For us foreigners, Grace O’Malley‘s name doesn’t say anything, but in British culture, she is so relevant that she already has a series in development in Australia, All The Queen’s Men, where her rivalry with Queen Elizabeth I will be the theme. central. Although it was a male-dominated world where women rarely stood out in leadership, Grace, in the series description, is called “Queen of the Irish Rebellions”. And her story is, indeed, fascinating.

She died 420 years ago, in 1603, at the age of 73 – a long life for the time – and came from a noble Irish lineage, being today cited as one of the three most famous female pirates in history (alongside Anne Bonny and Mary Read ). Her status as “Queen” deserves an addendum: even under British rule, Irish nobles had a certain autonomy, something that only changed during the reign of Elizabeth I’s father, King Henry VIII. In this scenario, Grace’s father, who came from a sailor dynasty, was the 10th lord of the Ó Máille (O’Malley) dynasty, and lord of Umall, came into conflict with the English Crown. This is because as they owned several castles on the Irish coast, they taxed everyone who fished on their beaches, including the English. In other words, the rivalry came from birth.

Little Grace was the only legitimate daughter and even with the existence of a half-brother, where the male heir was expected to pass before the females, Grace’s father recognized her as the legal representative of the family, on land or at sea. . Something like Viserys and Rhaenyra from House of the Dragon, where another similarity was that since she was little she accompanied her father in trade negotiations. Legend has it that when he forbade her to accompany him to Spain, claiming that his daughter’s long hair could get tangled in the ship’s ropes, Grace simply cut it short so she could go. I don’t know if she succeeded, but she got the nickname Gráinne Mhaol where maol means bald or very short hair.

Grace’s childhood included being educated far from home under the tutelage of another family and she even learned Latin, which was the language she used to converse with Elizabeth I in 1593. Be that as it may, she followed tradition and married at a young age, with a groom chosen by her father to seal a political alliance with the Ó Flaithbheartaigh (O’Flaherty). She became even richer and more influential, with around a thousand head of cattle and horses. From this first union, she had three children, two sons, and one female, and they would be at the heart of the future conflict with the Tudor queen.

Grace’s husband had political ambitions to be the top leader in Ireland, but he was overtaken by a relative appointed by the English Crown in his place. In 1565, he was killed in an ambush during a hunt, part of the conflict between the Irish clans. Everyone expected the young widow to offer no resistance, but they were surprised. Not only did she defend her Castle, she forced her enemies to retreat. She returned to her own lands and settled on Clare Island, where she supposedly took a shipwrecked sailor as a lover. The romance was brief as he was killed by Claire’s enemies, who in revenge attacked and conquered Castle Donna, earning the nickname ‘Dona’s Dark Lady’.

As expected, she remarried and had another son, who became the first Viscount Mayo. Famous already at this time, she would become legendary 10 years later when she was involved in more conflicts with the English, cited as the “most famous female sea captain” and “a notorious woman on all the coasts of Ireland”. Her worst rival was the English governor, Sir Richard Bingham, whose greed and violence would mark the pages of History. Appointed in 1584, his mission was to regularize the payment of taxes by the local nobility, who reacted. In trials presided over by Bingham, she handed down more than 70 death sentences for disloyalty to the crown. Bingham called her “the nurse of all the rebellions in the province during these forty years.”

In the bloody clashes against Bingham, he attacked her castle on Clare Island and forced her to escape. At this time, Grace wrote to the Queen asking “to grant her some reasonable support for the short time she has to live”. In return, he offered “surrender into his hands” of the lands of his two sons and his two surviving nephews, and “free liberty during his life to invade with sword and fire all his most high enemies wherever they are or are… without any interruption of any person or persons.”

Bingham killed Grace’s firstborn and captured her youngest and half-brother, holding them hostage and accused of treason. Desperate, Grace sailed to England with 200 men to personally petition Queen Elizabeth I for the release of her relatives. And, according to legend, it is the basis of the new series, they met at Greenwich Palace.

Whether fiction will adopt the versions that Grace refused to bow before Elizabeth because she considered herself “Queen of Ireland” and that she had a dagger hidden with her, will find out. The version is that Elizabeth I was calm and that the two talked without any problems, with the English Queen offering a lace-edged handkerchief when Grace sneezed, but that everyone was shocked when the Irishwoman blew her nose and threw the cloth into a nearby fireplace. In Ireland, a used handkerchief was considered dirty and properly destroyed, it was not an affront to the Crown, as they thought.

At this meeting, it seems, the Queen seemed to be appalled by reports of violence on the part of Sir Richard Bingham, trying to find an alternative to alleviate the situation. Grace convinced Elizabeth that she ordered her relatives to be released and the undue taxes to be returned, which he obviously disagreed with. With a fleet of three large galleys, Grace attacked Bingham, who accused her of rebellion and took her property, forcing her to return to England for help, without ever giving up the fight. Finally, a conspiracy against Sir Richard Bingham made him flee and he was arrested when he returned to London.

Grace would have lived to be 73 years old, dying at Rockfleet Castle in the same year as the death of Elizabeth I. Her story, until then, is part of Irish folklore, but apparently, she will conquer the world. All The Queen’s Men is still in production, let’s follow!

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