Female rule was often deplored—for instance, Mary Queen of Scots was denounced by John Knox as ‘abominable’—and associated with disorder and a topsy-turvy world. Despite this cultural prejudice, there were a surprising number of early modern queens exercising supreme political authority. William Monter found 30 such female rulers, including the Scottish Mary, across Europe between 1300 and 1800. Studies of European queens far outnumber those of female rulers from outside Europe, but Monter's introduction also notes scattered examples of regnant queens around the world while Merry Wiesner-Hanks's global survey suggests that women wielding political and religious power were found both inside and outside Europe. In early modern archipelagic Southeast Asia, regnant queens were unusually abundant. Anthony Reid's list highlights this remarkable elevation of women: 6 of 32 rulers of Bone since the fourteenth century; 2 queens between 1404 and 1434 in Pasai; one in Burma (1453–72); several at Sukadana in Borneo (1608–22), Jambi in East Sumatra (1630–55), and Solor in East Flores (1650–70); a century of female rule in Patani (1584–1688) and more than half a century in Aceh (1641–99). He suggests, ‘Austronesian societies, which include Polynesia and Madagascar as well as Indonesia and the Philippines, have been more inclined […] to place high-born women on the throne.’ Given increasing scholarly attention to queenship in premodern Europe and the issues raised about sovereignty, power, and representation, it is worth taking a more global view of gender and power by bringing non-Western examples into discussion.