Empress Mentewab — The Woman Who Ruled Ethiopia from Behind the Throne
In eighteenth-century Ethiopia, royal power was surrounded by ceremony, faith, military rivalry and ancient claims of descent from the House of Solomon.
The emperor wore the crown.
The nobles commanded armies.
The clergy guarded the traditions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
Yet for nearly half a century, one of the most influential figures in the empire was a woman whose authority extended far beyond the customary position of an imperial consort.
Her name was Empress Mentewab.
She became the wife of an emperor, the mother of another and the grandmother of a third. But Mentewab was never merely a royal widow standing quietly behind the throne.
She governed.
She negotiated.
She appointed officials.
She built alliances.
She commissioned churches, palaces, manuscripts and sacred works of art.
And when Ethiopia’s most powerful nobles challenged her family’s authority, she entered one of the fiercest political struggles of the Gondarine era.
The Beautiful Queen of Qwara
Mentewab was born around 1706 into a noble family from Qwara, a region west of Lake Tana. Her Christian name was Walatta Giyorgis, while her royal name was Berhan Mogasa, often translated as “Splendor of Grace.” She became widely known as Mentewab, a name associated with beauty and royal distinction. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
Contemporary and later writers frequently praised her physical beauty. But beauty alone cannot explain her extraordinary political career.
Mentewab possessed intelligence, ambition and a deep understanding of court politics. She learned how authority operated inside the imperial palace—through marriage, lineage, religious patronage, military alliances and the careful distribution of offices.
She understood that an Ethiopian ruler could not govern through a crown alone.
The ruler needed loyal relatives.
The ruler needed the cooperation of military commanders.
The ruler needed the support of the Church.
And the ruler needed enough political skill to prevent powerful provincial nobles from turning against the throne.
Mentewab mastered that system and eventually became one of the most influential women in Ethiopian history. (Bahir Dar University Journals)
Marriage to Emperor Bakaffa
Around 1722, Mentewab became associated with Emperor Bakaffa, ruler of Ethiopia during the later Gondarine period. In 1723, she gave birth to a son who would become Emperor Iyasu II. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
Life within the imperial household was never secure.
Royal marriages could strengthen political alliances, but they could also create rival factions. Queens, princes, relatives and provincial families competed for access to the emperor. A woman favored one year could be sent away the next.
Mentewab herself was temporarily removed from Gondar and sent north to Walqayet. Although she returned, her young son was kept away from the capital until the final year of Bakaffa’s reign. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
Rather than surrendering to uncertainty, Mentewab built a political network around herself.
She gathered trusted relatives and supporters from Qwara. This faction became known as the Qwaranna. Their loyalty would help secure her son’s succession and sustain her authority after Bakaffa’s death.
Mentewab was preparing not only to survive the court.
She was preparing to control it.
The Crown Behind the Crown
Emperor Bakaffa died in September 1730.
The imperial succession could easily have produced civil war, but Mentewab’s supporters moved quickly. Her son was proclaimed emperor as Iyasu II.
Because the new emperor was still a child, Mentewab assumed the central responsibility for governing the empire.
On December 23, 1730, she was formally crowned empress and recognized as co-ruler with her son—an extraordinary public confirmation of her authority. She did not simply advise the young monarch privately. Her political position was acknowledged through imperial ceremony. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
The throne belonged to Iyasu II.
But the government belonged largely to Mentewab.
She appointed officials, managed the court and elevated members of her Qwaran family to positions of influence. Her relatives became deeply embedded in the central administration.
To her supporters, this created a dependable government around a young emperor.
To her enemies, it looked like one regional family was taking control of the state.
That resentment soon erupted into open rebellion.
The Siege of the Royal Family
In December 1732, opposition to Mentewab and the Qwaranna developed into a major revolt.
The empress and her young son were surrounded inside the royal castle at Gondar. For more than two weeks, they resisted while their position appeared increasingly desperate.
Mentewab did not abandon her son.
She did not surrender the imperial succession.
She held the royal compound until loyal forces arrived and broke the siege. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
The revolt revealed both the strength and weakness of her rule.
Mentewab had secured enough loyalty to survive a serious challenge. But the uprising also proved that many nobles deeply resented her growing family network.
She survived the conspiracy.
She retained power.
And after defeating the revolt, her control over the court became even more secure.
A Reign of Relative Stability
During the reign of Iyasu II, Mentewab remained the dominant political presence in the imperial government.
The mother and son pursued a generally conciliatory approach. The central court made important appointments, but distant provincial leaders were often permitted to exercise considerable independence. This helped reduce immediate confrontation, although it also allowed regional nobles to increase their own power. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
For much of this period, the empire experienced relative stability.
Mentewab also attempted to reduce religious conflict inside the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Ethiopian Christianity included competing theological and monastic traditions whose disagreements could divide the court and provoke political unrest.
The empress supported reconciliation between major religious factions. Her reign became associated with a period of comparative religious peace. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
She understood that theological disputes were not merely spiritual disagreements.
They could divide armies.
They could turn monasteries against one another.
They could give political enemies a sacred justification for rebellion.
By promoting accommodation, Mentewab strengthened both the Church and the throne.
The Builder of Qusquam
Mentewab’s influence was not confined to government.
She became one of the most important royal patrons of Ethiopian architecture and religious art during the Gondarine period.
Her greatest architectural undertaking was the palace and church complex at Qusquam, outside Gondar. Construction began early in her regency, and the site became closely associated with her authority, spiritual devotion and personal identity. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
Qusquam was more than a royal residence.
It combined political power with religious symbolism. Its churches, carved stonework and sacred decorations reflected the relationship between the Ethiopian monarchy and the Orthodox faith.
Mentewab also commissioned the magnificent church of Narga Selassie on an island in Lake Tana. Work on the church appears to have begun during the late 1730s and continued into the 1740s. Its construction, paintings, library and religious treasures demonstrated the immense resources that the empress devoted to sacred patronage. (OpenEdition Books)
Her churches were not simply buildings.
They were declarations.
They announced that Mentewab possessed the wealth to commission royal monuments.
They showed that she could direct religious institutions.
They connected her government to the Virgin Mary, the Trinity and the sacred traditions of Ethiopia.
They transformed stone, paint and manuscript into instruments of legitimacy.
Mentewab encouraged the production of illuminated manuscripts and religious paintings. She and Iyasu II also supported foreign craftsmen who helped decorate imperial structures. The artistic achievements associated with their era became an important part of Gondar’s cultural legacy. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
The Death of Iyasu II
In June 1755, Emperor Iyasu II died.
Mentewab had governed beside her son for approximately twenty-five years. His death should have ended her direct role in government.
But the empress was not ready to surrender power.
Iyasu’s young son, Iyoas I, inherited the throne. Mentewab established another regency, this time governing in the name of her grandson.
Her decision brought her into conflict with Iyoas’s mother, Wubit, also known as Welete Bersabe.
Wubit believed that, as the reigning emperor’s mother, she should occupy the position that Mentewab had held during Iyasu’s youth. Mentewab, however, possessed decades of political experience and had no intention of yielding control to her daughter-in-law.
The rivalry became more than a dispute between two royal women.
Each queen represented a powerful political network.
Mentewab called upon her Qwaran relatives.
Wubit relied upon her Oromo family connections.
Armed supporters from both sides gathered around Gondar, raising the possibility that the imperial capital would become the battlefield of a civil war. (Wikipedia)
The Man Invited to Settle the Conflict
Seeking a powerful mediator, Mentewab summoned Mikael Sehul, the formidable ruler of Tigray.
She expected him to stabilize the court and defend the imperial family.
Instead, Mikael discovered that the conflict between the two queens had created an opportunity for him to dominate the empire.
He arrived in Gondar with military power and was elevated to the rank of Ras. Rather than serving as Mentewab’s loyal instrument, he gradually became the most powerful figure in the government. (Wikipedia)
Mentewab had invited him to prevent bloodshed.
He used the crisis to seize political control.
The empress who had mastered court politics for decades now faced a commander with an army strong enough to command the court itself.
The balance of power had changed.
The Death of Her Grandson
Emperor Iyoas attempted to free himself from Mikael Sehul’s control.
The struggle ended tragically.
In 1769, Mikael engineered the removal and killing of the young emperor. Iyoas was reportedly strangled after the nobles and church leaders accepted his deposition. (Wikipedia)
For Mentewab, this was not merely a political defeat.
Her grandson was dead.
The dynasty she had protected for nearly forty years had been shattered.
The commander she had summoned to preserve peace had become the destroyer of the emperor.
The killing of Iyoas accelerated Ethiopia’s descent into the Zemene Mesafint, the “Era of the Princes,” when powerful regional nobles dominated weak emperors and fought one another for control of the state.
Mentewab had once ruled through the imperial throne.
Now she watched military lords reduce that throne to an instrument of provincial power.
The Empress at Qusquam
After the death of Iyoas, Mentewab withdrew increasingly from public government.
She returned to Qusquam, the palace and religious complex she had built outside Gondar. Her son Iyasu II and grandson Iyoas were buried there.
The site that had once displayed her authority became a place of grief, prayer and royal memory.
Mentewab continued to follow political developments and reportedly remained involved in court intrigue from behind the scenes. But the empire was no longer hers to command.
The Qwaranna had lost their supremacy.
Regional armies determined who would wear the crown.
The woman who had once appointed officials and governed beside emperors could now do little more than watch Ethiopia fragment.
She died at Qusquam on June 27, 1773, after a political career that had influenced the empire for nearly half a century. (Encyclopaedia Africana)
A Complicated Legacy
Mentewab should not be remembered as a flawless ruler.
Her elevation of Qwaran relatives created resentment and intensified competition among regional factions. Her attempt to retain control during her grandson’s reign contributed to the conflict between the Qwaranna and the Oromo relatives of Wubit.
And her decision to summon Mikael Sehul produced consequences she could not control.
But these failures must be understood within the violent political world in which she governed.
Male rulers filled their courts with relatives.
Male rulers built regional alliances.
Male rulers summoned armies and appointed powerful commanders.
Mentewab used the same instruments of authority because she was not acting merely as a mother.
She was acting as a ruler.
Her political errors were the errors of someone exercising real power—not those of a ceremonial figure standing outside government.
The Woman Who Refused to Disappear
Empress Mentewab’s life challenges the belief that African women rarely governed major states.
She exercised authority at the center of one of Africa’s oldest imperial traditions.
She preserved her son’s succession.
She survived rebellion.
She dominated the government during the reign of Iyasu II.
She served as regent for her grandson.
She negotiated with military leaders and provincial nobles.
She shaped religious policy.
She commissioned palaces, churches, manuscripts and paintings that remain part of Ethiopia’s cultural inheritance.
Her authority did not come from Europe.
It did not require foreign recognition.
It emerged from Ethiopia’s own royal, political and religious traditions.
Mentewab did not inherit a peaceful court.
She ruled an empire filled with competing families, armed nobles and theological divisions.
For decades, she held those forces together.
In the end, the political system she had controlled began to collapse. Yet her influence remained visible in the churches she built, the art she commissioned and the memory of the woman who governed beside three generations of emperors.
She entered the palace as the companion of Emperor Bakaffa.
She became the mother and co-ruler of Iyasu II.
She became the regent of Iyoas I.
And she became one of the most powerful women of the Gondarine age.
Empress Mentewab was not simply the beautiful queen remembered by court chroniclers.
She was a strategist.
A patron of sacred art.
A builder of royal monuments.
A survivor of rebellion.
A mother who defended a dynasty.
And a ruler whose political presence shaped Ethiopia for nearly fifty years.
Empress Mentewab—the woman behind the throne who became the power of the throne itself.