Queens of the Deck

Wikipedia's a marvelous thing; if all you want to find is the general info on a subject, it's a great resource to help you catch what's up-to-date in the world of scholars and what facts they quarrel about now.  I've seen plenty of articles get revised over the years, and I'm pretty sure this was one of them, as my faulty recollections had Queen Elizabeth on this list somewhere once.  These are the four figures for the suits listed when I looked it up most recently; some of these may have been changed over time by various countries, histories, and modern trends, but these are probably either the most commonly found or the oldest recorded.

Diamonds: Rachel
Rachel is another Biblical figure from classic Jewish and Christian scriptures; I will say that I hold no very high opinion of this woman, who stole her father's idols for some unknown reason (see Genesis 31; also some interesting theories here: www.ukapologetics.net/15/image…).  Jacob and Rachel may have been in love, but obviously God was more sympathetic to Leah after she was cheated out of marital happiness by her dad, so God blessed her with lots of children; Rachel basically blames Jacob for her infertility in Genesis 30, which shows how much gratitude she has for actually getting a loving husband.  Like the Eagles once said, "Don't you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy; she'll beat you when she's able."

Spades: Athena (specifically Pallas, or "warrior" Athena)
The legendary Greek goddess of wisdom, as well as one of the actually nicer deities, I've heard a few stories about Athena; other than her involvement in the Trojan Wars, one of the more renown is the story of Medusa, which is nauseating enough.  Medusa was once a divinely beautiful priestess of Athena's temple, with especially beautiful hair, but after getting raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple, Athena turns her into a gorgon with snake hair and Stone-O-Vision; I heard a great theory that I like much better that this was meant as a protection to prevent anyone from hurting her like that again.  Be that as it may, most of the Greek gods seem to have thought primarily with their manhoods, while the goddesses were jealous, petty, and often outright whores (Aphrodite).  I did learn in Philosophy that many Greek philosophers of the time of Socrates found grievance with Greek poets for making the gods look this way, contrary to their divine nature; to be honest, considering that Plato's Symposium was written about an orgy that Socrates was at when this argument was made, I wonder how much credibility can be found in this view, as it seems to be more or less accurate.

Hearts: Judith
Here's a figure you may not have heard of; this story is actually not from the Hebrew Bible, and is therefore not considered a part of Hebrew scripture.  During the creation of the modern Christian Bible, the church had initially incorporated a few other books as Christian Biblical canon, such as the books of the Maccabees, Tobit, and Judith; the Book of Judith is a Deuterocanonical book, which means it is recorded in some Christian doctrines as a part of scripture, but not included as scripture in the Jewish canon.  The story of Judith is actually very similar to that of Jael, from Judges 4; during an Assyrian attack, Judith manages to seduce the enemy general Holofernes, then gets him drunk and beheads him.  Most artistic depictions of her that I've seen are usually of her performing this act, so I thought it only fitting to include the unfortunate general along with her; this also explains why the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland is always screaming, "OFF WITH HIS HEAD!"  I don't know if that's what Carroll had in mind when he wrote that, but it's too perfect a fit to be coincidence.

Clubs: "Argine" (anagram of Regina; Latin for queen)
This one had a bit of tricky research behind it, since apparently this card doesn't represent a specific person; the first Wiki page I found of this did not list any historical figures with it.  After digging around, I found out that these cards are also used in mysticism; not a surprise, but new to me, which I thought was cool.  Because one of the aspects of this card is supposed to be sacrifice, the Queen of Clubs is sometimes called the "Mother Mary" because mothers must sacrifice for their children, and Mary mother of Jesus also had to sacrifice her son.  Once I learned this, I decided to make Mary the figure of this card; she suits it well, doesn't she?  

Hope you like these; let me know what you think!  Thank you!