Noble Blood - Boudica Victoria

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

Boudica is one of the most famous folk-heroines of Great Britain, a woman who led thousands of troops in 61 A.D. against the Roman occupiers. Though her rebellion was ultimately uncessful, Boudica's final victory would be in becoming a symbol that endured through the centuries.Support Noble Blood:— Bonus episodes and scripts on Patreon— Merch!— Pre-order Dana's book, Anatomy: A Love Story— Sign up to join Dana on the Mary Shelley Pilgrimage in April Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong,

dance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. Before we start this episode in earnest, just one quick reminder, I have a book coming out and it comes out January 18th. It's a novel called Anatomy a Love Story. And it's a story about a young woman who wants to be a surgeon in the 1800s in Edinburgh and Scotland during the dawn of surgery. And she falls in love, or does she, with a resurrection man, a guy who digs up dead bodies to sell to doctors as was common practice during the 19th century. So if you like this podcast, I think it's

going to be really up your alley and it would mean the world to me if you wanted to read it. So it's available for pre-order now, you know, on Amazon or wherever you get your books, your local indie bookstore, ideally. And it's hopefully going to be available in every store where you get your book starting January 18th. So thank you so much for everyone for all of their support. You could support the show on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Noble Blood Tales. And I upload episode scripts there and also do bonus episodes talking about the TV show, Rain on the CW and the tutors. I'm thinking of doing bonus episodes on The Great. But yeah, you can find all that there. Thank you so much to everyone who supports the show, but as always, the best support is just listening.

So thank you to everyone who's listened and let this show come into 2022. There's a statue in London on the western side of Westminster Bridge, a statue that stands 10 feet tall. It's a bronze statue depicting a woman riding in a chariot pulled by two horses. The woman stands with both hands raised, arms above her head like an opera singer, or Ava Peron standing on a balcony. Except unlike Ava Peron and unlike most opera singers, the woman holds in one of her upraised hands a spear. Her hair is braided beneath a crown. On either side of her are two smaller women, her daughters. It's very clearly a statue of a warrior, and the The figure's been sculpted in such a way to convey to the viewer that this woman was brave and

fearsome, though not so brave and fearsome that she's not also conventionally beautiful. Her gown, a simple classical shroud beneath a cloak, clings close enough to her body that you can make out the contours of her belly and her breasts. She's a warrior woman, the statue says, but she's still a woman. The statue, originally sculpted by Thomas Thornycroft in the late 1800s, is a representation of Budica, the warrior queen of Britain, who fended off the invading Roman forces for a little while in a surprising but ultimately unsuccessful rebellion. As described by the statue's plinth, she is, quote, Budica, Budaica, queen of the Aseni, who died A.D. 16. after leading her people against the Roman invader. If you're British or were schooled in Great Britain or the Commonwealth,

you're almost certainly familiar with Budica, as she's most commonly referred to. But if you're American, her story might be a little less familiar. It's a classic tale of David v. Goliath, even if this is a case in which Goliath uses his considerable armed forces and superior weaponry and organizational strategy to defeat David. But I'm not just interested in the story of Budica. I'm interested in the idea of her. Or rather, how the idea of her has changed over time.

You see, Thomas Thornycroft sculpture was finally cast in bronze and erected in 1902 at the end of the reign of Queen Victoria. The statue is in an undeniable place of prominence, overlooking the Thames, facing straight toward perhaps the two most enduring symbols of London and centralized British power, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Though Budica was a relatively obscure figure for most of British history, in the Victorian era, she exploded in popularity, becoming a figure not only in the popular artistic and literary movements of the day,

but becoming a national heroine, a symbol of Britain, a face for the feminized representation of the abstract national term Britannia. Budica was a heroic warrior, but it might strike you, as it struck me, that she's an unusual choice to be the heroine of Victorian times, a period often stereotyped as one of piety, domesticity, and female obedience. The era that's become synonymous with women in tight corsets being afraid to talk about sex. That era certainly doesn't seem to be a natural fit for stories about a woman who led armies into battle

with her hair hanging wild behind her. Plus, she was a pagan, a wild heretic who used divinations. and look to nature for advice and guidance. And she, uh, burned London to the ground. We'll get to that later. But even all that aside, one might imagine buttoned up Victorian Christianity having a more challenging time embracing a story

that ends with a hero committing the sin of suicide. History, as much as it's about telling stories, is about examining the reasons we choose to tell certain stories and when. To very loosely paraphrase one of the many Batman movies, a city gets the hero it needs. In 60 AD, Budica fought for her life, her family, and her homeland. And then, almost 2,000 years later, even though the nation she lived in had a different name,

She was resurrected to continue to fight. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. A trigger warning for anyone listening who might be sensitive to particular content, this episode contains sexual violence. Almost all of our information on Budica comes from two classical sources, both written a few decades after Budica's death. The first is by Tacitus, who actually spoke to witnesses about Budica's uprising, first hand. Tacitus's father-in-law was actually a Roman governor of Britain. The second source was

written by a man named Cassius Dio, who seemingly based most of his account on the words of Tacitus, the age-old strategy of copying but changing it just enough so that the teacher won't get suspicious. For classical historians at the time, it was common practice to include, in their histories, long, flowery speeches, supposedly given by their subjects. It made the history more interesting to read, more relevant to readers, and it was a chance for the authors to add some color or moral teachings. But it's important for us to remember that these speeches are meant to be evocative, but not direct transcriptions. So though Cassius Dio and Tacitus both wrote down what Budica allegedly said to her troops,

It's not meant to be taken verbatim. After all, Budica wasn't speaking Latin or Greek. We're not certain when Budica was born. It's not recorded anywhere or reported with any real certainty, but most likely it was around 30 AD, most likely somewhere around the present-day English city of Colchester. Budica spent most of her life in and around what is now considered East Anglia to the northeast of London,

and though there's no source that makes it absolutely certain, it's likely that she was born into a prominent family. If not noble, then considered well-bred and well-respected. In 43 AD, what's known as the Claudian invasion of Britain began, Emperor Claudius in Rome, began his conquest of southern Britain, or, as it would have been called by the Romans, Britannia. I imagine what this must have been like for a teenage Budika, seeing legions of strangers carrying weapons,

marching over her green hills, them making camp laughing and jeering in a language she didn't understand. It was around this time that Budika got married to a man named Prasatagos, the leader of the Aseni tribe, the Bretonic people living around present-day Norfolk. Sources claim that Prasitagos was long reigning, which means it's probable that he was already king when he married Budica. Budica was tall and athletic.

Women would have trained in weapons alongside men, which meant that she knew her way around a sword as well as anyone. She had long ginger hair that reached her waist and piercing eyes, and she often wore a golden necklace and a cloak fastened with a brooch. Rather than fight the Romans, Prasitagos made the... pragmatic decision to ally with them. It became a mutually beneficial partnership, in which the Aseni people offered assistance to the Romans in their invasion, and assistant in putting down revolts against other nearby tribes, and in return, Romans allowed Prasitagos and the Aseni people protection and their much-valued independence. It worked out. At least it did, until Prasatagos and the

Prasitagos died in around 60 AD. In his will, Prasitagos left half of his fortune to his wife, Budica and their two daughters. The other half of his property, he left to the Roman emperor, who, by this point, was Nero. It was meant to be a generous offering, a symbolic deference as if to say, hey, you can have half of my holdings, but for the other half, let's keep that mutually beneficial salutary neglect situation going on. But the Roman Empire is known for many things, and mercy towards people that they want to conquer is not one of them. They flat out ignored Prasatagos's will, and claimed all of his property. When Budica attempted to defend their home from invading soldiers, the soldiers captured her. They tied her up and flogged her, blood dripping down her back,

and torn pieces of skin that would leave painful welts and then scars for the rest of her life. But that wasn't enough, it seems, to send the message. The Roman soldiers stormed into Budica's home and raped both of her daughters. The Romans knew that Budika was a queen and a leader, that she had the capacity to rally the Aeseni people behind her. They meant the flogging and the cruel violation of her daughters to be such a humiliation, such a trauma, that it would break her and leave her defeated. It had the exact opposite effect.

Budikha began rallying troops to expel the Romans from Britain. There was precedent, stories from history that inspired her and inspired the people who followed her. A few decades earlier in 9 AD, Prince Arminius of the Cheruski people drove the Romans out of his land in present-day Germany. And even in Britain, Julia Caesar himself had been defeated and forced to retreat. And so Budka gathered men and women to fight alongside her, as she allegedly said in a speech, It is not as a woman descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I'm avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters.

To subtly encourage men to fight alongside her, she challenged their manliness by adding, This is a woman's resolve, as for men, you may live and be slaves. Eventually, her army has, had over 120,000 troops, both from the Iseni and from the neighboring tribe, with whom she allied against their mutual enemy. To the shock of the Romans, Budica and her soldiers fought and won. They defeated the Roman 9th Legion and sacks the city of Camelodon. They continued on,

pillaging and fighting, burning down homes and Roman settlements in the Roman cities of Varylamium, modern-day St. Albans, and Lindenium, which, you might have correctly guessed, is where London now stands. Budica put her faith in a number of pagan rituals in order to lead her troops. One involved taking a hair and putting him under the many layers of her skirts. She would then lift her skirts and release the animal and watch the direction that the hair chose to run in. She knew that whichever way it went had some symbolic meaning. As Budica and her soldiers marched, they desecrated Roman cemeteries, breaking tombstones and knocking statues down. Some of those broken statues are still on display today at the Colchester Museum.

A centuries-old reminder of anger and fury towards an invading army made symbol in broken stone that lasts to this day. What helped Budica in these early battles was the fact that the Iraq, Roman governor of the province, a man named Gaia Sotonius Paulinus, was away during her attacks. He was leading a campaign on the Welsh island Mona when he heard about the staggering defeat that his countrymen were suffering on the east side of Britain. Enough was enough. Soutonius decided he would bring his troops toward Budica for a final confrontation. There's plenty of disagreement among his.

historians about where this final battle took place. Presumably it was somewhere between Varelimium and Lundinium. Some claim it was along a Roman road called Watling Street. What we do know is that Budica, her waist-length ginger hair flowing behind her, rode in a chariot up and down her ranks to rally her troops before battle.

Nothing is safe from Roman pride and arrogance, she shouted, one historian claims. They will deface the sacred and will deflower our virgins, win the battle or perish. That is what I, a woman, will do. Though Budica had numbers on her side, Sotonius had the advantage when it came to weaponry and strategy. With his 10,000 soldiers, mainly from the 14th Legion,

he first made a tactical withdrawal in order to draw Budica into battle on his terms. When the battle began, the Romans began by throwing javelins at Budica and her army, which led to massive casualties in minutes, before the two armies had even really engaged. The Romans then advanced to move in for the kill with short swords that allowed them flexibility of movement. They turned Budica's numbers against her. She and her army were trapped in their tight ranks.

Their weapons, which were mostly long swords, were difficult to use against the Romans who came in so close and so fast. And then Sotonius released the cavalry, which encircled Budica's army from behind. It was only another few moments after that until the battle was over. 80,000 of Budaica's Britons were killed. There were a comparative,

relatively few, 400 dead Romans. Budica was captured alive, but she knew the fate waiting for her would be worse than death. She would be raped by her Roman captors or forced to become a slave or both. And so, before that could happen, Budica drank poison and killed herself. We don't know what happened to her two daughters. Some claim that they killed themselves as well, but they also might have died in battle. Her revolt was ultimately unsuccessful, although for a moment it almost persuaded Emperor Nero that the conquest of Britain was more trouble than it was worth.

Still, the story of a woman brutalized, who then rose up against her oppressor, was one worth recording. Tacitus and Cassius Dio wrote in the late first century, and then it would be another few hundred years before Boudicca would appear in another major source. this time a 6th century book by a British monk named Gildes called On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, in which Gildes describes Boudicca, not unflatteringly, as a treacherous lioness. Though Boudicca was mentioned here and there for the next few centuries after that, she didn't become anything resembling a folk hero or even a mainstream historical figure

until the reign of Elizabeth I. The last Tudor queen happened to be reigning during a period in which the classical work of scholars from ancient Greece and Rome were rediscovered, including the writings of Tacitus and Cassius Dio. And Budica was a heroine ready-made, analogous to their own ginger-haired, notably tall Queen Elizabeth. Budica seemed to be especially relevant to their own queen when Elizabeth I made a speech to her troops at Tilbury

before facing off against the invasion of the Spanish armada. Both queens were mere women, leading massive groups of men against foreign invaders. Elizabeth was more successful than her historical counterpart. After Elizabeth's reign, interest in Budica waned slightly. During and after the reign of James I and 6th, the King of Scotland who ruled England after Elizabeth's death, Budica was seen with a little bit of suspicion,

to say nothing of the misogyny that you might expect in the 1600s. John Milton, in his history of Britain, frames Budica as shameless, a wild herodin who should have kept her mouth shut. But Milton was notable for his misogyny across the board. He didn't think any woman should occupy a person. position of power, least of all a woman with heretical attitudes. But by the mid to late 1700s, Budica began to re-emerge as a historical figure and an incredibly useful one. A historical

figure who also acted as a symbol. Budica became not just a woman who fought and lost against the Romans in 61 AD, but a symbol for Britain as a nation. Female personification of countries is a global tradition. In America, there's a famous painting by John Gast called American Progress or Manifest Destiny. If you took AP U.S. history, you probably had to study it for your AP test. It's a painting in which idealized American pioneers travel from, the right side of the canvas, painted to look like a growing dawn, towards the dark, shadowy west, where Native Americans brandish their weapons beneath dim clouds. The covered wagons,

cowboys, and trains make their way towards America's expansionist destiny, and they're guided along by a massive female figure, towering high as the mountains in the background of the picture. the woman, meant to be liberty or America or God's purpose for American expansion, is be decked with blonde curls. She wears a one-shoulder toga, evoking the classical democracies of antiquity. In France, the female personification of the nation is sometimes called Marianne. Picture the famous Eugene Delacroix painting, Liberty Leading the People, in which a woman raises high the tricolor flag. It's the painting Coldplay used for their Viva La Vida album cover, if you need help remembering. Like the American figure of Liberty, this figure also wears a one-shoulder toga,

although maybe in predictable French fashion, her toga reveals both of her breasts. Though Budica, unlike America's blonde giantess and France's Marianne, was a real person, she certainly more or less the same symbolic purpose. William Cowper was a famous 18th century poet. In his work, he actually coined the phrases, God moves in a mysterious way, and variety is the very spice of life. But in his 1780 poem Budica in Ode, he wrote, She with all a monarch's pride, felt them in her bosom glow, rushed to battle, fought and died, dying hurled them at the foe. Ruffians, pitiless is proud. Heaven awards the vengeance due. Empire is on us bestowed. Shame and ruin wait for you. And then Budica became permanently

entrenched in British culture in 1837 when a young woman that they began calling Victoria became queen of their empire. Budica became the emblem of Victoria. Budica became the emblem of Victoria. Victoria's power. A comparison made easy by the helpful coincidence that the root of the name Budica comes from either the Celtic or the Welsh word for victory, which meant that she and Victoria basically had the same name. During a period when Brits might have begun to fear that their empire would be in decline, Budica became a helpful tool to bolster national pride, a rallying symbol. Victorian children were forced in their classrooms

to learn William Cowper's poem by heart, and there was a renewed interest in trying to find out where exactly her battles took place. Attention towards Budica reached a zenith during 1894, when archaeologists excitedly determined that an earthwork on the north side of Parliament Hill might be the site of the Iseni Queen's final resting place. Though the land was excavated and no grave was found, the public hubbabaloo of everyone talking about the ancient queen gave John Isaac Thornycraft the boost he needed to help raise funds to finally cast the sculpture made by his by now late father, Thomas Thornycroft, who died before ever seeing his plaster cast set in bronze.

In 1902, his sculpture, Budica and her daughters, was finally erected on Westminster Bridge, a permanent tribute to the woman who tried to burn London to the ground. To this day, she's still considered a national heroine of Britain. That's the story of Budica and the story of the story of Budica, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about rumors that still persisted. around her. Hello, gorgeous, it's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up

cups at Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. I've been full on over sharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz. I had a little bone to pick with Shortsy when he came on the pod. You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife? I almost flipped a pizza in your lap. Oh my God, I literally forgot about that until just now. Sorry, I don't want to, I don't want to blame alcohol. That, I got to blame that one on the alcohol. This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on life in because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to.

We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love. It's unruly, it's unruly, it's un-traditionally la-la. Listen to untraditionally la-la on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's still no historical consensus as to the location of Boudicca's Remed. remains. One rumor, magical but almost certainly not true, holds that Budica was buried in the ashes of Lundinium and that a train station sprung up in the centuries after her death. The rumor is that Budica's body happens to be located far beneath the bricks directly between

Platform's 9 and 10, where, at Platform 9 and 3 quarters, another symbol of Britannia has made his claim. Another theory, and one I quite like, even though I have absolutely no expertise to evaluate its historical accuracy. Actually, that's not true. In my limited expert opinion, I'll say this one is not true. But the idea is that the mysterious circle of Stonehenge was erected in Budica's honor as a funeral arrangement. This was a speculation first put forward by the writer Edmund Bolton, who lived in the court of James I think his historical basis was mostly that it would be cool. The theory of, whoa, can you imagine? What a fun coincidence. A more likely theory is one that gives us less to hold on to. We don't know how the Isani tribe dealt with their

dead or what their rituals around funerals were, but some other tribes in Britain during the John's age, simply laid their dead out, in special places, to be desiccated by the elements out in the open. It's possible that that's what happened to Budica. If so, there would be nothing left of her. She's gone, disappeared into the British soil and air and water. Nothing left except what we want her to be. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkie.

The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz. Executive producers include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by Rima Ilkjali and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.

I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body. having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.