A journey into the lives of the most ruthless female figures in history, between Renaissance courts and modern serial killers
Beautiful, evil and always mysterious. According to aggression researchers, women would manifest violent attitudes mainly in self-defenseexpressing fear, guilt and shame more frequently. Emotions that, fundamentally, reduce the likelihood of committing crimes. Yet history does not skimp on examples of women who have chosen to embrace evil with compulsive ease.
This is the territory explored by Maurizio Roccato in the volume The most evil women in history (2025, Diarkos)an investigation into the dark side of the lives of some of the most ruthless and controversial female figures of the past, from the Renaissance courts to the working-class neighborhoods of modern metropolises.
The queens of unscrupulous power
Let’s start with powerful women. Catherine de’ Medici she is remembered for having introduced the use of the fork and the best Italian culinary habits to the French court. But behind the teacher of good manners there was a cruel woman. Widow and regent of France for her ten-year-old son Charles IXused his supremacy to “bless” the nEight of San Bartolomeothe massacre carried out on 24 August 1572 by the Catholic faction against the Protestant Huguenots in Paris.
Lucrezia Borgiadefined by the French historian Jules Michelet «female demon installed on the Vatican throne»showed unstoppable ruthlessness on several occasions. He enjoyed watching his brother Cesare execute criminals by skewering them with a crossbow, and was said to plan assassinations with a ring that released poisonous powder.
Also Cleopatrawhose portrayal as an evil woman has its roots in the propaganda of Octaviandid not hesitate to exterminate his family, having two brothers and a sister killed in order to consolidate his power over Egypt. Apparently, even his death was violent and theatrical: having lost hopes of victory against Augustus, she let herself be bitten by an asp and died of poisoning together with her lover Mark Antony.
The uncrowned criminals
Roccato’s volume has the merit of sketching out the contours of equally ferocious common women. Not clouded by power, but by the desire for revenge or simply by sadism.
Aileen Wuornosborn in Rochester (Michigan) in 1956, lived a childhood that was nothing short of hellish, marked by family abuse of all kinds. He harbored a growing inner anger and a feeling of hatred towards the male gender. Between November 1989 and 1990 he killed seven clients for whom he prostituted himself, shooting repeatedly with a 22 caliber revolver. His story became that of one of America’s most notorious serial killers.
And finally Irma Grese, German war criminalwas transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. In the seven months in which he supervised a punitive escort, he was responsible for the deaths of at least thirty prisoners a day, indiscriminately sending sick and healthy people to the gas chambers and amusing himself by kicking and punching those who attempted to escape.
