I'd like to point out that England wasn't the only country to have a female monarch. Austria had Marie Theresa, and Russia had Catherine the Great. While these monarchs did come after the first Female monarch from britain, they weren't the only European country to have female monarchs.

Okay team: we have established there were female rulers outside of England. Now it's time to build on that and explain how females were viewed in those leadership positions; how did that individual move around the political landscape while performing femininity (or as the case might be, masculinity?)

This is simply not the case, many European nations were ruled by women much earlier than Mary and Elizabeth. For example, queen regnants were not unusual in the Iberian Peninsula. Navarre, Leon, Castile, Aragon and Portugal had a number of queen regnants going back to the 10th century. The United Kingdom didn't abolish male primogeniture until 2013.