2. Empress Matilda

History may have forgotten Empress Matilda, but we haven’t. When The White Ship disaster deprived Henry I of his only legitimate male heir, he names his daughter Matilda as his successor. But the throne is stolen from her by her cousin, Stephen of Blois. England is subsequently thrust into a civil war known as The Anarchy for nineteen years. But Matilda eventually gets her victory in her son, the future King Henry II of England, the first Plantagenet King.