SOURCE: "Women at Arms," in The New Yorker, April 24, 1989, pp. 108-111.

In the following review, Bliven examines the characteristics of the historical figures outlined by Fraser in The Warrior Queens and comments on their significance.

Antonia Fraser's The Warrior Queens is an intelligent and artful study of women rulers who commanded in battle. The book begins in prehistory—practically every pagan pantheon featured a warrior goddess—and comes down to the present; its heroines lived in Europe, Asia, and Africa. (The New World has produced no warrior queens known to history.) The author's ground rules exclude the West's most famous woman warrior, Joan of Arc, because she did not wield political power, but Ms. Fraser finds a place for Margaret Thatcher, who, living at a time when a nation's political chief is no longer expected to appear on the battlefield, made the decision that sent British soldiers to...