Pulcheria

Born in 398 or 399 to Emperor Arcadius and Empress Aelia Eudoxia, Pulcheria was the oldest surviving child in a dynasty that controlled half the Roman world. When her younger brother Theodosius II inherited the throne as a child, she was named Augusta at fifteen and took over as his guardian in 414. For more than thirty years she shaped policy through religious devotion and direct involvement in the era's fiercest theological battles, steering the Council of Ephesus and then the Council of Chalcedon, where the Church settled fundamental questions about Christ's nature. After Theodosius died in July 450, she married the incoming emperor Marcian that November in an arrangement that preserved both her political authority and her lifelong vow of chastity. She died three years later, in July 453, and both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches eventually canonized her as a saint.