S. Jansen 
The Monstrous Regiment of Women [PDF ebook] 
Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe

In The Monstrous Regiment of Women , Sharon Jansen explores the case for and against female rule by examining the arguments made by theorists from Sir John Fortescue (1461) through Bishop Bossuet (1680) interweaving their arguments with references to the most well-known early modern queens. The ”story” of early modern European political history looks very different if, instead of focusing on kings and their sons, we see successive generations of powerful women and the shifting political alliances of the period from a very different, and revealing, perspective.