After a years-long battle to secure her inheritance as heiress of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Maria Theresia arrived in Prague, the capital of what was then Bohemia, clutching the holy crown of St Wenceslas. Almost everyone assembled there agreed that she was indeed Bohemia’s rightful monarch, but they had never had a reigning queen before and there was no mechanism in place to accept one.

Finally, it was agreed that they would simply declare Maria Theresia to be a man, crowning her as king of Bohemia on 12 May 1743. She had similarly been crowned as king of Hungary two years before, with this ceremonial change of sex a neat solution to the problem of a female heiress.

There have been female monarchs for at least 5,000 years in various places across the globe, although they remain rar

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