Boudica
We all have heard her name before. For my 10th birthday I went to Norwich Castle and rode on a pretend chariot chasing Romans away before sitting down to hear the tale of a brave woman.
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| Keira Knightly as a Briton Woman |
Women were allowed to have power, own land, and even divorce their husbands. Celtic women could also climb up the social ladder, either by inheriting status, or by achieving it. Landowners were expected to fight if their chief went to war, and if the landowner happened to be a woman, then she was expected to fight as well. In fact, women warriors could teach young girls and boys how to fight.
Boudica was of royal descent, she "possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women", that she was tall with red hair hanging below her waist and wore a large golden necklace, a many-coloured tunic, and a thick cloak fastened by a brooch.
Her husband Prasutagus was the king of the Iceni, the people who inhabited what is now Norfolk. They initially were not part of the territory under direct Roman control, having voluntarily allied themselves to Rome following the conquest of AD 43. They were proud of their independence, and had revolted in AD 47 when the then governor Publius Ostorius Scapula threatened to disarm them. Prasutagus had lived a long life of conspicuous wealth and, hoping to preserve his line, made the Roman emperor co-heir to his kingdom, along with his wife and two daughters; Heanua and Lannosea.
Prasutagus lived well on borrowed Roman money, and on his death his subjects had become liable for the debt.
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| Boudica |
Client kingdoms were going out of fashion; direct rule was now more to the Romans' taste.
With the loans that Prastagus has forced upon his people during his lifetime, Nero and demanded to have paid back with interest. On the emperor Nero's orders, the imperial procurator Decianus Catus seized all of Prasutagus's estate and declared that any resistance would be treated as an act of rebellion and punishably by death.
When Boudica took the matter to a higher Roman authority, she was publicly stripped and flogged and her daughters raped (again) by Catus Decianus’ thugs. Roman law forbade sex/rape with Boudicca as it was forbade to have sex with a widow, this didn’t apply to enemies or slaves, but at this time she was neither. Whipping was designed to humiliate and metal pieces and leather knots were added to the whip to increase pain.
It was time for revenge, Boudicca, as ruler of the Iceni, led a retaliatory revolt against the Romans enlisting the support of the neighboring tribe of Trinovantes and others, she headed towards the town the Romans called Camulodunum (Colchester), the new administrative capital of the Roman imperial province.
After Boudicca's forces resoundingly defeated the Roman troops and burnt it down they headed towards Londinium (London) which was a relatively new settlement, founded after the conquest that had grown into a thriving commercial centre with a population of travellers, traders, and Roman officials.
Londinium was abandoned and the Celts burnt it down, slaughtering anyone who had not left. Verulamium (St Albans) was next to be destroyed. In the three settlements destroyed, between seventy and eighty thousand people are said to have been killed. Tacitus says that the Britons had no interest in taking or selling prisoners, only in slaughter by gibbet, fire, or cross.
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| Statue of Boudica in London |
While Boudica's army continued their assault in Verulamium, the Romans regrouped. Of more then ten thousand men. They took a stand at an unidentified location in the West Midlands along the Roman road Watling Street.The Celtic forces were said to have numbered 230,000
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Boudica exhorted her troops from her chariot with her daughters beside her; she gave a short speech in which she presented herself not as an aristocrat avenging her lost wealth, but as an ordinary person, avenging her lost freedom, her battered body, and the abused chastity of her daughters. She said their cause was just, and the Gods were on their side. She was resolved to win or die; if the men wanted to live in slavery, that was their choice. Eighty thousands Celts died compared to four hundred Romans.

Boudica poisoned herself when she was captured; favouring death over slavery.
Chiomara
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| Chiomara's Story |
She was captured by the Romans and raped by a centurion but when he learnt of her status, he demanded (and received) a ransom. Her people came to the appointed place with the ransom, but while the centurion was counting the gold, Chiomara indicated to them - with a nod or by speaking to them in their own language, that they were to cut off his head.
Chiomara carried the head home wrapped in the folds of her dress, and threw it at her husband’s feet, saying it was right that only one man alive should have been intimate with her.
King Arthur
I know what you are all thinking “King Arthur? He wasn’t real”. Probably he wasn’t, but he was a great Briton.
He was a legendary British is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries who led the defence of Britain against Saxon after the Romans left.
It is very confusing and hard to find out extra information without knowing if he was real or imagined. We all know of the stories about the lady of the lake, Excalibur, Lancelot and Guinevere, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Avalon etc but isn’t the stories what made the ledged of King Arthur great?
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