In my view of history, everyone in the past was sexist and would not allow a woman to rule. So why are there queens like Elizabeth? Was royalty exempt from the normal rules? Or did they make sure she had enough men advising her.
Clearly your view of history is incomplete, given that people in the past did in fact allow women to rule. You can’t just say that royalty is exempt from the rules of who’s allowed to rule, since royalty were precisely the folks who were ruling.
That said, most historical monarchies have had rules of inheritance that at least favored men.
I am excluding ancient times in my question, and I specifically ask about Europe (if I have to pick a date, let’s say 1500 onward)
Having a mere woman rule was quite woeful but it was better than letting the family lose the throne.
You can’t paint with that broad a brush. The English did not favor a female monarch, but they would certainly put up with one if they had to. The alternative, after all, was civil war or attack from other governments.
Elizabeth is a really interesting case, too, because she spent a lot of time on her PR. She talked about herself as a man’s spirit in a woman’s body, as the embodiment of England itself, all sorts of things to reassure her subjects that she was just as good as a man. She spent her whole life playing suitors against each other, probably never really meaning to marry any of them because it would mean a forfeiture of power. She never let anyone know what she really thought. And she wouldn’t name an heir until the very last possible second, because she knew that would likely spark (even more) conspiracies and attempts on her life.
Every country in Europe had different customs and laws, though. You can’t extrapolate from England in 1500 to Spain or France or anything.
Men were favored. This was part sexism and part practicality: in medieval times, the king was expected to lead soldiers in the field and a woman might have trouble wearing armor or carrying a sword.
It did depend on the country. France had Salic Law, which meant that no woman could inherit the throne. They were also lucky – there wasn’t a time where there wasn’t a male heir available, so the question of a reigning queen never came up.
In England, it was different. The earliest kings were male. This didn’t mean that women never ruled. Just before Henry I died, he forced the barons to swear that they would support his daughter Matilda as queen. After his death, the barons swung their support to Stephen of Blois. Civil war ensued. Matilda actually defeated Stephen and was ready to rule as queen, but she upset Londoners and the fight continued.
In 1327, Queen Isabella deposed her own husband Edward II and put her son Edward III on the throne. Edward was underage, so her lover Roger Mortimer was named regent, but Isabella actually ruled until Edward III was able to depose her.
After the Wars of the Roses, Henry VIII started things on the road to having a reigning queen. He named his son Edward as his heir, but also named his daughters Mary and Elizabeth as second and third in line. Edward died young and things got messy. Edward was Potestant; Mary was Catholic, and the Protestant advisors to Henry were terrified of losing their power. They chose Lady Jane Grey, but she only ruled for nine days until Mary deposed her. Mary was unambiguously the first queen of England. When she died. Elizabeth took over the throne.
She also frequently invoked her resemblance to her father, emphasizing that she was the daughter of a king. She was said to have had many of his personality traits and was observed to have been ‘very much influenced by his (Henry VIII’s) way of doing things.’ Though she had been proclaimed illegitimate at one point and her sister had been heard to remark she believed it, Henry himself had never questioned or indicated that he didn’t think she was his child - just that she wasn’t the product of a legitimate marriage. She certainly was much like him in personality, talents and temperament and played that up for all it was worth.
As noted the situation was highly variable, depending the country. It’s before your cutoff, but Margaret of Denmark, who forged the Kalmar Union uniting Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a single realm, is a notable example. Note the gyrations around her title in Denmark.
A list of European queen regnants in history. Notice the prevalence in Iberia and southern Italy in particular.
In some kingdoms and in the Byzantine empire women who inherited the throne in their own right were expected to marry and the husband to rule jointly, if not altogether entirely, by right of his marriage. When Elizabeth’s sister Mary married her cousin Philip of Spain it was expected by many- including Philip and many of the English- that he would have the powers of King of England, but Mary- adore him (or at least the concept of him) that she did had other ideas. She had been powerless for too long to divide what she saw as literally her God-given powers with anybody. Elizabeth of course went a step farther and refused to marry altogether because she was not going to be the conduit through which a man claimed the throne.
One reason Henry VIII was so desperate to have a son was that the only time England had ever been inherited by a woman was in the 12th century when Henry I’s daughter and sole legitimate child (he had many many illegitimate children) Matilda inherited and her rule was a nightmare. It wasn’t because she was such a terrible ruler but because her cousin Stephen refused to allow her to rule and tried to seize the throne in spite of having made a holy oath to defend her right to the throne while her father was alive. Consequently the kingdom was plunged into two decades of civil war.
One thing that eased the path for Mary a bit was perhaps her bloodline. Her mother Catherine of Aragon had been not only beloved by the people but had proven that a woman could be a good ruler; when Henry VIII was away on campaign she served as his regent and even he had to admit she did a very good job (even killing the King of Scots in a battle). Catherine’s own mother, Isabella of Castille, had been the wrath of God down in the Iberian peninsula but none could dispute her ability to rule with an iron fist in both war and peace, including her husband Ferdinand, and her sponsorship of Columbus had ultimately proven one of the most lucrative decisions in the history of monarchies. Knowledge that her mother and grandmother were more than capable of ruling a kingdom had to have been noticed by many in England.
In the Byzantine empire there was actually a sort of blessing to a single woman taking the throne because it was a prime opportunity for regime change. Opponents of her father (or whoever she inherited from) were able to choose the next emperor and then make him the emperor by marrying him to the queen. Of coruse sometimes this went poorly: Zoe had such a miserable marriage with her appointed husband Romanus V that she killed him and married her much younger boyfriend, making him Michael IV. Following a short civil war when Michael died she basically agreed to marry whoever they chose and go to a convent, which she did with Constantine VII.
Why do you have this view?
Maybe because it’s an accurate one?
Yes, there have been some Queens regnant, as that Wiki link shows. But that link also shows that for every Queen regnant in the world there must have been 20 or 50 or 100 or 1000 Queens who were mere consorts. And there were many nations who never allowed a woman to rule.
Even the women who did were controversial and had to take steps no man would ever need. Elizabeth was the Virgin Queen because it was unthinkable that a woman could have sex outside of marriage. She couldn’t marry because it would instantly diminish her power.
The Queens who were true rulers are the exceptions even on that short but inflated list. If you check the links or know the history, you’ll see that a number of those listed may not really have ruled, or did so briefly, or are disputed, or are otherwise doubtful.
The best you can say is that some countries, when all other means of continuing the legitimacy of a dynasty failed, put up with women as rulers. And then went back to men as soon as physically and politically feasible. That is sexism, and it is historically pervasive in all times and cultures.
For some real gyrating with titles, there’s Jadwiga of Poland, who was officially crowned as the country’s king, queens regnant apparently being a concept the Poles of the day had trouble embracing.
The basic principle of a royal line is that it’s like a chain. Its legitimacy comes from the whole length not from any individual link. So occasionally a country would tolerate what was seen as a weak link (a female ruler, a child ruler, a senile ruler, an insane ruler, an incompetent ruler) rather than discard the entire length of chain.
The same thing happened in China and Egypt. There were female rulers even though there was no word for a female ruler.
Besides what everyone else has said, yes. The higher up you are in status, the more exempt form normal social rules you are; “the poor are crazy, the rich are eccentric”. Normally people wouldn’t be able to get away with marrying their sister either, but kings were known to on occasion.
Didn’t Christina of Sweden reign as King Christina to drive the point home that she was a monarch in her own right and not merely a consort or regent?
Originally (in early medieval Europe) kingdoms were pure family property. If you have sons, you leave your military-related stuff, like swords and kingdoms to them. If you don’t you leave them to your daughter. Many kingdoms were even divided between sons. Charlemagne left France, Germany and Italy to different sons.
When Roman law was reintroduced after AD 1000, written laws of inheritance started to appear. When a dispute of inheritance appeared, they came up with something and that became the law. This led to politically motivated legislation. In France, male inheritance was emphasized because it kept the kings of England out. In England, femalle inheritance was strong, because the womenfolks were more protestant. I don’t think sexism in either country had anything to do with it.
Might have to do with the fact that you just don’t want to mess with Latinas.
To give the OP an example: When her enemies, having murdered her second husband, held both her sons hostage and threatened to kill them if she did not surrender her fortified city (banking on wymynly weakness one supposes), Countess Caterina Sforza got up to the walls, showed them her cooch and told them to go ahead as she had the means to make more.
They didn’t have the balls to put their threats to execution, either. And they failed to take the city. And the mastermind behind this brilliant plan got captured. By her. Bad idea, let me tell you.
She proceeded to set fire to his home as he watched, dragged him behind her horse across town for a while then had him publicly dismembered and his last sight on this Earth was bits and pieces of himself being thrown into the cheering crowd.
She’s also reported to have tamed a revolt in one of her cities by screaming insults at the ringleaders for three days straight. She happened to be very pregnant at the time and gave birth a few days later.
As I said, you don’t want to mess with Latinas. Bitches be crazy 
from a very old book on english history, the salic law was put up to prevent women from transmitting royal blood, rather than allowing female ascension. the salic law was invoked when edward III of england lay claim to the french throne, being the closest surviving heir. unfortunately, his french ancestry was transmitted by a woman, not a man. there followed the hundred years war.
Women were certainly seen as second best as heirs but when you look at the most successful English monarchs it is hard to look past Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II (this time it’s personal!).
We may well have missed out on some top monarching thanks to medieval sexist hang-ups.