Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Real Wives of Dictators | Börte, wife of Genghis Khan

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

What was life like to be married to Genghis Khan?In this new limited series, Real Wives of Dictators, we're finding out all about the women behind, or alongside, some of histories most notorious men.First up is Börte Üjin, the woman who built the Mongol empire alongside her husband, Genghis, in the 12th and 13th centuries.Were they in love? What happened when she was kidnapped by a rival tribe? And what was her relationship like with the other women in Genghis' life?Joining Kate today is historian Marie Favereau, author of The Horde: How The Mongols Changed The World, to help us find out.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.If you'd like to get in touch with the show you can contact us at [e-mail] up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here, you are here, and we are all ready to proceed with the show. But before we can do that, I have to tell you. This is an adult podcast,

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They say they're behind every great man. There's a great woman. I've never really believed that. But what about evil men? Are there crap and evil women behind them too? And whilst it's the men in these horror stories that seem to get the most attention, in this brand new mini-series, we are exploring the lives of four of the wives of some of history's most bloody and notorious dictators.

Were they victims? She was certainly young at the beginning. She was drawn to the flame. Absolutely. Or were they enablers? She famously defied the judges, calling them fat. And she said, I was Mao's dog. I bit who he told me to bite. She's aware of the anti-Semitism. It's not that she looks the other way. She doesn't think it's a problem. She doesn't need to look the other way.

What was their life like behind closed doors? She's grown up in a revolutionary family and she married a revolutionary. So you can assume that she's on the revolutionary side. And were any of these women thirsty for power themselves? The rest of the leadership was dead set against it. They sensed her ambition. They had an instinct about her. I'm Kate Lister, and these are the real wives of dictators. Episode one, Bote Ujin, aka Mrs. Jenghis Khan.

What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up And pushing for fun. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful then. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie.

Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. 12th century, Mongolia, was quite a tough environment. And they didn't get much tougher than in the world of the Kans. That is, Genghis Khan. And the focus of today's episode is his wife, Borte. Did she share his ideology in ambition,

for creating a united Mongol empire? Or was she just along for the ride? What happened when she was kidnapped in the first years of their marriage? And what influence did she exert? Especially when it came to the other women in Jenghis's life. Joining me today is Marie Favaro, author of The Horde, How the Mongols Changed the World, and she is going to help us get to know Borte a little bit better.

So without further ado, let's crack on. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. Only Marie Favaro, how are you doing? Hey, hello, Kay. I'm doing very well. I'm still in Bishkeek, you know, in the heart of Central Asia. So, Kyrgyzstan. Now the weather is better.

It's not minus 10. It's more minus 5. And with some snow, it's okay. It's not so bad. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, because you were here previously to tell us about the man behind the myth of Jenghis Khan, not Genghis Khan, as we all learnt in that episode. It's supposed to be pronounced Jengis, despite what we learned in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure.

But you are back to tell us about Mrs. Jenghis Khan, somebody that we very rarely has made the impact on the public consciousness the way that Jengis did. In fact, when you think of him, you tend not to think of him having a wife. You tend to think of him with a sort of a harim. So let's start with the most basic question. Who was Mrs. Jenghis Khan? Well, Mrs. Jenghis Khan, her name is Bertie. And in the sources, she's even named Bertie Uchin, which means Lady Bertie. She's not any Bertie.

She's Lady Bertie. And she's the primary wife, the chief wife, the first wife. She's the most important wife of Jinghis Khan. And without her, it's clear they would not ever have been a Mongol empire, all these big conquest, Jingis led up to, you know, Korea, what side, Europe on the other side. Never ever anything would have happened without Bertie. She's a very, very important character. And she was analyzed.

as such, even by the people of the time, 13th centuries, Mongol people would really respect her very, very much, Bertie Uchin, so Jingi's wife. All right, so she sounds like, well, quite a badass in her own right, but paint me a bit of a picture of where they grew up, where they came from, this is Mongolia in the 12th and 13th century. What was this like? Because when I think of this, I'm afraid I think of the Dothrake,

from Game of Thrones. That's zero historical accuracy, but that's kind of what I see when I think of the Mongols in Mongolia. Please disabuse me of that and tell me what these people were like. Yeah, so these space is more or less what is Mongolia today. Step areas with some forest and mountains,

not just think about like, you know, grass spaces, but really also mountains and rivers and forest. are very important. Very cold in winter, probably rather hot in summer, a little bit like today, that's what we think. And also, all these peoples, sometimes we call them tribes, but, you know, this word tribe is a bit strange because in sources, those people have names. So there are groups of peoples, you know, in this area. Some are called Mongols, some are called differently. So Berthe's people is called Congerat, people Hongirat, and they are very important

in Mongolia. They are very much in the east of Mongolia, far away from where Jenghis Khan was born, several weeks probably on horseback from his place. So, you know, they are from different areas in Mongolia. What we know

about her people is that they were quite wealthy and peaceful people. They have this reputation in the old sources. So we are now in the end of 12th century. And these groups and peoples in Mongolia,

Congerat, Mongols, others will name later probably like Tatar, maybe Merkits, also, all those people. They tend to fight and ally, depending on circumstances, but there's not one big

empire. There's not just one umbrella power, you know? They are fragmented, but they respect to one another and they also have common traditions, especially it's very important when you look for a wife or when you look for a husband to go far away from your family because you want to avoid, you know, blood mixture. You want to know that your exact incest. You want to be sure that also it's going to be a very

like sound alliance for your family. So it's better to go far away from your own land and your own family. And that's what happened actually, Jinghis Khan, young, boy would go with his father to look for a bride for him far away from his place, from some termongoya, they go east, up to, and they will end up into Bertie's family, right? So several weeks of travel. So that's the early beginning of their relations and it's end of 12th century and that's basically what we know. It's vague, but it's enough information to know it happened, you know. It's not like a mystical legend, whatever. We know this happened. And they were nomadic people, weren't they? So they were moving around all the time and they

live in, yurts, is that right? Is that where they live? In Mongolia, we call them GER. So these are around stents for six to eight people usually. Nomadic means they move, but they don't move all the time. They move with seasons. And they move also according to the weather. So if weather conditions, Even if it's springtime, weather conditions are bad, there's wind, they might move, right? But if the weather condition are good, hurts are doing well, they stay. It's very important to understand that they live in the town and also that they are herders, all of them. Djenghis family, Bertie's family, so they have horses, they have camels, they might have goats and sheep as well. It's their everyday life.

So they, everyday life, they can understand each other. they can communicate. They know they are harders. But probably Bertie's family is richer, wealthier than Jingis right in the beginning. Oh, okay. He's punching above his weight. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Jingis's first name, Jingis is the title, Djenghis hat.

His first name is Timujin. This young boy, Timujin, is around, like we think, yeah, Timmy. He's nine years old. He's nine. And he met her. his future wife, she's 10. She's one year older than him. I like that.

They're so little. Yeah, she's a bit older. I think it's interesting because she's going to be like his advisor in many ways later in his life. You know, she's going to be so important. And I think this one year difference, of course, when you grew up, it means nothing. But when you're young, it's a big thing, you know, 9 and 10, especially girls and boys, you know, 9 and 10. The difference is huge. So, yeah, they met around his age, 9 and 10.

What sources do you use to research this history? Did they write things down? Have they left us stories? How do we know this stuff? How do we know when Timmy and Bertie met? Well, I would say the main source is called the secret history of the Mongols. This source was written, we think, yeah. It was written in the mid-series.

13th century, just after Denghis Khan died, probably under one of his son and successor. But we think that the story, it's like a biography of Jingis Khan, official biography. So we have to sort of, you know,

reading between lines, you know, against the grain, I think we say. But against the grain, still, it's very much about a family. It's very much about the love and the meeting of this couple, Jingis and birthday. there are key characters in what's going to be a lineage, like imperial lineage of the Mongolian

empires, as they are so important. So I would say, like, the problem for us historian is it's official. So it means some details might have been changed and erased, but at the same time, it's coming from Mongolia from inside. It's a Mongolian source, 100%. And very interesting, this source focused very much on women. not only on birthday, an other woman in Jingy's family and his mother also and some of his daughters are mentioned as well. But we know that in this source, for more going people, mid-13 centric women are in charge also.

They are very important persons, political terms, economy-peace speaking as well. So that's also why this source is so rich and interesting if you want to think about who was this birth. a woman, who know what kind of person she was and what role she played in the beginning of the Mongol Empire. So I'm assuming then that this would have been an arranged marriage, that it wouldn't have been the case for a nine and a 10 year old to start dating. This would have been set up by the families. But did they love each other? Like, how did they get along? Do the sources tell us anything like that? Yeah, this is very important question, Gates. Actually, so yes, it's arranged in a sense that. So, Jenk's father, yesterday, take his son, so Jenghis to find a bride, to find someone,

there's a political alliance behind their things. But he doesn't know who, how, you know, it goes to some families who have good relationship with his only age, but it's not decided in advance, who's going to be the bride. It said in the secret history of the Mongol that there's some sort of meeting between the two fathers, so Jingy's father and Bertie's father, and they sort of connect. Bertie's father had a dream, and he dreamed about this family coming to him and this potential alliance. But then when Jingy's met with Bertie, it doesn't know yet, you know. She's one among others, although she's one of the daughters of the chief.

but yeah, it could have been another girl. This one, it said she's not only fair, beautiful girl, but she also has some fire in her eyes and she has really something. Which means she was probably, she looked intelligent and fierce and strong. And somehow it's part of the information that sort of helped Jane Gis to fall in love with her or in any case to build up a very strong couple relationship with her. Because of course love, who knows. We are not in their mind of the time, right?

But clearly this couple, it's going to be a strong couple that's going to work very well. So they connected. And I like the fact that it's a source that said she had fire in her eyes. It's also said that Jingy's himself as a boy. He had something in his eyes that Shudy was, they were. special both of them and they are intelligent both of them and they sort of connect through their eyes and I really like this idea. I love that. You touched just briefly there on what it was like to be a woman in this culture. If I'm thinking about 12th century Europe, it's deeply patriarchal

and women weren't as confined to the domestic as you'd like to think, but it certainly wasn't, they weren't having a riot. The men folk were very much in charge. What was it like in Mongolia? Yes, it's very different in Mongolia. It's different because her, they work together. There's a lot of work in the camp. So you have to take care of the animals. You have a lot of work to do.

They can't be pissing around, staying at home when you've got stuff to do, can you? Yeah. Exactly. A woman are in charge of many tasks and they work a lot. But they also, we know they need to move freely. Because you ask me about sources, and I mentioned a test. of the secret history of the Mongols. But we have also to mention archaeology and textiles and we have burials and we have a little

idea of how like women would have been dressed for instance, you know, and they're closed. And we know that they would be like men a little bit. They would have the same type of shoes as the same type of coat. They would ride horses. We know this from also miniatures for later, later buried, but still we know with description. So they are very free that the body. of the woman is very free to move because they need to work. Even if they are from high society, they are active women. And they show themselves, they show their face. They don't have

veiled face. It gives us a little bit of an idea of what, you know, Bertie could have been, you know, even, you know, her clothes, her way of doing everyday life. We know she knows how to ride a horse like a man. We know she's very strong physically like she does a lot of work. And she's a daughter of the chief. So it gives us some idea, right? And also, we have some clues about the religion of the Mongols of the time. They know about Christian religions and they know about Islam and they know about Buddhists, but they are different. They have their own ways of being connected to the nature, to spirits of the nature, spirit of the rivers, of the mountains, of the hills, the spirit of the ancestors. But we know that in their religion and belief, there is nothing that would

sort of downplay the role of women. It's very important, I think, that women, they participate in rituals like men. They are not like sent away because there are some rituals. So I think also that might be when you look at Middle Ages as a historian's influence of religion is very important. So here we see something much more open where men and women are more on equal basis. Although they have different tasks to do. There are things women do and things men do. So differentiation, gender differentiation is there, but still it doesn't mean there's not equal respect in this society for men and women. So that's very special. And we know through the eyes of Western travelers or Muslim travelers or Chinese travelers to Mongol area, that women are really free

and they are, you know, showing themselves as strong public characters. And all those witnesses from other parts of the world are super shocks. They're like, whoa, in this, but women are so different. And they even say, okay, you like imagine you're a traveler, you're coming from the West, you need to bring some gift for the Mongol chief, but you have to bring some gift for his wife, for the Mongol woman as well. That is really said in our, you know, sources and text. you know, they have to be considered just like men in terms of political influence.

This is something that is super different from the rest of the world, as far as we know. That makes perfect sense, actually. When you think about it, if you've got a group of people that are nomadic, which involves packing up an entire home, moving it, moving with the animals, reestablishing it, putting it up. There's no space there for women to go, oh, I'm too delicate. There's no stay at home if home is constantly being moved. So that makes perfect sense that there isn't space for this sort of confinement of women

and this weakening of women that you see in the West of like they're very delicate. If you have to ride around on a horse all day, no, no, you're not. I'll be back with Marie and Borte after this short break. All right, so Bertie and Timmergen have got married and they've got married very, very, very, little. What on earth would that have been like to be married as a 10 year old? Was anyone expecting them to, you know, be proper man and wife at this point? It's like when the babies start to arrive? Like, are they playing house? What, what is going on here? Okay. So first, when they are 9 and 10, they get engaged. Oh, but they're not really married. That makes more

sense. Yeah. Very important. Yeah, they really respect like the cycle of life. So you don't, you get engaged, but you don't marry before a certain period of time. Right. And actually, we know that they get married probably seven, eight years after that. So late teenagers, probably we can imagine Timujin is 16 and she, birth is 17. Not sure about dates, you know, but that's what we see. Something like rather rational, right? They get married and very soon after, so there are a lot of political issues and troubles with enemies.

At that time, Jingy is in between lost his father, killed by enemies. And when he married birthday, very soon after he married her, something terrible happened to them. Enemies came. So it's people called milk kids people. They live a little bit more in the north. They are more like forest people. they have to take revenge from the Mongols for some personal reason. So they come back to the Mongols.

They found the camp of Jingdis and his wife and they captured Bertie. And at that moment, Bertie and Tammy Gina just married since less than a year with since just a few months, right? So that's a very tragic moment. It's described as such in the secret history of the Mongol. It was that common practice? as a revenge tactic, we're just going to go and kidnap the wife of an opposing tribe. And dare I ask, what happened then?

Like, they're taken back to their tribe. Oh, God. Like, what did this mean, Marie? Yes, it seems that it happens. So it's probably common. You take the wife and you marry them. So it's not just you take the wife and kill them or it's not, imagine at that time, people value life, okay?

But they, what they want. So if another chief come to you, want to take revenge about something, it will take your family, your wife, your children, not to kill them, but to integrate them in these home people. To make its own people larger. Wow. That's more the way we have to think about it. It's not about killing each other. It's more about integrating more people. So, of course, we can imagine they are prisoners, but it's more complex than that, because probably,

Probably Bertie was kind of married to one of the market chief, to the inmates. So the idea is not to get rid of her. It's not to use her. She has potential. She's coming from a wealthy family. And also it's like you show how victorious you were on your enemy if you take wife, families, animals, everything from your enemy, right? So that's the idea behind.

So she was captured and married to some market prince probably. of it. Yes. And the tragic aspect also of the story is that it is said in the official source that Jenghis just left her. When the market came, he just ran away to hide himself. Jenghis. And he left her behind.

Yes. He ran away. Jenghis Khan ran away. Yes. And it said in an official sources, Mongol sources. So the idea is to show that he was not able to defend his wife. and he just ran for his life. But in some ways, you can see it's rational

because he needs to protect himself before. If he's not alive, how can he protect his family? So he needs to show us hide and protect himself. But then after that, it said how bad he felt about it. And then he's going to work on getting his wife back. It's like never ever forgetting her. He knows she is the one and he wants her back and he will do everything to come.

get her back. And this is also part of the story, the official source, which I think is, we don't know, honestly, we're not in the end of 12th century. We don't know exactly what happened. But it's super interesting that it's presented as such in the official text. The fact that the chief had this failure, leaving his wife behind to some enemies. So that's a really big thing. But also that he felt pain and sorry and guilt about it. It's interesting. It's there in the text. And also how he's going to bring her back. So that's a whole story, like how he's going to build up a new army, make a new alliance, sort of convince as friends to sort of join him to sort of do some

expedition to get her back because he wants his wife's back. And that's what happened. After probably something like seven, eight months, he's able to get her back. Long time. Yeah, it's a long time. And it's seven, eight months. And when he get her back, she's, She's pregnant, almost about to have a deliver baby. Oh. So some people believe the baby is not from Gengis. It's from the American prince and the husband she was forced to marry when she was in captivity. And that's possible, of course.

But I think it's special that in this text, it's not said that we know. Because imagine at that time no DNA research, not like today, today you know. But at that time, there's no way you can know. So it might be Jingis, but it might be the Merkitt, Prince, who's the father of the first baby she, Bertic, going to have, right? That's a big issue in some ways, because after that it's going to come back into sources. Oh, maybe this first born son is not really from Changis. It's from another father, you know. So the first born son has a name, Zerchi.

Zerchi means guests. It's interesting. this. That's an interesting choice. The meaning, exactly. So we are two options. One is because the baby is born unexpectedly. So after he got his wife back, on the road, the baby came.

So guests, you know, he arrived. We didn't know it would be the time and a moment. So that's one explanation. The other explanation is a guest in a sense that it's a guest in a family. It's a guest because he's not from Jingis bloodline, but he's from America. kids chief bloodline. But Jenghis recognized him as his son though, didn't he?

Exactly. That's what is beautiful in the story. I didn't expect that. Yeah, Jenghis recognized his son as his first bomb and he would always give him everything. When you look at the first period of Jenghis conquest, when he gives some responsibilities and just, you know, peoples and armies to his son, he would always favor his first bomb until some point. They would have some, you know, issues at some point. Something that could happen between father and son, I think, in general. But we know he would always say, this is my son.

There's no question about it. And it doesn't allow anyone to question the fact that this boy is his son. And Berkeley, of course, the same. She would always support her son and treat him as the others and never show anything. Or at least that's what we have in our sources in the text. There's nothing that. that would say at some point that they love him less for any reasons. Also interesting when you think about the notion of adoption,

because Bertie, she's amazing. So she had this first born song, okay? It's a judge. Then she would have three more sons with Jingis. These ones are long, you know, we know for sure they are coming from, you know, they are Jingis's grandfather. But then she's going to have five daughters as well. Wow, that's busy.

Yeah. She needs quite a lot of kids, right? Nine. Yeah. And look, she's going to also adopt. She's going to adopt kids as well, at least three or four more kids. And adoption is something very important at that time in this world. I mean, life is harsh.

There's war, often. There's no regulation about, you know, orphans and anything. And Jingy's mother, so Bertie, she would adopt kids and she would treat this adopted kids as her own kids as well. She would be really respectful with them. And Jingis would give the adopted kids also a lot of functions, roles, cash, respect, everything as well. I think it's very beautiful as well.

So it shows a couple working hard to create a huge family with adopted kids, biological kids, maybe up to 15, you know, at the end, right? And they're loving them, loving them. I'll be back with Marie and Borte after this short break. So the marriage, I mean, they must have loved each other. Jenghis must have loved her to have gone to all that trouble to get her back. And, you know, they seem to have, right, we're going to, we're here together and we're going to grow our family. And at some point, he also decides to unite the Mongol Empire, which is impressive.

Along the way, Bertie has found herself wife to the first Mongol emperor, which I don't know if she saw that coming. But what were her powers within that? Because Jenghis is very powerful and he was sort of the number one guy. What was her role within that? Was she a quiet power behind the throne? Well, not quite, but power certainly behind. I mean, not even behind next to him. Wow. When you look at her advice, so she advised him. We know at least in three directions. One is keep the family united.

Respect your brothers. Also treat your sons kindly. They have daughters. He was in love with his daughters, so he treated them super kindly. But really was harsh with his sons, not the first one, specifically all of them. So she was always behind saying, no, you really have to be generous with. your sons as well and just we also understand them they are young and everything. So that's one direction, family.

The other direction is she was super intelligent and astute when it comes to alliance. And she was one of the first who saw that he had the problem with one of his first ally. His guy named Jamuhar is also a Mongol. They allied together when Jenghis was young. But then at some point it seemed clear that this guy was also. a competitor. It was a challenger for Gingis. Jenghis really had to split. You know,

something has to be done. And she's there and she's there and she said, no, you have to interpret what's happening. You have to be careful of Jamukkah and you have to split and protect yourself. And she's there saying this to her husband and he listens to her. So that's also nice. You know, you see, it's just... Wow. This is

like a power couple, isn't it? Yeah. Very powerful. Yeah. And powerful also. Also, because she's also the brain. Not only like the mother was giving, you know, building up the lineage and the family, she's also a brain and very intelligent in political terms. And finally, regarding religion,

she's one of the first who said to Jingis, okay, there's this powerful shaman. The guy is called Ted Tengri in the sources. So he's a powerful shaman. And he's like a priest, you know, and he helps and support Jingis, but it's becoming powerful. like too powerful, right?

And she says to a husband, you have to get rid of him. He's also becoming some sort of competitor for you. He's not helping anymore get rid of him. And he follows one more time her advice and that I think is a very important political decision at the level of the empire. So yeah. So these are just examples, but you can see how she was also

acknowledged by the people of the time as a political advisor for her husband. and also something like a real brain, you know, in the situation. And sometimes Jane does get nuts and get, you know, infuri and upset about his sons, about this and that. And she's not necessarily calm because she can speak harsh, but she says what she has to say. And she's very, like, open and frank also.

So she's depicted as such loyal to her husband, but also telling him like, you're making a mistake here, you know. And he listened to her. I just had this image of like Bertie in a nightgown with her hair enrolers first thing in the morning just saying to Jenghis, oh God, he's off again attacking the hordes. Get back here. What time are you going to be back? Don't be like. I was really tickling me. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think she's, when Jenghis goes on campaign and leave the house and leave the camp, she has also our own world to rule and she's in charge. So when he leaves, he goes Central Asia, he goes China, she's in charge. And when he will die, actually, she's going to be in charge of a huge part of his hord. So his warriors and she will also take care of his assets in many ways.

So I don't know what was her feeling. I guess she's in love. She must be sad if he lives, right? But at the same time, she's in charge and she has work to do. I think she would be very active then. Clearly, she would stay a lot in Mongolia. We have to add to this story that Jenkis had other wives after her. I was just going to ask you about them.

Because one of the things that we looked at in the last episode was Jengis's reputation for sexual savagery and debauchery. And you were swift to point out there is no evidence, there's no mention of that in the sources, or at least there's no reason to expect it was any worse than anywhere else. But he definitely had other wives. And how did Bertie deal with that? Yeah, and younger wise, probably. Well, I mean, there are different explanations. One is, anyway, he has to make, at that time, you make alliance,

and when you make a line to sort of sealed marriage, new marriage. So it can be just a political decision, and this for sure would not affect the day. But one of his younger works, we think Jingis was, I mean, probably like some feeling for her, took her with him when he was older, during this campaign, probably in the 1220, early 1220s, at this point. We don't know about their marriage exactly, but we know that Berthe is a chief wife.

So she's in charge with the other wife. She's in charge of all the other wife. Her statues remain high. She's the only one we can give real hairs to the throne. So when Jen is going to die, only a son from her and him going to be going to get to throw. It's not going to be a son from another wife's, you know. So I think it's sort of repair maybe what the, I don't know if she's hurt or anything. We have no idea, you know, her real feelings, you know. Maybe she had seen for some other men. We have absolutely no idea. We have to be honest

with that, you know. We have just the official portrait. But it's clear she, our statues, we mean eye until the end. And she would be in charge with the secondary wife. The other thing is, when Jingis died in 2012-27. She was in charge with a huge park of his, you know, as I said, his wires. We call them Ordah, hordes.

So his wires, some of his buildings, some of his, you know, treasuries, whatever. She's still there, you know, as a person. But we have less sources, you know,

and we don't even know when she died. I think it's important to say that. We don't know when exactly and we don't know where she has been buried. Maybe we see. him, but we don't know where he's buried.

The people remember a discussion about Jenghis. So there's a bit of a mystery also about Bertie, you know, at the end of her life, you know, where she went, what she did, where she's buried, we don't know. But in the Mongol official cults, official sources, rituals, in 13, 14th century, even up to gay, she's a very respected character. She's a key person, you know, and there's no Mongol Empire without her. It's like, Jenghis and Berthi. It's not Jenkins himself.

Doing himself what? He would not have been able to build a lineage and a family, right? So, and this is really clear. So, but we don't have portraits of Bertie. We don't know her face. You can imagine the, you know, fire in her eyes and, you know, a beautiful complexion. She was probably very energetic woman. and something, but yeah, we don't have a portrait.

Marie, you've been wonderful to talk to it. Again, thank you so much for dropping by to tell us. A bit more about Bertie Kahn. That was amazing. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? I think they can find podcasts and documentaries where I participated. And then I've been in Mongolia and trying to find more information about James Han and his family and Bertie.

So I think people can find me on the Smithsonian Channel. I've been part of a documentary on Jenghis Hans Mongolia. And, yes, of course, my book, The Horde, The Mongols, Change the World, in which I say, whatever I know about Bertie and a woman in Jingi's family, because they were so important. Thank you so much. You have been marvelous. Thank you.

Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Marie for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hi, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. Coming up, we have got episodes on the darker side of Alice in Wonderland and the second episode in this limited series, which is about Eva Braun, the wife and confident of none other than Mr. Shithead Hitler, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer is Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society,

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