This study examines three early modern portraits of three European female monarchs from around the time of their coronations to determine how they use visual rhetoric to legitimize their regimes and generate agency. The study evaluates how the portraits utilize rhetorical and semiotic resources to create persuasive visual messages and royal personae, using Roland Barthes theory of myths to interpret how the monarchs repurpose or get around prevalent problematic perceptions of gender and power within their respective doxas. The study finds that the most commonly alluded to myths in the portraits are myths about the divine right of kings, the monarchs’ two bodies and patriotism as well as myths about the relationships between men, women and power. The monarchs associate themselves with masculine attributes culturally perceived as appropriate for a monarch, and perpetuate negative myths about women and femininity in the interest of posing themselves as an exception to them, while largely avoiding alienating themselves from the perceived virtues of womanhood.