the king and her kingdom

(and how i'm learning to kneel)

A few years ago I learned of Peggielene Bartels. At first I found hers just an interesting story. But it turns out I’ve never forgotten it.

She’s a secretary in Silver Spring, Maryland. She answers phones, files forms, probably has a favorite mug in the break room. And she is also the reigning monarch of a royal palace in Ghana.

She is a king.

Not a queen. A king.

Apparently, when the previous king of Otuam died, tribal elders consulted ancestral rituals and determined that Peggielene—a distant relative—was the rightful successor. She got the call at 4:00 a.m. She thought it was a prank. It wasn’t.

You can read her whole story on Wikipedia, or in the book King Peggy, or you can just pause here with me and marvel at this one shimmering detail: a woman is a king.

And not in a quirky, symbolic, honorary-title kind of way. Not as “Queen Adjacent” or “Duchess of Outreach” or “Royal Consultant for Emotional Labor.” No—she is the king.

This detail landed hard for me.

I grew up in a world - the one we all live in now - that has different rules for kings and queens. Men and women. Boys and girls. It teaches boys not to feel. It teaches girls not to take up space. It sneaks into our relationships, our workplaces, even our parenting. And it’s sneaky because it’s normal. It’s everywhere. So when I heard about Peggielene Bartels—a woman who holds the title, the power, and the throne—I felt a little bit of hope..

My patriarchy-trained brain didn’t know where to put her. A woman. As a king. As a therapist, I’ve spent a lot of time inside rooms with men and women trying to figure out how to love each other without reproducing the broken systems they inherited. A lot of that work ends up being about power: who has it, who doesn’t, and what it means to share it without losing yourself.

I’ve been married for 28 years, and I’d say with some humility and some awe that I’m married to a woman who, on more than one occasion, has ruled with grace, fire, and authority. Not because I let her. Because she does.

And we’re raising daughters. Two of them. And I’m watching them wrestle with this strange tension—being told they can be anything, while still navigating a world that sometimes narrows their worth to their softness, their silence, their sex appeal, or their capacity to soothe.

When I heard about Peggielene, I wanted to hand her story to my girls like a sword.

And then I thought: maybe I want to hand her story to the men, too. Not to shame us, but to wake us up. To remind us that strength and leadership and legacy are not gendered. That there is more than one way to rule. That maybe the best kings among us are women who were never supposed to be.

I’m a sucker for a good girl-power story. A few come immediately to mind: Arcane, Tomb Raider, The Eagle Huntress and even The Woman King - though this is a decidedly different story than Peggielene’s. I want and we need stories like that. Because “the world we live in” isn’t going to change without some clever plot twists. And sometimes it starts with someone - probably a woman - saying, “Actually, I’ll take the throne.”

So here’s to King Peggy. And to all the women who lead in ways we still don’t have proper titles for. To the ones raising kings and queens and whatever comes next. To the ones making room, breaking rules, and wearing crowns made of to-do lists and tenacity.

Here’s to the woman who is a king.

And to the men learning how to kneel without losing their dignity. I’m trying.

kZB