Boudica: Your Hero and Mine

by Anne Thériault · November 6, 2014

Boudiccastatue
Anne Thériault’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

Friends, we need to have a chat about the swaggest English monarch ever.

No, it’s not Elizabeth I, but that’s a good guess. Her swag was deep, but not quite deep enough.

It’s not Victoria either, even though she was a badass didn’t care what people thought, not even when her subjects were pissed about the fact that she was pretty obviously boning her servant John Brown. Not just boning, either – there was romance involved, too. They definitely spooned. Victoria was the big spoon, and no that’s not a fat joke in case you were wondering. Victoria was the big spoon because she was a boss and when there was cuddling going on you’d better believe that she was the cuddler and not the cuddlee.

But even though Victoria was a boss, she was not the boss in the pantheon of Awesome English Queens. That title belongs to one Boudica, queen of the British Iceni, a Brythonic tribe that loved horses and hated the Romans.

I’ll just give you minute while you go look up “Brythonic.” You’re welcome, by the way, for that addition to your vocabulary. Feel free to drop it into conversation whenever you want. Oh, and it looks like all those undergrad Classics courses weren’t such a waste after all, MOM.

And before anyone jumps in to whine about how England wasn’t even England back when Boudica was around and blah blah historical inaccuracy blah, let me just tell you right now that I am not interested. That is some Comic Book Guy-level shit and I don’t have time for it. No, the Jutes and the Angles and the Saxons hadn’t yet invaded in 60 AD, so “Angle-land” as we know it didn’t exist, but it’s the same geographical spot and also I don’t give a fuck. Look in my bag of fucks. There are none there for you. Any fucks that I might have I am keeping for my damn self.

ENG151196034 01The first thing that you need to know about Boudica is that she was a tall red-head who didn’t take sass from anyone. According to Roman historian and He-Man woman-hater club member Lucius Cassius Dio, she was “possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women.” Way to back-hand that compliment, dude. Dio also wrote that she had a harsh voice, a piercing gaze, and wore a giant badass gold torc around her neck. So basically she was EXACTLY HOW A QUEEN SHOULD BE.

Boudica, Queen of the Misandrists. Bow down, sweet little man-hating novices, and pay tribute to your patron saint.

Boudica was obviously always a super swag lady and was a queen by marriage, but she didn’t become ruler of the Iceni until after her husband, Prasutagus, died. Then they had a vote and pretty much all of the Iceni were like HECK YEAH WE WANT BOUDICA TO BE OUR QUEEN. And then the occupying Romans, who had not been invited to the British Tribe Party but decided to crash it anyway, were like, “Sorry? You don’t have a penis?” So they stamped DENIED on her application to rule over her own people, annexed her land and, just for good measure, raped her daughters. Ancient Romans: literally the worst.

When a bunch of British tribes, including the Iceni, decided to revolt against the Romans, they chose Boudica as their leader because the Celts, at least, knew a fucking boss when they saw one. Boudica’s first act as leader was to perform some witchy magic junk because she was basically Stevie Nicks in that one video but cooler. So she hid a rabbit under her skirt, and then invoked invoked Andraste, the British goddess of Getting It Done, and let the rabbit go. This act of divination apparently told Boudica to demolish Colchester, and she was like, “Cool. I’m on it. Thanks, Andraste. Can I call you Andy for short? No? That’s fine, I get it, some people don’t like nicknames.”

After Colchester was smashed flat and an entire Roman legion wiped out, Boudica set her sights on London. Because go big or go home. The Romans, who were literally the worst but still pretty smart, abandoned London to the rebel tribes. So Boudica burnt that shit to the ground. Nothing in the history of burning has been burned the way London was burned that one time. It was burned so hard that archeological digs have uncovered huge red layers of charred debris that correspond with the time when Boudica was figuratively (though I hope also literally) pissing on London as it burned.

Can I pause here a moment to get a hell yeah?

Next the Iceni destroyed St. Albans, bringing the Roman death count to something like eighty thousand. And was Boudica what my mother would refer to as a “gracious winner”? Only if being a gracious winner means taking no prisoners. Only if it means slaughtering every Roman you can find. Only if it means that you impale the Roman noblewomen on spikes and cut off their breasts and then sew their breasts to their mouths.

Oh, and according to Dio, they did all this “to the accompaniment of sacrifices, banquets, and wanton behaviour.”

Heck yeah they did.

Boudica’s final battle came somewhere in the West Midlands, where the Roman governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus had taken a stand with all the Roman soldiers he could find. Boudica led her people into battle, riding in a huge chariot with her daughters at her side. She told her troops that she would either win or die, and that anyone who didn’t want to be a slave to the Romans was welcome to join her.

Dear readers, I will spare you the details of the brutal downfall of the Greatest Woman Ever. Suffice to say that she did not win.

But we’re not here to talk about Boudica’s defeat. We’re here to celebrate the woman who carved a swathe across Britain that said FUCK THE PATRIARCHY in huge, fiery letters. We’re here to pay tribute to the giant middle finger that the occupied tribes flipped at the occupying force. We’re here to honour the memory of Boudica with our own banquets and wanton behaviour. Boudica died so that you could have banquets and behave wantonly – please do not let her death be in vain.

Say it with me now, my fledgling misandrists: LONG LIVE BOUDICA

May she reign in our hearts forever.

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95 Comments

  2. bocadelperro +196

    I was at a party once and some dude came up to me and asked if I was a “Jackie or a Marylin.” Due to too many gin sours, I replied, “I’m a Boudica.” It was my finest hour.
    (I later learned of the Mad Men episode from which this came, and I still regret nothing)

    2. JocastaCarr +21

      Holy shit you are my hero. That is my forever answer to any and all questions like that.

    4. MilesofMountain +83

      I hate guys who watch Mad Men and don’t get the feminist critiques it makes. That episode was all about what a shitty, dehumanizing question that is.

  3. GreenGrasses +29

    This is extremely timely as:
    a) I just heard mention of Boudica for the first time on the Rex Factor podcast yesterday (thanks Toasties for rec’ing that!)
    b) I am mulling over tattoo ideas and right now my heart is set on everything but this could be a major inspiration
    c) smash the patriarchy

    1. bellejarblog +14

      Seriously though how has there NOT been a movie about her yet? And that miniseries starring Doctor Corday doesn’t count

      1. cosmia +23

        I’m kind of worried about what a Boudica movie would be like, though, because I’m going to imagine it’s going to pretty heavily feature a romance and not be about rampant misandry.

        1. bellejarblog +12

          Yeah, true, a proper Boudica movie would just have to be unmitigated misandry from start to finish

        2. leslieellenjones +4

          It’s already been done: the late Hammer-vintage “Viking Queen” (1967; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062443/?ref_=fn_al_t…. If we’re not going to quibble about no Angles or Saxons yet, we can certainly ignore the fact that there won’t be any Vikings around for another 800 years, surely?) One of the best Bad Anthropology movies ever. EVER.

  4. projectbeks +20

    Can I pause here a moment to get a hell yeah?

    HELL YEAH

    I <3 Boudica. Boudica forrreeevvveeerrrrrrr

  8. houblonchouffe +63

    *ahem* now that the shouty is out of my system

    One of my very very favorite moments when visiting London a couple of years ago was visiting the statue of Boudica and basically falling down to worship it on a beautiful day in October. 10/10, would prostrate self again.

    1. Unreadaethel +35

      I enjoyed Badass of the Week’s point that almost nobody has a statue of themselves in the middle of the city they burned to the ground.

    2. clew +3

      Also, the verse on the plinth is the most *amazing* neener neener from the British Empire to the Roman Empire. Way to hold a grudge.

  9. PonyAlong +21

    “Boudica, queen of the British Iceni, a Brythonic tribe that loved horses and hated the Romans.”

    You had me at “loved horses” but yeah, this whole thing ROCKED. And goes without saying, I freaking DIG your writing style and your articles!

  10. paisleyLo +15

    Anybody else first hear of Boudica thanks to the effervescent Sue Perkins in the Ancient Rome episode of “The Supersizers Eat…”?

      1. Steph +6

        Amongst her other general excellentness, she did an documentary on queer history in England, and it was GREAT. Can’t for the life of me remember what it was called, and her Wikipedia article is not helping :/

    3. Steph +21

      The “Sue Gallavants Around Town In Period Dress Hollering At People” scene of Supersizers is always the best.

  11. zachariahary +43

    While Boudica was unassailably kickass, I have to ask:
    “cut off their breasts and then sew their breasts to their mouths.”
    Who… how… do you even think of that? Like, does the idea to do something like that just spring into your head fully formed? Or is it the result of sitting there thinking, “Well, we’ve got to do something with all these severed breasts” and just improvising?

    1. bellejarblog +33

      The only thing I could come up with was that this might have been some kind of symbolic gesture referencing how Britain was the teat from which Rome was suckling, i.e. Rome was plundering all of their resources?

      Or else maybe they were just like LOL BOOBS

    2. GruntledDave +30

      Legend goes she also cut dudes junk off and stuffed it into/sewed it to their mouths, sometimes before they were dead. She knew how to scare the hell out of the Romans for sure.

    3. winterbymorning +14

      Dio just says that the sewing to the mouths was done “in order to make the victims appear to be eating them.”

  12. SarcasticFringehead +24

    Between this and the German rocket cats, the Toast is becoming my go-to source for military history.

    (also I vote for more swears in history textbooks, please and thank you)

  15. jlper +17

    I’m terrible, because I first learned about Boudica from Civ.
    She’s pretty great to play as though

    1. Steph +10

      And in her illustration she looks like she’d rather slice you in half than look at you for another second.

    2. menunu +3

      This is where I first learned of Boudica too! I play her every time. She is a bad bitch. Now I want to do a playthrough where I denounce every male leader I come into contact with and have nothing to do with them.

  16. Bunburying +20

    YES BOUDICA *IS* MY HERO

    Sadly, the first I ever heard of her was from playing Civilization IV. I blame the education system for its pedagogic failures in the field of Prominent Misandrists of History Times.

  17. jirelofjoiry +28

    YES.

    Queen Maeve, Emer, Scathach…Celtic women did not fuck around. You should do an article on Macha, because I love to imagine the epic eyerolls she made when confronted with male stupidity. “You had ONE JOB, dude, which was to not tell anyone about my goddessness. Seriously?” “You want the heavily-pregnant woman to do *what* now?” “Screw you idiots, I’m out of here. Oh have some menstrual cramps while I’m at it lol”

  18. Briony_Fields +15

    I was *just* reading stuff about Boudica earlier today, how cosmic! She was a strong contender for this year’s Halloween costume but I didn’t want an evening of “Who are you?” followed by, “Who’s that?”

    1. Alli525 +11

      Luckily for you, the only appropriate response to that question is to slice off their boob and sew it to their mouth. (n.b. can be applied broadly, works well with beer guts too I suppose)

  19. MsNormaDesmond +29

    I *KNEW* that the genius who wrote this had to have written the amazing piece on Anne Boleyn that I shared to FB and was not liked by a single man and now I’m gonna share this and the same thing will happen and its gonna make me so happy.

  20. Alli525 +8

    And once again, my parochial school (specifically, Independent Baptist in the south) education has failed me.

  21. leslieellenjones +46

    Let me just point out that Boudicca actually means “Victoria” in Brythonic Celtic. A fact that was well understood by the Victorians who erected the statue of Boudicca outside Westminster. Just imagine, back in the day, when politicians could assume the general populace (or at least, the populace that counted) would get bilingual puns in extinct languages. Sigh.

  22. annee +12

    I grew up in Iceni-land (Norfolk), always known about her, to me she’s also Britannia, the lady on the back of old pennies and my first, infant school, feminist icon.

  23. dianabhurlburt +6

    H E L L yes. Seeing the Boudicca statue at Westminster when I was eighteen was like the capstone to a youth (mis)spent reading British myths and lore. There may have been tears.

    (the statue of Dame Edith Cavell was also a religious experience, mainly because of T.H. White and ants)

    I wish I could remember the name of a book I read about Boudicca in high school. It was a novel, slim, ostensibly for teenagers, but brutal.

    1. bellejarblog +12

      Was it maybe Song For A Dark Queen by Rosemary Sutcliff? That was how I learned about her!

        1. dianabhurlburt +1

          I’m also available to chat about the ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE Diana Paxson-as-Marion-Zimmer-Bradley Avalon book Ravens of Avalon because of course you need Boudicca in your franchise even if it makes no sense.

      2. OncoMouse +3

        Rosemary Sutcliff wrote a novel about Boudica? I need to get my hands on that immediately!

  24. logicbutton +22

    It’s some bullshit that we have all this Arthur mythology but nobody’s lining up to put together cheesy adaptations of Boudica’s adventures.

  26. mkpatter +17

    If only Game of Thrones was based on Boudica (minus the downfall), and not the War of the Roses…if only all things were.

  27. HotDoom +39

    I once had a hot boy come stay with me in college and we were both ready to rip each others’ clothes off *however* his visit happened to fall on the night of the premiere of a hotly anticipated (for me) Masterpiece Theatre show about Boudicca and I made it clear that he was not to talk while I watched it for two hours. And THEN we got busy, and not a moment too late.

  29. heythatsmybike +5

    I had never heard of her before reading this post. **Hangs head, slowly slides feminist misandrist card across the table**

  31. AllieJ +9

    There was a cheesy adaptation of her story, starring Alex Kingston as the queen and, if I remember correctly, Emily Blunt as one of her daughters. It was not good. It was so obvious they didn’t have the budget to film such an epic story. Alex Kingston was an awesome casting choice, but they did not give this tale its proper due. I’m still waiting for an adaptation worthy of such a queen.

  33. Hepzebah +9

    One of the darker of Rosemary Sutcliff’s many dark historical fiction novels for young-ish adults is Song for a Dark Queen, about Boudicca. All Toasties should read it forthwith.

  34. Abigail +24

    My mother’s cat is named Boudicca. I -hoping for a sweet, loveable kitten-lobbied against this choice. True to her namesake, Boudiccat is a proper hellion and the most opinionated, violent feline I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. (Also she has one of those calico cat patterns that makes her look like she’s got the Braveheart half-face paint on in orange. Extra points there.)

    1. Virginia +4

      I had a cat named Boadicea. For 14 years she was MY boss, and her rule was firm but fair. She stole my food (especially legumes). At 9:15 pm every night she stood on me to tell me to go to bed. She once launched herself through a windowscreen to protect me from an Outside Cat.

      Long may she live in infamy!

  37. cloudmir +5

    My cat is also named Boudicca!! It was also my go-to username for about a decade. Long live the QUEEN OF MISANDRISTS.

  38. eleventysix +7

    1) I love your writing! And choice of topics

    2) I GREATLY prefer this overview of Boudica’s role in history to the poo-pooing she got from the cambridge latin course.

  39. Kate +6

    You guys, Manda Scott’s trilogy that turned into four books on Boudica is pretty damn good, in a mystical kind of way….the first one is called Dreaming the Serpent Spear. You’re welcome!

  41. hoppytoad79 +6

    Love your writing style. I adore Boudicca and have chosen to conveniently misremember how she met her end. Men have been rewriting history to suit their own purposes for thousands of years, after all, so why the hell shouldn’t a woman do the same? ;p My history of choice is that she kicked Roman ass and triumphed, the battle ending when she, bloodied and tired, held a sword to Gaius Suetonius Paulinus’ neck and demanded the Romans surrender. Recognizing he had no choice, he did. He and Boudicca went to her tent, and hammered out the terms of the surrender. When it was all said and done, the Romans beat feet from the north of what is now England and left the Iceni and their allies the hell alone–at least until Boudicca died. While she was alive, though, she and her people lived in peace because no way in hell Rome was going to risk messing with her again. She married again, had more kids, they had kids, those kids had kids, and all the intermarriage of her children and grandchildren with other tribes–and the occasional war trip to kick ass and take names if another tribe wasn’t seeing things Boudicca’s way–ended up spreading the control and influence of the Iceni over most of the northeast of England, and between tribal control and family connections, her family’s power and control over the area lasted, in one form or another, for roughly fifteen hundred years. Boudicca lived to about seventy years, and when she died she was buried with all the pomp and circumstance you’d expect a great tribal leader to be buried with. [/alternate history] What she did in Real History is freakin’ awesome as well, but the Romans so deserved to be soundly trounced, know what I mean?

  42. sumcunctator +7

    1) Boudica, so swaggy that even the Romans had to admit she was pretty cool. But, like, begrudgingly.
    2) The first in a long line of Welsh people to invade England. It never works, but goddamit, we try!

  44. JGlo +7

    One of my friends went to the Niagara Celtic Festival one year dressed as Boudica, complete with blue woad face paint and everything. People would come up to her and give her free shit because she was the queen and looked amazing. There was a full page picture of her in the Buffalo News. I want to dress up as Boudica, but I can’t because I stand in awe of how well she pulled it off.

  45. sigaloenta +13

    Tacitus gives her a good parting shot at the end of her pre-battle exhortation: ,”On the field we must win or die: this is a woman’s intention: you men are welcome to live as slaves.”

  46. marsmarigold +1

    We bought our 4-year old the Boudica for children story… It glosses over a *few* things, but my kid still loves it when Boudica gets all “fuck no” at those Romans who try to take her land.

  47. Henry +1

    My only qualm is that she wasn’t an English Monarch. She was Celtic and, if anything, is closer to the modern Welsh than the English.

  48. ks6172014 +13

    Firstly, as an East Anglian, all hail our greatest of queens. Secondly I have a story about Boudica. In Ipswich Museum there was a statue of Boudica which was a great fave of mine in my youth, she had a chariot, a big spear, and a really really angry face. all big mouth and teeth and just anger everywhere. recently i went to visit her again, pay my respects, maybe lay a memorial wreath, having just moved back to ipswich. and she was gone. her chariot was not there. however i searched the museum from top to bottom for her. and i found her. And she was a Roman wife. Her spear arm had been removed and covered with a shawl and she was standing in some placid faced roman goat herd’s house. But no cloak could as conveniently cover the rage still all over her face. she looks like she wants to kill that goat herd with his own goat. I am planning to free her soon. our queen deserves better

    1. AlisonB +2

      omg so disturbing!
      The statue is alive and thinking “who dares deny the Queen her rightful place?”
      She will have her revenge (in this life or the next)

  49. Hannah +4

    Sooo, while it’s correct that Boudica didn’t become the ruler of the Iceni until after her husband died, to call her a “queen by marriage” doesn’t do this lady justice. Apparently the Iceni were matrilineal, so she was of the Royal line and Prasutagus was the lucky stud who got to be king by marrying her. DISCLAIMER: pretty much all my Boudica knowledge comes from Song for a Dark Queen, so MAYBE Rosemary Sutcliffe is not the ultimate authority, but she’s good enough for me.

  50. AlisonB +7

    Great article, informative and hilarious. Why isnt more history like this.

    As a Londoner I have passed by that statue and silently saluted many a time. I was originally outraged at her bare-breastedness compared to all the ‘men in suits/ suits of armour’ statues, but have realised it’s because her & her breasts were too badass for society & men to handle.
    LONG LIVE BOUDICCA.