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Women Who Took their Vengeance in an Epic Fashion

Khalid Elhassan February 28, 2021 36 min

Phoolan Devi - Bandit Queen — Phoolan Devi, when she eventually turned herself in. India Today

Piracy - Umhaill — Grainne Ni Mhaille, Ireland’s pirate queen, and Queen Elizabeth I of England. Pintrest

7. The Pirate Queen Meets Queen Elizabeth I

The Irish pirate queen’s run of dominance and vengeance eventually came to an end. After the English defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, they were free to focus on consolidating their grip on Ireland, and resources were freed to fight Irish piracy and pirates such as Grainne Ni Mhaille. To resist that English expansion, Mhaille allied with Irish lords rebelling against the English. However, in 1593, the English captured her sons and brother, so Grainne sailed to England, to petition Queen Elizabeth I for their release.

She met the English queen at Greenwich Castle, and the presence of such two formidable women in the same room must have been an electrifying sight. Grainne reportedly refused to bow, on the grounds that she did not recognize Elizabeth as Queen of Ireland. Elizabeth extracted from Mhaille a promise to cease assisting Irish rebels. Elizabeth did not live up to her end of the bargain, however, so Mhaille went back to helping the rebels, and reportedly died in one of her castles in 1603.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.