Hey there!

A few weekends ago, I was driving home from visiting a cousin in eastern Washington. I didn't need to rush home so I decided to split up the four-hour drive with a stop at the Maryhill Museum of Art.

The Maryhill is out in the middle of nowhere, perched on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge with stunning views both ways down the river. The whole area is windswept, sagebrush-covered hills dotted with wind turbines, and closest bit of civilization is a collection of four gas stations at the intersection of two highways, called Biggs Junction.

It's gorgeous country, but extremely desolate.

So what could possibly be at the Maryhill Museum, you might be wondering. Old tractors? Rocks? Weird taxidermy prairie dogs?

I'm glad you asked!

I hadn't been to the Maryhill Museum since I was a kid, so I didn't remember much about it except that it was inexplicably filled with priceless treasures and Rodin sculptures.

(Yep. Rodin sculptures. In the middle of nowhere, Eastern Washington.)

So I pulled into the parking lot, with only the fuzziest idea of what was in the museum. I was wholly unprepared to meet the woman who was about to steal my heart...

More on her in a second. ;)

The history of the Maryhill Museum of Art is bizarre.

It was the result of a friendship between Sam Hill (a rich guy/bigwig who shaped the early years of Washington and Oregon), a famous and apparently quite provocative Parisian dancer named Loïe Fuller, and Queen Marie of Romania.

I know. That’s not what I expected, either.

Sam Hill had originally built the mansion to be his home, but for reasons I'm sure I read about but can't remember now, he instead turned it into a museum with the help of the two ladies above and another friend, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, the wife of a San Francisco sugar magnate.

(I hope their company was named Spreckels' Sugars. I refuse to look this up in case I'm wrong.)

One room of the museum is filled with Rodin sculptures (apparently Loïe Fuller was a friend of Rodin's). Other parts of the museum are filled with historical information about the historic Columbia River Highway, which Sam Hill helped get built. There’s also a huge collection of chess boards on the museum’s lower level and fashion dolls on the top floor, both of which are mystifying, but also fascinating.

But the main floor is devoted to my new crush: Queen Marie of Romania.

My fascination with Queen Marie started when I read a plaque beside an ornate silver chair with a leather back.

The plaque mentioned that the leather had been carved by Queen Marie herself — which made me perk up.

As someone who’s recently gotten into leatherworking myself, I was delighted to hear this! I took a closer look, and yeah. It was pretty, but definitely more amateurish than you'd expect to see on a royal audience chair. Nice job, Marie, I thought. Way to keep your hands busy.

Next, I came across a cabinet that Queen Marie had built and carved. Rad! The queen is a woodworker, too? She must have had tons of free time!

She was also a designer, I soon discovered, as I learned that most of the other pieces of furniture in the collection had been designed by her and built by artisans.

Including her coronation crown:

Oh! And apparently she also wrote a dozen books: novels, memoirs, and essays.

We had so many hobbies in common! We could have been besties!

I needed to know more.

Fortunately, the Maryhill Museum had plenty more to say — because Queen Marie was not just hanging around writing fun stories and putting birds on things.

She was being a complete and total badass leading her country and negotiating with the powers of Europe during World War I, while also working tirelessly in hospitals tending to wounded Romanian soldiers.

(She and I do not share either of these hobbies.)

Warrior queen. Style icon. Amateur leatherworker and woodworker. Accomplished writer.

How had I never heard of this absolute legend before?

I’ve been remedying my lack of knowledge this week by listening to a fascinating deep-dive history podcast called The Other Half. I was looking for podcasts about Queen Marie, and came across this excellent 6-part series.

(Here's the first episode, though you could jump in at later parts of her life if you were more interested in those — the host, James Boulton, does a great job of catching you up at the beginning of each episode.)

The first thing I learned is that Queen Marie of Romania started her life as Missy of Edinburgh!

Because, fun fact, after centuries of disastrous infighting from Romanian monarchs, Romania amended its constitution so that they would be ruled only by foreign monarchs. (I have so many questions?????) Missy’s husband Ferdinand was actually German, and she was British and Russian, related to the Romanovs.

Which led to all sorts of drama during WWI, as you can imagine.

(Another thing I learned from this podcast is that I know nothing about European monarchies, but they're all related to each other and basically none of them are from the countries they're ruling, and the whole system is incredibly weird.)

After a rough entry to her life in Romania, Missy began to educate herself in politics, eventually gaining influence in the court and using her powers of charisma, intelligence, and sheer willpower to become a truly great leader during a horrible time in Romania’s history.

All within the confines of what women were allowed to do at the time, of course.

Because Queen Marie wasn’t allowed in the rooms where the decisions were being made — but that didn’t stop her from getting shit done. And in the end, everyone knew that even though Queen Marie was barred from official negotiations because she had girl cooties, she was the one who held the real power behind the scenes.

And she did it all with style.

Seriously. This woman packed 60 dresses and multiple chests of accessories for her trip to the post-war negotiations in Paris, then set up her own court in a nearby hotel suite. Eventually, the male politicians started ignoring Romania's prime minister and visiting Queen Marie for tea and treaty negotiations instead.

She knew if she wanted to get the best terms for Romania she had to walk in like she owned the place and absolutely slay with style, grace, and determination.

And she did.

I am in love.

I highly recommend checking out this podcast to learn more about this badass warrior queen-slash-crafty homemaking goddess.

And to learn about other rad women! The host just started a series on Manuela Sáenz (partner of Simón Bolivar, the liberator of South America). I’ve always been fascinated by her, so I'm excited to learn more of her story.

OK.

I'm done gushing.

I realize this isn't very science-fictiony (or at all science-fictiony), but it's stories like this that make their way into my own stylishly determined characters, so I wanted to share.

(Getting definite shades of Phaera D from the Bulari Saga from Queen Marie.)

I'll leave you with this photo of Queen Marie in her coronation robes, ready to bend European heads of state to her will:

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