centuries, until I found what I think is the correct answer. As always, I am happy to be proven wrong!

If we go back in history, here is the unbroken chain of female monarchs whose reigns overlapped with each other.

• Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (b.1940), who came to the throne in January 1972, has been the sole European female monarch since September 2022, when Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II passed away at the age of 96.
• Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) ascended the British throne in 1952 following the sudden death of her father, King George VI. Yet there was already another female monarch in Europe at the time right across the English Chanel.
• Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (1909-2004) inherited the throne in 1948 following the abdication of her mother, Queen Wilhelmina (1880-1962). She, in turn, became queen in 1890 after the death of her father.
  

• By 1890, Britain had been ruled by a woman for over forty years: Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was, until recently, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and remains one of the country’s most emblematic female monarchs, giving her name to an entire era.
• When Queen Victoria came to throne in 1837, after the death of her uncle King William IV, there were at least three female monarchs in Europe: Queen Isabella II of Spain (who reigned between 1833 and 1868), Queen Maria II of Portugal (who reigned between 1834 and her death in 1853) and Napoleon Bonaparte’s widow, Marie Louise of Austria (1791-1847), who was sovereign Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla in her own right from 1814 until her death in 1847.
• Marie Louise’s predecessor on this list of European sovereigns was Portugal’s Queen Maria I (1734-1816), who was queen from 1777 to 1816 – admittedly she had been declared insane by the latter part of her reign and was living in exile in Brazil.
• By the time Queen Maria ascended the throne in 1777, Austria was ruled by the famous Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780). She had been ruler of the Habsburg dominions from 1740 until her death in 1780. Her reign as Queen of Bohemia and Queen of Hungary began on 20 October 1740, and for a moment I thought we had found the answer to the riddle.

• Enter Empress Anna of Russia (1693-1740), who ascended the throne in 1730 and died shortly after Empress Maria Theresa inherited her dominions. The overlap between the two women’s reigns is extremely short – a mere eight days, safeguarded by the fact that Empress Anna died on 17 October 1740 according to the Julian calendar which was in use in Russia at the time – and which translated into 28 October 1740 according to the Gregorian calendar, which was used in most of Europe, including Austria, at the time.
• To the best of my knowledge, when Anna inherited the throne on 15/26 February 1730 following the death of her predecessor Peter II on 19/30 January, there were no women ruling in Europe in their own right.
• I can only deduce, therefore, that the last time that Europe had no women sovereigns was 25 February 1730 – the day before Anna’s accession. That’s an astonishing 294-year period!

Of course, there have been many female rulers in Europe since time immemorial – think of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Isabella of Castile, Queen Joan of Naples, or the Tudor queens Mary and Elizabeth. But the unbroken line above demonstrates that, despite changes in succession laws in recent times, European monarchies remain very much a male-dominated world.

While most surviving European monarchies will have a female monarch before long, the laws that regulate the royal succession still given men precedence over women in Monaco and Spain. Liechtenstein is the only European monarchy that strictly applies “Salic law” or agnatic primogeniture, which effectively excludes women from the line of succession.