Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics

by Jason Porath

  As her career expanded, Annie became involved in the women’s suffrage movement and served as an ambassador for professional women everywhere. She gave talks at the World’s Fair in Chicago and fought tooth and nail against the stereotype of female astronomers as just astrologers and horoscope readers. She never retired and kept working—seven days a week, mostly for the criminally low rate of 25 cents an hour—until she was 76, at which point heart disease took her life.

  Part of the reason for Annie’s amazing astronomical skills was that she was almost totally deaf. A nasty bout of scarlet fever permanently damaged her hearing in college, but she used this to her advantage. The relative silence, she’d later say, allowed her to concentrate more fully on her work. While some biographers claim her hearing loss had a negative effect on her social life,* any effects were only temporary. In later years, with the help of a powerful hearing aid, she held regular dinner parties at her house, an utterly charming villa she dubbed the Star Cottage.

  Near the end of her life, with World War II on the horizon, Annie summed up her worldview in one of her last interviews: “In these days of great trouble and unrest, it is good to have something outside our own planet, something fine and distant and comforting to troubled minds. Let people look to the stars for comfort.”

  • ART NOTES •

  The scene here is a bit of a mishmash of Annie’s life. The observatory is based off a Peruvian one she worked with, producing some of her most important work (although she never visited), but the telescope is from later in her career. The women in the background didn’t do their work at the observatory, and almost certainly didn’t work by lamplight, but they did illuminate much that was unknown to humanity.

  Speaking of the Harvard Computers, some notable ones include:

  • Williamina Fleming (standing with book): Pickering’s ex-maid and leader of the Computers. Deserted by a crappy husband, she devised the first star classification system and cataloged around 10,000 stars.

  • Henrietta Swan Leavitt (seated at the end of the table on the right): Also a deaf astronomer! She devised a method for calculating the distance to very faraway galaxies, and Edwin Hubble himself said she deserved a Nobel Prize for her work.

  • Antonia Maury (seated, getting poked by Williamina): Had a big disagreement with Pickering over classification systems and ended up leaving the Computers. Hence she’s got kind of a snarky look at Williamina’s comments.

  • Pickering himself is holding the ladder for Annie.

  Wilma Rudolph

  (1940–1994, UNITED STATES)

  The Olympic Runner Who Beat Polio

  If anyone ever had the cards stacked against them, it was Wilma Rudolph. Born in the segregated southern United States, Wilma was the 20th of her father’s 22 children. With her parents’ annual income never topping $2,500, she lived in utter poverty her entire childhood. She made dresses out of cloth sacks, used candles and outhouses in place of electric lights and plumbing, and had to take a Greyhound bus—where she was forced to sit in the back—50 miles to the nearest hospital.

  It was a trip she had to take often. Before the age of seven, she had contracted scarlet fever, measles, mumps, whooping cough, pneumonia (twice), and, worst of all, polio. The disease took away her ability to walk, forced her to miss her entire kindergarten year and much of first grade, left her in leg braces until the age of 11, and instilled in her deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.

  Consider how unlikely it was, then, that by the age of 20 this little girl would become a three-time Olympic gold medal winner. After becoming an unwed teen mother.

  But it happened.

  For all the setbacks life handed her, Wilma had one key strength: her family. After Wilma’s disabling bout with polio, her family took turns massaging her legs until she could walk again. When she started running competitively, they cheered her on—and gradually she became so good that scouts took notice. When she became pregnant (the father, her high school sweetheart, initially took no responsibility), the family kept it secret, and her sister Yvonne would raise the baby so that Wilma could focus on her athletics.

  Wilma competed in both the Melbourne (1956) and Rome (1960) Olympics. Prior to Melbourne, she didn’t even know what the Olympics were. She’d never been on an airplane, let alone traveled out of the country. Although she didn’t take home any gold medals, she did return with a fervent desire to win. Four years later, win she did—taking gold for the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, and 4-by-100-meter relay.

  The reaction to her victories was overwhelming. Not only was Wilma the first American woman to ever win three gold medals in track and field, but she’d also beaten the Russians at the height of the Cold War—establishing herself as one of the first famous black female athletes in the world. She met President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the pope; starred in newsreels sent around the country; and even appeared on Ed Sullivan’s variety show. There was also a TV movie of her life story starring Cicely Tyson and a young Denzel Washington.

  Wilma quickly used her newfound fame for good. When her hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee, put on a parade for her return, she made her attendance contingent on the parade being integrated. This condition put her in direct conflict with the governor, who’d run on a strict segregationist platform—but in the end Wilma prevailed.

  It was not all celebration thereafter, though. Wilma’s track and field teammates, feeling slighted, eventually turned on her. Before one banquet, they hid her hair care products, so she had to appear without her hair done. Later they intentionally threw a relay match in Britain, running slower than they could—only to see Wilma pour on the speed in the last leg and narrowly eke out a win. Gradually, feeling that her peers saw her as a rival or a threat, she retired from running, reunited with her high school sweetheart, and settled down.

  Her post-Olympics life was one of setbacks and disappointment. She’d won her medals in the era before sponsorships for athletes, and without a lot of knowledge of the world of entertainment and agents, Wilma had no idea how to parlay her victories into other opportunities. She moved her family around often and worked a series of menial jobs. Moreover, her fame proved only temporary insulation against racism: a white man spit on her children the same day Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.

  Nevertheless, she stayed strong. In her autobiography, she never shared her failures, only her successes. Even as she struggled toward the end of her life—after divorcing her husband because he wanted a “traditional” subservient woman, she would face poverty once again—she never complained. She kept striving, all the way to the end.

  Wilma Rudolph died of brain cancer at age 54, happy with her life of ups and downs. “The triumph can’t be had without the struggle,” she said. “And I know what struggle is.”

  • ART NOTES •

  The image is, left to right, a timeline of Wilma Rudolph’s life—escaping the polio leg braces, leaving her newborn child with her sister, winning the Olympics, and becoming a worldwide star.

  Alfhild

  (5TH CENTURY, DENMARK)

  The Viking Who Became a Pirate

  Our story begins in typical Rapunzellian fashion: the beautiful princess Alfhild, chaste to the point of covering her face so as not to incite lust, was living locked away from the rest of the world.

  Guarding her from gentleman callers were a viper, a snake, and several hundred guards. Get through, the rules went, and she’d be yours. Fail, and your noggin would be repurposed as a furnishing no Viking home could do without: heads on pikes.

  Enter the son of King Sigar: Alf, hunky fella and dashing hero type. Wearing bloodstained hides to whip Alfhild’s reptilian sentinels into a frenzy, he quickly dispatched the snakey duo with a red-hot poker and a spear. After all, everyone knows the surest way to a maiden’s heart is by sneaking past her guards, breaking into her room unannounced, and brutally slaughtering her childhood pets before her eyes.

  To his credit, Alfhild’s dad didn’t give
her away just like that. In a display of paternal virtue rare for the time, he let her choose if she wanted to marry the first man to successfully run the gauntlet of doom. After consulting with her mom (who warned her against letting Alf’s good looks influence her decision), Alfhild chose option C: donning men’s clothing, running away from home, and becoming a pirate.

  For the next several years, Alfhild led an all-female band of pirates, looting and plundering (as any virginal and chaste shieldmaiden would). She became such a nuisance that several Danish expeditions were launched to stop her, but none returned. So great was her renown that, upon meeting her, a newly captainless crew of sailors quickly accepted her as their new leader.

  By the time Alf caught back up with Alfhild (he’d been stalking her all this time), her fleet had grown much larger than his. Undeterred (and not wanting to seem like a coward around women), Alf boarded her ship and began wantonly stabbing people. It was only after Alfhild’s helmet was knocked off that he realized the terrifying warrior in front of him was, in fact, the object of his obsession. He wrapped his arms around her and the battle was over.

  The rest of the story goes in a manner typical for its sexist historian scribe Saxo Grammaticus. According to Saxo, Alf and Alfhild marry, she starts wearing women’s clothing again, they have a kid, and Alfhild is never heard from again.

  But just because they were not recorded does not mean she didn’t go on to have other adventures.

  Calafia

  (16TH-CENTURY SPANISH MYTH)

  Griffin-Riding Muslim Queen of California

  Pop quiz! California was named after:

  A. John Gideon California, a 15th-century pilgrim who founded an orphanage for gay socialist orphans.

  B. A Native American word meaning “unaffordable rent.”

  C. A griffin-riding Muslim warrior queen from an island of black Amazons.

  The correct answer is C. Meet Calafia, queen of California.

  Calafia is introduced at the tail end of The Labors of the Very Brave Knight Esplandián, an adventure novel that was the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets of 1500s Spain. In it, the titular Esplandián, a capital-C Christian warrior, ventures across the world in a fire-breathing serpent/boat, fighting the pagan (read: Muslim) menace. This leads to a climactic battle at Constantinople that draws out all the greatest warriors of the Muslim world—including Calafia.

  Calafia was from the island of California, a gold-rich nation described as being somewhere near the Indies.* The cave-dwelling inhabitants of California were women warriors who raised the island’s native griffins (mythical bird/beast hybrids described as depicted in the art, purple dots and all) to both carry them into battle and kill and eat any man in sight. Virtually the only male Californians were ones kidnapped from nearby islands and held in slavery. The Amazons killed most of the male children shortly after birth.

  The author of this novel was not, shall we say, a stickler for historical accuracy.

  Calafia arrives late in the story, crushing the entrenched Christian defenders of Constantinople by having her aerial forces gift them with impromptu skydiving lessons. This quickly turns into a comedy of errors once the Muslim ground troops subsequently charge the walls, only to also be murdered by the man-eating griffins (who are more anti–Y chromosome than anti-Christianity).

  Calafia sheepishly stops making it rain men and proposes that the war be settled with one-on-one fights between the leaders of both sides.

  From there, the story dissolves into godawful fan fiction. Calafia’s messenger returns, going on at nauseating length about Esplandián’s stunning good looks, which leads Calafia to meet him in person so she can go on about it herself. Calafia acquits herself fairly well in one-on-one combat but is defeated. Then she sits around waiting for Esplandián to marry her. When he doesn’t, she marries his uncle, converts to Christianity, and happily goes off to conquer more islands around California. The story ends by saying that to list her continued exploits would make for a never-ending story.

  Seems to this author that perhaps it’s time someone continued chronicling those exploits.

  Keumalahayati

  (16TH–17TH CENTURY, INDONESIA)

  The Widow Admiral of Indonesia

  By the time the sultan of Aceh came asking her to lead his navy, Keumalahayati* was ready. The descendant of the first sultan of Aceh and the daughter of a line of naval admirals, Keumalahayati had already long been working in the sultan’s armed forces. After her soldier husband had been killed by the Portuguese, she’d banded together all her fellow war widows and started the Inong Balee: the “Widow’s Army.” They operated out of their own superhero headquarters fortress (the “Widow’s Fort”) and fought the Portuguese at every opportunity.

  But now that Keumalahayati was being given command of the naval fleet, it was time for the first female naval admiral in the modern world* to step up her game. She had a lot of work ahead of her.

  Aceh at the turn of the 17th century was in a precarious position. Located at the northern tip of Sumatra, Aceh was a natural gateway to the rest of Indonesia and a target for foreign powers, notably the Dutch and the Portuguese. Compounding matters was the sultan’s age: he’d taken the throne in his nineties, and attempts to dethrone him were as regular as the setting of the sun. In fact, it was his general distrust of men that led the sultan to seek Keumalahayati’s aid. It’s a good thing he did.

  The first major crisis of Keumalahayati’s career came in 1599, with the arrival of two of Holland’s worst diplomats, the brothers Cornelis and Frederick de Houtman. They had already made a disastrous name for themselves by insulting a neighboring sultan and going on to pillage nearby villages. They soon got into a heated battle with Keumalahayati* in which she—and her 100-galley-strong fleet—got the better of them. She killed Cornelis in the fighting and took Frederick prisoner, forcing him to make the world’s first Malay-Dutch dictionary.

  In the years that followed, Keumalahayati made it abundantly clear that Aceh was not to be played with. When a Dutch admiral robbed and sank an Acehnese merchant ship, Keumalahayati began attacking Dutch ships and arresting their crews on sight. After two years of this, the Dutch royalty finally relented. Prince Maurits of Holland sent out ambassadors with official apologies and levied a substantial fine on the merchant-robbing admiral. This was a fresh start in friendly relations between the two nations: for the first time, Aceh sent ambassadors to Holland, making Maurits look all the more prestigious to his European neighbors.

  By the time Britain came around to visiting Aceh, the reputation of the Acehnese navy had spread so far that the British didn’t even try forcing their way in and instead worked diplomatically from the start.

  According to legend, Keumalahayati died in battle against the Portuguese. Her name has become synonymous with boats in Indonesia—one of their chief warships today is called Keumalahayati—and the Inong Balee live on as a contemporary all-female guerrilla force that agitates for Aceh’s independence from Indonesia.

  Marie Marvingt

  (1875–1963, FRANCE)

  The Fiancée of Danger

  Are you the sort of person who got mad when you learned Mozart composed his first symphony at age five? Do kids who graduate from college before they’re old enough to drive make you angry?

  Prepare to get furious.

  Here’s a short sampling of Marie Marvingt’s long athletic career:

  • Swam four kilometers by age four and was hailed as France’s best female swimmer by age 31.

  • Learned gymnastics with the circus and could ride a horse using secret inaudible commands.

  • Dominated the 1908–1910 Olympics in skiing, ice skating, luge, and bobsledding—all of which helped promote the ski school she’d opened, the first ever accessible to civilians.

  • Became proficient at cycling, tennis, golf, polo, jujitsu, boxing, shooting, fencing, swimming, mountain climbing, and ballooning.

  • Finished 36th in the 1908 Tour de France, alt
hough she wasn’t even allowed to officially enter.

  • Scaled Dent du Geant, a treacherous mountaineering feat that only two people, both men, had accomplished before her.

  • Sailed a balloon from Paris to England in the middle of a storm, almost dying multiple times. When she did land, it was by crashing into a tree and getting tossed out (she was fine).

  • In 1910 won the Medaille d’Or for All Sports from the French Academy of Sports. Yes, she won a medal for all sports. Every single one of them. Hers was the only one of these awards ever given.

  Mad yet? Well, buckle in, we’re barely halfway through her résumé.

  Marvingt was intensely focused from a young age. Her mother died when she was very young, and with Dad busy looking after her infirm brother, Marie had to step up to run the house. When she was 22, her brother died, and she vowed she would never marry. Instead, she became, as she’d later title her autobiography, The Fiancée of Danger.

  After hitting her mid-thirties, Marie began to drift away from sports and into aviation, the interest for which she became best known. She started flying a scant seven years after the Wright brothers’ test at Kitty Hawk, operating experimental planes that could charitably be described as flying death traps. Despite crashing several times (an inevitability in those days), she became the third woman in the world to get a pilot’s license. Next Marie did what any upstanding citizen with an incredibly dangerous, unproven piece of new technology might do: she joined the war effort.