Among Shakespeare’s cast of queens two stand out for their charisma and their infamy: Tamora and Cleopatra are sustained explorations of the peril of having clever, amoral, foreign, and beautiful women in positions of power. Written at least a decade apart, Titus Andronicus and Antony and Cleopatra are well-known examples of plays that muse on the repercussions of bad leadership, and they come to remarkably similar conclusions. Numerous scholars agree that Tamora and Cleopatra are bad rulers in the logic of the plays. However, the possibility that Octavia and Lavinia are equally intentional examples of flawed queens appears largely undiscussed. While Tamora and Cleopatra wreak havoc with their too forceful personalities, Lavinia and Octavia are unable to muster sufficient force to counterbalance them. When read together, these two plays paint a picture of Shakespeare’s ongoing preoccupation with the nature of good queenship. I contend that these women might also be read as part of a larger thought experiment on what good English queens can be in early modern England. Shakespeare, I argue, is using these four characters to generate an apophatic template for queenship. When read through this lens, the historical Elizabeth I, a locally born and unmarried, childless ruler, emerges as the ideal model of English queenship.