Occassionally, you have royalty establishing a dictatorship for a period of time, ala Alexander I of Yugoslavia, in 1928 to deal with ethnic tensions and terrorism going on. But even then I believe he meant it as a temporary measure, and abolished that in 1931.
Uh-what about Imelda Marcos?
She was not an independent ruler; her power derived from that of her husband Ferdinand.
Well, I did used to be married to one…
It’s known that she
1- Stopped all tributes to Rome from her own and from her allied tribes
2- Set up weapons manufacturing on a large scale to arm those under her control
3- Distributed spoils from the cities her followers sacked
all of which indicate some kind of political judgment. Plus, a military dictator is a dictator, and nobody expected her to do anything after her beating and the rape of her daughters but what most people in her situation would have done, which would have been to grow bitter and comply in defeat. Her husband was hardly the first king whose estate Rome had confiscated (Herodias didn’t attempt any type of coup when Antipas’s estate was seized and he was exiled), and again- she established hegemony over other tribes- so it’s obvious she had some serious charisma behind her.
True, but that’s most of the ancient world. Most of what we know of all lands under the Roman empire come from Roman sources. And if anything they’d have been more likely to attribute her acts to males as it would have made the initial defeat less humiliating. Caractacus (by some accounts a relative of her’s) was possibly ennobled to make him more respectable- he died in relative comfort in Rome- but Boudicca was despised.
We know that her husband was a weak king, allied with Rome, and not feared by other tribes. And we know that she was militarily strong, hated Rome, and very feared by other tribes.