Hysterical. Seductive. 

Manipulative. Ambitious…

​​

Some women have crossed history shrouded in rumors and caricatures. Turned into dark legends, reduced to convenient archetypes: the ruthless seductress, the frivolous spendthrift, the scheming manipulator. Anything but human.

And yet. Beneath the cracked surface appear women who were educated, strategic, creative, untamed. They unsettled the world because they refused the roles written for them. Because they spoke loudly. Because they claimed their place. Because they dared to think, to love, to decide.

This book does not raise statues. It offers neither absolution nor condemnation. It seeks to understand. To explore contradictions, choices, motives. To reveal how reputations are built and distorted.

Judged before they were ever heard, they reappear here in double exposure. With a decoder lens, some details fade while others emerge, and little by little a truer face takes shape. It is a symbolic gesture: to look differently, to doubt the obvious, to free these women from the prism that has trapped them for far too long.