 This would have been the reason for the enthronement of Taj ul-Alam, rather than a conscious strategy by the grandees to weaken the power of the court.Closer analysis of the age of queens has furthermore pointed out that the period should not necessarily be seen as one of societal decline, that it was ruled by softer and more flexible hands than before 1641, and that Aceh after all was able to withstand Western pressure to the extent that it preserved its independence.In the rest of the East Indies, once-powerful indigenous states such as Mataram, Ternate, Banten and Makassar lost their autonomy or became heavily dependent on the VOC in the late seventeenth century.