Britain's most powerful politician's niece traded Whitehall for the Middle East, dressed as a Turkish soldier, and eventually declared herself Queen of the Arabs.
Hester Stanhope was the niece and political hostess of William Pitt the Younger, Britain's prime minister during the Napoleonic Wars. She effectively ran Pitt's household, managed his correspondence, and was celebrated in London society for her intelligence and conversation. After his death in 1806, the government granted her a substantial annual pension.
In 1810, Stanhope left Britain permanently after a series of personal losses. When her ship was wrecked in a storm off Rhodes and she lost everything, she borrowed a Turkish man's outfit — robe, turban, trousers, and sabre — and never wore European women's clothing or a veil again.
Stanhope became the first Western woman to enter Damascus without a veil and the first to visit Palmyra, riding into the ancient desert city at the head of a Bedouin caravan of 22 camels. The local Bedouin, astonished, held a triumphal procession in her honor and crowned her 'Queen Hester' on the spot.
In 1815, she led the first archaeological excavation in Palestine, guided by a medieval manuscript describing buried treasure at the ruins of Ashkelon. She found no gold — but unearthed a 7-foot headless marble statue, which she ordered smashed and thrown into the sea as a diplomatic gesture to the Ottoman authorities.
Stanhope eventually settled in a fortress-monastery high in the Lebanese mountains, where she exercised near-absolute authority over the surrounding region for more than 20 years. When Ibrahim Pasha was preparing to invade Syria in 1832, he sent envoys to negotiate her neutrality before proceeding.
She spent her final years increasingly reclusive and deep in debt, attended only by loyal servants. When she died in 1839, she was found completely penniless — not a single coin in the house. She was buried in her garden, as she had instructed, having lived one of the most improbable lives of the 19th century.