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1. Grace O’Malley
If you thought Teuta of Illyria was a badass pirate queen, wait until you learn about Grace O’Malley. The 16th-century Irish clan leader—technically known as Gráinne Ní Mháille in her own dialect—was a redheaded Irish warlord who backed down from no challenge. For decades, she fought to keep the English from invading Ireland. Grace came of age just after Henry VIII abruptly declared himself King of Ireland. The English were moving quickly onto the island, and the Irish didn’t care for it.Grace’s father was the lord of the O’Malley dynasty. That crew had been a successful seafaring bunch on Ireland’s west coast for centuries. So it was only natural for Grace to take to the ocean herself. From an early age, she was on ships with her father. The first time she asked to accompany him on an expedition to Spain, he joked that her hair would catch and tangle in the ship’s rigging.Not surprisingly, she acted on the concern: Grace cut off her hair and forced her father to let her go on the trip. She proved to be a great sailor, and she also got a nickname out of the deal. Forever after, she was known as Grace the Bald (Gráinne Mhaol).As she grew older, Grace married, but she didn’t settle down. When her first husband died, she took to the high seas with a band of Irish pirates. The group was dead set on maintaining Ireland’s independence from England. Grace wanted her coastal lands undisturbed by English rule, and she would do whatever it took to get that. So she amassed a pirate haul of nearly two dozen ships. Then, she started raiding coastal Tudor villages on the other side of Ireland and in England.She did this for decades until Queen Elizabeth I got sick of it and called for a meeting. Grace wanted something out of the deal, too: the release of some kidnapped family members. What happened next remains the stuff of legend among Irish people today. Grace met with Queen Elizabeth and infamously refused to bow before Her Majesty. That was unheard of at the time, but O’Malley didn’t see herself as one of the Queen’s subjects and cared little for formalities.Symbolically, the bow was significant. Practically, it ended Grace’s vicious reign. Her family members were released from captivity, but in exchange, her days of piracy on the high seas were over for good.
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