I've been thinking about this with regards to a fantasy setting mainly. How could we get a Queendom to work realistically- I'm not wanting to go down any sort of cliched Amazon warrior or magic powered women route, I'm thinking solidly within the rules of our universe.
Which leads me to ponder, is there any point where we could get such a thing IOTL?
My thinking about how to do it leads me down the path of a captive monarch. A constitutional monarchy which wasn't exactly the monarchys idea. Revolutionary leaders think that maybe a woman ruler is easier to control than a king but still maintains the same legitamcy. And/or they believe that people will be more willing to fight for a woman than a man, that a woman makes for a better national symbol.
The only big problem standing out to me is in how then we continue the line- how to stop the king/prince consort being too powerful. Having the queen passed around a bunch of men, perhaps a random citizen drawn by lot, is going down a bit too much of a kinky fantasy route which I want to avoid and of course in the real world of christianity would be rather....iffy.
So, this is a very unlikely scenario, but is there anyway we can stretch and poke at history to make a Queendom appear somewhere?