Submitted by Nan Hawthorne http://www.shield-wall.com

Not long ago at a flea market I happily wielded the long sword I had just bought. The man who sold it to me apparently found my pride humorous, and made some remark about a woman hefting a sword. I turned to him with fire in my eyes and said, "You obviously have never heard of Ethelfleda, Sovereign Lady of Mercia!"

Ethelfleda was the eldest child of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex and the man who with his armies successfully prevented Danish invaders from conquering England sea to sea. A wise as well as redoubtable military leader, he knew that the Kingdom of Mercia in central England would be stronger as an ally than as a subject nation. He therefore married his daughter, Ethelfleda, to Ethelred of Mercia , cementing a partnership to stay strong against the Danes.

She was well prepared for her role at Ethelred's side. She was, like other high born Saxon girls, educated not only in academic subjects but as a warrior, learning archery and swordplay. She was mindful of the Saxon people's neighbors, the Celts of Wales, and throughout her life strove for and won the trust and loyalty of many of the Welsh leaders.

On her wedding journey to Mercia Ethelfleda's party was attacked by Danes who sought to kill her and break the alliance between Mercia and Wessex. Though half her force was killed in the first attack, Ethelfleda herself led the defense against the second, using a trench as a fortress and defeating the Danes.

Ethelfleda and her husband ruled Mercia together, and there are charters from their reign signed by her. As Ethelred began to suffer a debilitating sickness, Ethelfleda took over sole command of the Mercian forces. When Ethelred died in battle, King Alfred's daughter took the throne as "Lady of Mercia", the equivalent of Queen. Unlike other Germanic tribes the Saxons respected inheritance from the "spindle" or "distaff" side. In fact when Ethelfleda died, she was succeeded by her daughter Ælfwyn.



Ethelfleda was so great a battle strategist and fighter in her own right, she was held in fear by Danish leaders who had previously defeated her male predecessors. One of many female heroes of the struggle, including an old woman who cut the ropes of Danish ships in one battle, the Lady of Mercia took one fortress and town after another back from the Danes who often surrendered without a fight.

By 919, Ethelfleda had forced the Danes to surrender even their keystone stronghold at York. When she died that year at Tamworth her accomplishments further included the establishment of Staffordshire as Mercia's central administrative town and the rebuilding of the Roman town of Gloucester whose street plan still exists today.

It is said that the rights women of Saxon England enjoyed would not be seen again in England until the 20th century.

Encyclopedia of World Biography on Amelia Mary Earhart

The American aviator Amelia Mary Earhart Putnam (1897-1937) remains the world's best-known woman pilot long after her mysterious disappearance during a round-the-world flight in 1937.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, the daughter of Edwin and Amy Otis Earhart. Until she was 12 she lived with her wealthy maternal grandparents, Alfred and Amel
ia Harres Otis, in Atcheson, Kansas, where she attended a private day school. Her summers were spent in Kansas City, Missouri, where her lawyer-father worked for the Rock Island Railroad.

In 1909 Amelia and her younger sister, Muriel, went to live with their parents in Des Moines, Iowa, where the railroad had transferred her father. Before completing high school she also attended schools in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Springfield, Illinois, while her father fought a losing battle against alcoholism. His failure and its consequent humiliation for her were the root of Amelia's lifelong dislike of alcohol and desire for financial security.

Amy Earhart left Edwin in Springfield in 1914, taking her daughters with her to live with friends in Chicago, where Amelia was graduated from Hyde Park School in 1915. The yearbook described her as "A.E.--the girl in brown (her favorite color) who walks alone."

A year later, after Amy Earhart received an inheritance from the estate of her mother, she sent Amelia to Ogontz School in Philadelphia, an exclusive high school and junior college. During Christmas vacation of her second year there Amelia went to Toronto, Canada, where Muriel was attending a private school. In Toronto Amelia saw her first amputees, returning wounded from World War I. She immediately refused to return to Ogontz and became a volunteer nurse in a hospital for veterans where she worked until after the armistice of 1918. The experience made her an ardent, life-long pacifist.

From Toronto Earhart went to live with her mother and sister in Northampton, Massachusetts, where her sister was attending Smith College. In the fall of 1919 she entered Columbia University, but left after one year to join her parents, who had reconciled and were living in Los Angeles.

In the winter of 1920 Earhart saw her first air show and took her first airplane ride. "As soon as we left the ground," she said, "I knew I had to fly." She took lessons at Bert Kinner's airfield on Long Beach Boulevard in Los Angeles from a woman--Neta Snooks--and on December 15, 1921, received her license from the National Aeronautics Association (NAA). By working part-time as a file clerk, office assistant, photographer, and truck driver, and with some help from her mother, Earhart eventually was able to buy her own plane. However, she was unable to earn enough to continue what was an expensive hobby.



In 1924, when her parents separated again, she sold her plane and bought a car in which she drove her mother to Boston where her sister was teaching school.

Soon after that Earhart re-enrolled at Columbia but lacked the money to continue for more than one year. She returned to Boston where she became a social worker in a settlement house, joined the NAA, and continued to fly in her spare time.

In 1928 Earhart accepted an offer to join the crew of a flight across the Atlantic. The flight was the scheme of George Palmer Putnam, editor of WE, Charles Lindbergh's book about how he became, in 1927, the first person to fly across the Atlantic alone. The enterprising Putnam chose her for his "Lady Lindy" because of her flying experience, her education, and her lady-like appearance. Along with pilot Wilmer Stultz and mechanic Louis Gordon, she crossed the Atlantic (from Newfoundland to Wales) on June 18-19, 1928. Although she never once touched the controls (she described herself afterward as little more than a "sack of potatoes"), Earhart became world-renowned as "the first woman to fly the Atlantic."

From that time Putnam became Earhart's manager and, in 1931, her husband. He arranged all her flying engagements, many followed by often strenuous cross-country lecture tours (at one point, 29 tours in 31 days) for maximum publicity. However Earhart did initiate one flight of her own. Resenting reports that she was largely a puppet figure created by her publicist husband and something less than a competent aviator, she piloted a tiny, single-engine Lockheed Electra from Newfoundland to Ireland to become--on May 20-21, 1932, and five years after Lindbergh--the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

During the scarcely more than five years remaining in her life, Earhart acted as a tireless advocate for commercial aviation and for women's rights. The numerous flying records she amassed included:

1931: Altitude record in an autogiro

First person to fly an autogiro across the United States and back

1932: Fastest non-stop transcontinental flight by a woman

1933: Breaks her own transcontinental speed record

1935: First person to fly solo across the Pacific from Hawaii to California

First person to fly solo from Los Angeles to Mexico

Breaks speed record for non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey

1937: Sets speed record for east-west crossing from Oakland to Honolulu

Honors and awards she received included the Distinguished Flying Cross; Cross of the Knight of the Legion of Honor, from the French Government; Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society; and the Harmon Trophy as America's outstanding airwoman in 1932, 1933, 1934, and 1935.

On July 2, 1937, 22 days before her 40th birthday and having already completed 22,000 miles of an attempt to circumnavigate the earth, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific somewhere between Lae, New Guinea, and Howland Island. The most extensive search ever conducted by the U.S. Navy for a single missing plane sighted neither plane nor crew. Subsequent searches since that time have been equally unsuccessful. In 1992, an expedition found certain objects (a shoe and a metal plate) on the small atoll of Nikumaroro south of Howland, which could have been left by Earhart and Noonan. In 1997 another female pilot, Linda Finch, recreated Earhart's final flight in an around the world tribute entitled "World Flight 97." The event took place on what would have been Earhart's 100th birthday. Finch successfully completed her voyage, the identical route that Earhart would have flown, around the world.

English-born Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591-1643) was banished from the Massachusetts colony and excommunicated from its church for dissenting from the Puritan orthodoxy. Her "case" was one of several prefiguring the eventual separation of church and state in America.

Anne Marbury was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, the eldest daughter of a strong-willed Anglican priest who had been imprisoned and removed from office because of his demand for a better-educated clergy. In 1605 the family moved to London, where her father was reinstated to the clergy. He died in 1611, leaving his daughter a legacy of biblical scholarship and religious independence. The following year Anne returned to her birthplace as the bride of William Hutchinson, a prosperous cloth merchant. For the next 20 years she operated the household, acquired a knowledge of medicinal herbs, and cared for over a dozen children.

Her Early Puritanism

Hutchinson also continued her father's religious individualism. Adopting Puritanism, she often journeyed to St. Botolph's Church in Boston, England, to hear John Cotton, one of England's outstanding Puritan ministers. When the Anglican Church silenced him and he left for the colony of Massachusetts in America, Hutchinson became extremely distraught. She finally persuaded her husband to leave for America, so that she could follow her religious mentor.

The Hutchinson family was well received in Massachusetts. William Hutchinson was granted a desirable house lot in Boston, and both husband and wife quickly became church members. William Hutchinson resumed his career as a merchant, became a landowner, and was elected a town selectman and deputy to the General Court. Hutchinson's experience with medicinal herbs made her much in demand as a nurse, and she made many friends. When she was criticized for failing to attend weekly prayer meetings in the homes of parishioners, she responded by holding meetings in her own home. She began by reiterating and explaining the sermons of John Cotton but later added some of her own interpretations, a practice that was to be her undoing.

Puritan Orthodoxy

John Cotton was an intelligent and subtle theologian who had articulated an extremely fine balance between the value of God's grace and the value of good works in achieving salvation. While the Puritans believed that salvation was the result of God's grace, freely given to man, they also maintained that good works, or living the moral life, were important signs of that salvation and necessary preparation for the realization that one had received God's grace. But grace and works had to be kept in proper balance. To overemphasize works was to argue that man could be responsible for his own salvation and thus would deny God's power over man. On the other hand, to overemphasize grace was to assert a religious individualism that denied the necessity of moral living and by implication rejected clerical leadership, church discipline, and civil authority. While Cotton had maintained his balance in this most difficult of issues, Hutchinson did not, and she finally came to stress grace to the exclusion of works in determining salvation. The origin of her views is difficult to discover. Certainly Cotton had influenced her. She probably held her beliefs prior to her arrival in Boston, but she evidently did not advance them until the meetings in her home.

As her meetings became more popular, Hutchinson drew some of Boston's most influential citizens to her home. Many of these were town merchants and artisans who had been severely criticized for profiteering in prices and wages; they saw in Hutchinson's stress on grace a greater freedom regarding morality and therefore more certainty of their own salvation.

But others came in search of a more meaningful and personal relationship with their God. As she attracted followers and defenders, the orthodox Puritans organized to oppose her doctrines and her advocates.

Antinomian Controversy

The issue of grace as opposed to works assumed political significance and ultimately divided Massachusetts into hostile camps. The orthodox Puritans called the Hutchinson group "Antinomians," or those who denied the applicability of moral law to the saved, and the Hutchinsonians referred to orthodox Puritans as "Legalists," or those who trusted only the observance of church laws as a sign of salvation. The orthodox Puritans, always a majority in the colony, came to demand repudiation of what seemed not only religious error but also potential social chaos. If Hutchinson's views predominated, they reasoned, individual conscience would replace clerical and civil authority as the standard for public conduct.

The Puritan orthodoxy began its assault on the dissenters in the May 1637 election. Henry Vane, a Hutchinson defender, was defeated for reelection to the governorship by John Winthrop, an opponent of her views. In the summer a synod was called in order that the "errors" of the Hutchinsonians could be identified and dealt with by the government. Following a special election in October, in which the orthodoxy increased its political strength, the government moved against individuals. Boston's pro-Hutchinson deputies were not permitted to take their seats in the General Court, and Hutchinson's brother-in-law John Wheelwright (previously convicted for sedition and contempt because of a sermon preached in defense of grace) was banished.



Anne Hutchinson Banished

The court then moved against Hutchinson. It was a difficult situation. As a woman, her words had not been public and she had not participated in the political maneuvers surrounding the controversy. Called before the court, she was accused of sedition and questioned extensively. She defended herself well, however, demonstrating both biblical knowledge and debating skill. She returned the next morning to be aided by John Cotton's testimony about her beliefs, which differed from the report of the clergymen who had spoken for the court. This conflicting evidence would have cleared her, but she brashly intervened and, before it was over, had declared herself the recipient of direct revelations from God, without aid of either Scripture or clergy. This assertion of direct communion with God was regarded as the vilest heresy by all, and it sealed her doom. She was banished as a woman "not fit for [Massachusetts] society."

While Hutchinson's trial was, by modern standards, a gross miscarriage of justice, it was not unjust according to the standards of 17th-century England, where, generally, in sedition cases a formal defense was not permitted and a jury was not used. Yet even by 17th-century standards, a mistrial occurred when the same men sat both as prosecution and judge, for her guilt had been thus "known" by the General Court long before she even presented herself to it.

After her sentencing, Hutchinson's importance waned. Her strongest supporters had either left Massachusetts or been banished, and her idol, John Cotton, had finally allied himself with the orthodoxy. The result of her investigation by the Boston congregation was a foregone conclusion. Her attempt to renounce her former errors was taken as incomplete by the clergy, and she was excommunicated for the sin of lying. Within a week she and her family departed for Rhode Island, where she was free to practice her religious views. In 1642 her husband died, and Hutchinson moved with her six youngest children to Long Island and then to the New Netherland (New York) mainland. In the late summer of 1643, Hutchinson and all but one of her children were killed in an Indian attack.

It was a sad end for an important religious figure. Hutchinson's emphasis on grace as the only requirement for salvation was an important step toward the achievement of religious freedom--that is, the ability to follow the dictates of one's own conscience in matters of belief--in America.

This is a list of beliefs for which Anne Hutchinson was prosecuted, and was transcribed from: The Heresies of Anne Hutchinson and Her Followers, by Rev. Thomas Welde of the fisrt church of Roxbury, Massachusetts; The Preface to "A Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of Antimonians." (1644).

Anne Hutchinson's Creed

That the Law and the preaching of it, is of no use at all to drive a man to Christ.

That a man is united to Christ and justified, without faith; yea, from eternity.

That faith is not a receiving of Christ, but a man's discerning that he hath received him already.

That a man is united to Christ only by the work of the Spirit upon him, without any act of his.

That a man is never effectually Christ's, till he hath assurance.

This assurance is only from the witness of the Spirit.

This witness of the Spirit is merely immediate, without any respect to the word, or any concurrence with it.

When a man hath once this witness he never doubts more.

To question my assurance, though I fall into murder or adultery, proves that I never had true assurance.

Sanctification can be no evidence of a man's good estate.

No comfort can be had from any conditional promise.

Poverty in spirit (to which Christ pronounced blessedness, Matt. v. 3) is only this, to see I have no grace at all.

To see I have no grace in me, will give me comfort; but to take comfort from sight of grace, is legal.

An hypocrite may have Adam's graces that he had in innocence.

The graces of Saints and hypocrites differ not.

All graces are in Christ, as in the subject, and none in us, that Christ believes, Christ loves, etc.

Christ is the new Creature.

God loves a man never the better for any holiness in him, and never the less, be he never so unholy.

Sin in a child of God must never trouble him.

Trouble in conscience for sins of Commission, or for neglect of duties, shows a man to be under a covenant of works.

All covenants to God expressed in works are legal works.

A Christian is not bound to the Law as a rule of his conversation.

A Christian is not bound to pray except the Spirit moves him.

A minister that hath not this new light is not able to edify others: that have it.

The whole letter of the Scripture is a covenant of works.

No Christian must be pressed to duties of holiness.

No Christian must be exhorted to faith, love, and prayer, etc., except we know he hath the Spirit.

A man may have all graces, and yet want Christ.

All a believer's activity is only to act sin.

Article by Encyclopedia of World Biography on Anne Marbury Hutchinson

Amina was born around 1533 in Zaria, a province of today’s Nigeria. She was the daughter of Bakwa of Turunku. Their family's wealth was derived from the trade of leather goods, cloth, kola, salt, horses and imported metals.

When Bakwa died in 1566, the crown of Zazzua passed to Amina’s younger brother, Karama. Their sister, Zaria, fled the region and little is known about her.

Although Bakwa's reign was known for peace and prosperity, Amina chose to hone her military skills from the warriors of the Zazzau military. As a result, she emerged as leader of the Zazzua cavalry. Many accolades, great wealth, and increased power resulted from her numerous military achievements.

When her brother Karama died after a ten-year rule, Amina had matured into a fierce warrior and had earned the respect of the Zazzau military and she assumed the reign of the kingdom.

Amina led her first military charge a few months after assuming power. For the rest of her 34 year reign, she continued to fight and expand her kingdom to the greatest in history. The objective for initiating so many battles was to make neighbouring rulers her vassal and permit her traders safe passage. In this way, she boosted her kingdom’s wealth and power with gold, slaves, and new crops. Because her people were talented metal workers, Amina introduced metal armor, including iron helmets and chain mail, to her army.



To her credit, she fortified each of her military camps with an earthen wall. Later, towns and villages sprung up within these protective barriers. The walls became known as Amina’s Walls and many of them remain in existence to this day.

According to legend, Amina refused to marry and never bore children. Instead, she took a temporary husband from the legions of vanquished foes after every battle. After spending one night together, she would condemn him death in the morning in order to prevent him from ever speaking about his sexual encounter with the queen.



Legend also decrees she died during a military campaign at Atagara near Bida in Nigeria. Her exploits earned her the moniker Amina, daughter of Nikatau, a woman as capable as a man. Her legendary escapades made her the model for the television series Xena Warrior Princess. Today, her memory represents the spirit and strength of womanhood.

Maria Anna Mozart, beloved nicknamed Nannerl, was the elder and only sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As children, both were considered gifted musical prodigies and their father, Leopold, arranged tours to display their talents to the masses in the grandest capitals of Europe. Both children could play the most challenging pieces and could compose into notes any song they heard.



They enjoyed a pleasant childhood, indulging their musical creativity and creating their own childish kingdom. As Nannerl and Wolfgang’s musical genius progressed into composition, her adoring younger brother greatly praised and encouraged her work. At a concert, when he announces that the piece he has just played was written by his sister, Leopold is incensed. He orders Nannerl to never compose music again because in the 18th century, women did not become composers.

Thereafter, Leopold focused all his attentions on Mozart, not Nannerl. He refused to allow her to study the violin and composition. Leopold announces Nannerl must remain at home when he takes Wolfgang on tour and obliges her to give piano lessons to wealthy students to finance her brother’s Italian tour. Her dreams shattered, Nannerl complies, but falls into a deep depression.



Victoria, one of her students, becomes her protégé. Through Victoria, Nannerl’s passion for music is re-awakened. When Victoria’s father becomes interested in her, he rekindles her spirit. Her relationship with Mozart, however, is plagued by years of separation and the preference of their father for his son and not his daughter. Nannerl struggles not only with the loss of her hopes and dreams, but also with the ever-growing estrangement with her brother and her father who refuses to recognize her talents because of the laws of society which will not allow a woman to enter the wold of musical composition.

Even her choice of suiters were one-by-one turned away by Leopold. In 1784, she married the magistrate Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg (1736-1801) and moved to St. Gilgen. Nannerl returned to Salzburg to give birth to her first son and left the newborn there in Leopold's care.

Nannerl grew ever more distant from Wolfgang, especially after his marriage to Constanze Weber. They resumed corresponding briefly after the death of their father, but by then, their affection for each other had all but disappeared and Mozart's brief letters to her dealt almost exclusively with the disposition of their father's estate.

When Wolfgang dies, Nannerl re-awakens to life and makes it her purpose to honor her brother by collecting and assembling all his compositions and erecting monuments to honor his life.

After her huband’s death, Maria Anna returned to Salzburg and supported herself once again by giving piano lessons. She died on October 29, 1829, and was buried in St. Peter’s cemetary.

Anna was the first born child of Moritz, Elector of Saxony and his wife, Agnes Hesse. Their son, Alberto, was born a year later, but when he was only five months old, he died.

Anna was an ugly daughter, her hunched back and lameness exaserbated her uncomely fetures. Becaause of her repulsive looks and the death of her baby brother, she received little or no affection from her parents. At the age of eight, her father died. Two years later, her mother remarried, but died six months later.

Anna's uncle August, Elector of Saxony, readily assumed responsibility for her because as the only surviving child, Anna had inherited a vast fortune. Her wealth and luxurious lifestyle extended to those who raised her. She developed a strong sense of self-importance and in her teens became unruly, difficult, rebellious and prone to explosive fits of temper.

On November 18, 1560, Anna was invited to attend the wedding of Countess Katharine of Nassau-Dillenburg and the Count of Schwarzburg. There she met Katharine's widower-brother, the twenty-seven-year-old Prince William of Orange, or William the Silent as they called him in later years.

The handsome and sophisticated prince impressed the unattractive and obstinate Anna. He too, seemed genuinely impressed with her. William followed her to Dresden to woe her and Anna fell madly in love with him. In order to marry Anna, however, William needed to seek the king's permission. So he returned home to Dresden.

Almost immediately, he received three letters from the pining Anna. Matters of state occupied all of William's time, so he asked his younger brother, Ludwig, to pen responses to Anna's letters. Afterwards, William copied them in his own hand and sent them to her.

The Catholic king objected to a marriage between William and Anna because he feared it connected him too closely with the Protestant German princes, his enemies.
Nevertheless, the king could not prevent it, and William and Anna were married on August 24, 1561 in Leipzig.

Certain the German princes would use the occasion to plot against him, the king insisted that Anna become a Catholic. Anna's grandfather, the Landgraf of Hessen, objected.

Anna was excessive in everything she did. She burst out in violent fits of temper, often smashing everything within easy reach to bits. At parties, she drank heavily and drunkenly flirted with the male guests.

Frequent hysterics, bouts of extreme happiness, drunken outbursts, and fits of depression did little to endear herself to her new husband. The marriage experienced problems from the start. To be married to a man so completely pre-occupied with matters of state was no easy matter.

Nevertheless, at the age of seventeen, Anna became pregnant. Her uncontrollable moods and emotional outbursts grew more frequent. Everyone credited to the pregnancy.

On October 31, 1562, Anna gave birth to their first child who they named Anna.
While William was busy conducting a costly guerrilla war, his relatives in Germany were forced to live frugally. Anna detested her life in Dillenburg. She publicly cursed and vehemently denunciated her husband. Her haughtiness, pigheadedness and insolence angered William's relatives.

On December 8, 1564, a second child was born. This time, it was a son who they named him Moritz August Philips. After the birth, she began to express thoughts of suicide and despair, secluding herself for days in a darkened room illuminated only by candles, receiving no visitors, and refusing food.

Anna was uncaring to both her own children and her two stepchildren, so in 1564 William took his own two children from her care. By then, it was common knowledge that their marriage was a complete failure.

In 1566 Anna's little son, Moritz, died at the age of 2. Anna's behavior grew even more distressed. She began experiencing sudden and inappropriate attitude changes, recurring fits of temper, and suicidal tendencies. Anna complained she was bored in Breda and traveled to Spa, where she publicly ridiculed William and openly mocked his sexual abilities. Thus, she became subject to gossip and disapproval of the whole society. Her impulsive behavior often discredited both herself and her husband. Soon, she would sink deeper into the darkness of total insanity.

Political turmoil interfered with their lives. When the news reached them that the Duke of Alva was on his way to The Netherlands with a large army, William fled Germany with his family. They went to live with his relatives at Dillenburg. Here, on 14 November 1567, Anna gave birth to another son named after Anna's father.
In August of 1568, William departed for The Netherlands and left Anna, who was again pregnant, with his mother and sister-in-law. Anna drank heavily and the women admonished her.

Because of the discord, Anna left Dillenburg on 20 October 1568, taking her children and sixty attendants with her to Cologne. Away from the prying eyes of family, she lived a life of extreme lavishness. Before long, she squandered all her money and lived in an almost constant inebriated state. She mistreated her staff terribly during this time.

Without financial resources, she wrote to her uncle and asked him to send someone who could help her with her problems. Erich Volckmar von Berlepsch arrived on January 1, 1569 and spent four days with her. Firstly, she told him that the reason for her departure from Dillenburg had been the plague from which several people had died. Secondly, she wanted to be in Cologne where she could be closer to her husband. Thirdly, she confessed her husband's relatives cared little for her. Last, she told him about her financial difficulties. She owed money as well as her staff's salaries. Von Berlepsch advised her she had too much staff so she reduced them to twenty-four and he authorized the money.

On 10 April 1569 her daughter Emilia was born.

William repeatedly asked her to return to him, but she publicly destroyed any correspondence he sent her. Finally, she agreed to meet with him in Mannheim, but they remained separated from each other.

In 1570, her uncle assigned Jan Rubens, a Flemish refugee, to her household to maintain the financial purse strings. This enraged Anna, so in May 1570, with Jan Rubens in tow, she left to speak to her uncle in person. She left her children in the care of Rubens's wife. During their journey, Anna seduced Jan, sleeping with him frequently.

To avoid the scandal of having her affair and pregnancy by Jan known, she moved her household to the country castle in Siegen.

Gossip of Anna's indiscretion soon reached William and his brother, Count Johann VI. Johann arrested and imprisoned Rubens in Dillenburg Castle. Despite her obvious pregnancy, Anna denied any wrongdoing. She rejected the accusations vehemently. William presented her with Jan Rubens' signed confession. Anna broke down, begging William to execute them both, which was the common penalty for infidelity in such circumstances.

On 22 August 1571, while at Castle Siegen, she gave birth to the daughter fathered by Jan Rubens and named her Christina von Dietz. Weary of her unpredictable personality, her infidelity, and her unpopularity with his family and the public, William refused to acknowledge Christina as his own. He declared his marriage to Anna annulled and forthwith removed his and Anna's children to Dillenberg. They never saw their mother again.

In October 1572, Anna and her illegitimate child moved to the German Castle Beilstein. It was here that the first serious signs of madness became apparent.
When infuriated, she attacked her staff. After her meals, the staff removed and secreted away all the knives. Preachers delivered sermons to her twice a week in her room. However, her violent outbursts, hallucinations, and filthy talk grew worse. She even claimed to have killed her own children.

She was held in custody until 1575, when her uncle the elector of Saxony brought her home to Dresden on December 22, 1576. Her madness worsened. In Dresden, her uncle confined her in two rooms and sealed the windows with bricks. She spoke deliriously, nonsensical, shaking and foaming at the mouth.

Her uncle assigned two men to her protect her female staff from Anna's violent outbursts. One of the men reported that Anna had attacked him with knives and was "raging and foolish as if she were possessed". Her hallucinations and violent outbursts worsened. Her uncle removed Christina from her care and sent her to William to raise her with her half-siblings.

In 1577, William exiled Jan Rubens and he returned to his wife and had another child who became the famous painter Peter Paul Rubens.

Anna lived out the remaining year of her life Dresden. She died on 18 December 1577 at the age of thirty-three.

Nefertiti reigned in Ancient Egypt between 1351 and 1331 B.C. She was the chief wife of the "heretic" Pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten desperately wanted a male heir and Nefertiti tried hard to provide him with one. Instead, she presented him with six daughters. It was Queen Kiya, his lesser wife, Kiya, who provided him with male heirs - Smenkhkare and Tutankhamun, a fact which inflamed Nefertiti’s jealousy and wrath.

Pharaoh Akhenaten loved both his wives, but it was Nefertiti to whom he exalted to a prominnent role in the religious and political life of Egypt. He bestowed upon her with such titles as Mistress of Happiness, Endowed with Favors, Chief Wife of the King, Beloved, Lady of the Two Lands, and May she live for Ever and Always".

(Ahkenaten, Nefertiti, and their children)

She helped her husband initiate a massive religious and cultural revolution and represented the feminine aspect of the god, Aten. Renowned for her beauty, Nefertiti dressed to enhance her best features. She is often depicted wearing a close fitting sheath. As Akhenaten´s chief wife, she wore the crown of Hathor that resembled cow horns with plumes or the crown of Mut, the vulture goddess. But the crown she is most often associated with, is the blue war crown with its flat top.

Nefertiti vanished around year fourteen of Akhenaten´s reign. Rumours abound about her mysterious disappearance. Her name was struck from numerous inscriptions. Some say it was because she and her husband fell into discord and he banished her in disgrace to her palace, Aten’s Castle. Others believe that she disguised herself as a man and assumed a new identity as Smenkhkare so that she could rule as co-regent with her husband. It is even speculated that she simply died from the plague and her death was so painful for Akhenaten that he did not wish to be reminded of her.

Whatever the circumstances, however, Nefertiti simply disappeared and there is no record of her death nor has her mummy or place of burial been confirmed. Her husband, Akhenaten died about several years later under circumstances just as mysterious. His mummy has not been found either.

Famed throughout the ancient world for her outstanding beauty, Akhenaten's queen Nefertiti remains the one of the most well known and mysterious queens of ancient Egypt.