Oh What A Time... - #170 Female Leaders and how Boudica Torched London! (Part 2)

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we have three stories of incredible female leaders from throughout history: Queen Boudica and how she took on the Romans, trailblazer author Christine de Pizan and lastly, the terrifying story of 1700s pirate Shi Yang!Plus, Chris’ milkman has become the first milkman to be a freeman of the city of London. Has your milkman done anything as impressive? Please let us know: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, What a Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets, and access to the Oh, What a Time group chat. Plus, if you become an Oh Water Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh, water time. Hello, this is part two. of amazing female leaders. Let's get on with the show. So, I want you to cast your mind back into time. This time, not too far away, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Did you watch the opening ceremony like I did?

No. No, I didn't. However, I did work for three weeks at the Paris Paralympics. So I was part of that culture and fun and celebration. You claimed some credit for the success of that Olympic great games. Well, I don't know if you saw it. The setting for the opening ceremony was the entire city of Paris. They were going up and down the Sen with like a magical electric light up horse.

Oh, yes, I do remember that now, yeah. Right. Which did not work. Was confusing. But there was one. Well, the horse didn't light up or was just too confusing as a concept. No, it did light up. You're just like, it's just going for ages.

You're just like, what am I watching as it goes from one area of Paris to the next? Okay, yeah, fair enough. But throughout the ceremony, you were seeing, like, Kings, Revolutionaries, artists, like, fitting in with the ceremony. But there was one character in this kind of historical pageant that may have puzzled viewers. And unless you were particularly well versed in medieval French literature, and I'll hold my hands up, I am not.

You wouldn't have recognized her in that opening ceremony. But she was one of the most remarkable figures in European and intellectual history. Okay. And I've just discovered about her, thanks to her, Dr. Darrell, who provided this short biography for her. Her name was Christine de Pizan. She's widely regarded as Europe's first professional writer. And the time she does it in is equally astonishing. 1364 she was born.

Wow. Wow. Early. And actually, she was born in Venice. Her father was a highly educated man who had studied at the University of Bologna, one of the great centres of learning in medieval Europe. He worked as a physician and an astrologer. I love how in like this medieval time you could have two jobs like that. Dentist and barber.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, great. Very much of that ilk, isn't it? It's quite a good idea, actually, a dentist slash barber. You'd need two people. You need one person doing your teeth. And when you're lying there, there's also a time giving you a haircut at the same time. Because you're there for your deep clean, hygiene, disappointment for 45 minutes.

It's about the right time for a haircut. And you might as well, so if you could fit it in. It's like having an MOT on your whole head. Ellis, chucking a shropiness as well. Let's get the feet up. It's actually quite a good idea. If you're mega busy, genuinely, who are the people that do people's nails as well? If you're into that, if you want to get your cuticles done?

This is actually a really good idea. Just a really good hour that everything gets done. Yeah, yeah. You're deading at one hour. A team will work on you. Yeah, you call it the body shot. As you can't call it the body shop because that's already taken, but I would call it the body shop. Like a pit stop.

Pit stop. Oh, that's nice. No, you could call it pit stop. And they also wax your pits as well if you want that. Perfect. Yeah, so her father worked as a physician and astrologer, professions that in the 14th century often overlapped with scholarship and court service. So in 1368, when Christine was a child, her father received a prestigious appointment. At the court of the French king, Charles V.

And the family then moved to Paris, one of the largest and most important cities in Europe, then and now. For Christine, the move proved decisive. Instead of growing up in a Venetian republic, she was raised in the environment of the French royal court. Wow. Her father made an unusual decision for the time. He ensured that his daughter received a serious education. While many girls in medieval Europe received little formal schooling, Christine was taught languages, literature, philosophy, and living in Paris gave her access to one of the most impressive libraries of the period.

King Charles V had founded a royal library in 1368 and he housed it in a tower of Leloup Palace. It contained around 900 manuscripts which is an insane collection for the period and Christine was able to read widely from this collection. She encountered

biblical texts, classical literature, medieval romance, historical works stories of the Trojan War drawn from Greek and Roman sources such as Homer and Virgil, particularly those fascinated her. Leaving near a library back then must have been amazing. I had a friend who lived across the road from a Blockbuster video

when I was about 12. I was so jealous of him because he had access to all this. This is obviously pre-net-fetched, all this sort of stuff. He could go and get the newest film at all time. It's kind of the equivalent to that, basically, isn't it? Well, most people couldn't read. Yeah. So it would be like most people not having a VHS video player,

and yet you live next to Blockbuster. People are like, oh my God, how's he playing these things? always all available. Yeah, and the interesting thing about her having the ability to go into the, to access to so much literature, it reminds me, have you ever read Freakonomics? Oh, yes, I have read Freakonomics, yeah. It's a brilliant book about why some people are successful. And I remember there's a few things in it that stick out for me.

And one of those that Bill Gates had access, had more access to a really good computer than almost anyone in North America because his mom worked at a library that contained this real top computer. He learned coding. He had a huge advantage. It was also probably quite bright, wasn't he? Do you think? It can't be entirely that he lived near a computer.

And also a mega nerd who loved computers. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. If I lived by a really good computer, I wouldn't be a billionaire. It wouldn't have changed anything. So anyway, back to Christine. So this early exposure to literature and scholarship

would shape her intellectual life. But at this stage, writing was not her career because, like most women of her social background, Christine was expected to marry and manage a household. So in 1380, when she was 15 years old, she married Etienne de Castel, a royal secretary working at the French court. By all accounts, the marriage was a very happy one.

They had three children, but then tragedy struck. Just nine years later after getting married, Etienne died suddenly, probably of the plague. And Christine was left widowed at the age of 25, with three children to support, along with other dependents and significant debts. So now she had a stark choice. She could either remarry or attempt to support her family herself,

and Christine chose that second path. In the process of pursuing legal claims for her late husband's wages, Christine discovered something important. She was a talented writer. By the early 1390s, she had begun composing ballads and poems, circulating them among members of the French aristocracy, and her work quickly gained attention.

Patrons began commissioning writing from her and manuscripts of her poetry were copied and circulated among noble households. For the rest of her life, writing would become her profession. It's interesting that her manuscripts getting passed around noble households. It's that even though she's a brilliant writer, again, no one can read. Yeah, yeah. Is she just say, I know you can't read that, but trust me, it's brilliant. They're going on, fair enough.

Yeah, I imagine it is, yeah. Over the next several decades, Christine produced more than 40 works ranging from poetry and political commentary to biography and moral instruction. She died in 1430, leaving behind one of the most substantial literary careers at the medieval period. And what made her particularly unusual was not simply that she wrote, women had written before, but that she earned her living through writing. She became a full-time writer. Christine's most famous works were completed in 1405.

These were the book of the city of ladies in its companion, the treasure of the city of ladies. The first book is an allegorical work in which Christine imagines constructing a symbolic city populated entirely by exemplary women from history and mythology. Scholars, rulers, warriors, inventors,

saints and writers. The city is governed by female virtues and that ultimately presided over by the Virgin Mary. But the purpose of the book was clear. It was a rebuttal to the widespread medieval belief expressed in many male authored texts that women were intellectually and morally inferior.

Christine argued the opposite. Women, she insisted, had demonstrated their abilities throughout history. In the treasure of the city of ladies, Christine moved from allegory to practical advice. This book functioned almost as a guide

to women's lives across medieval society. It addressed noble women, widows, wives and women of the working classes offering guidance on education, morality, household management and public behaviour.

The text encouraged women to develop intellectual independence and moral strength, even with the constraints of a medieval society. And for this reason, bottom scholars often see Christine as a precursor to later feminist thought. The philosopher Simone de Beauvoir famously describes her as the first woman to take up her pen in defense of her sex. Incredible, isn't it? Doing it at this time.

Did she do anything for a bit more sellable for like the Christmas market? Have you got 200 family friendly jokes or whatever it happens to be? Do you do toilet books, Christy? Kids love wizards, Christine. Yeah. Yeah. No, amazing. This is fantastic. But interesting, her writings weren't limited only to women's issues.

She also engaged deeply with politics and moral philosophy. In 1400, she wrote the letter of a theatre Hector, a work designed to instruct knights in the ethical responsibilities of warfare and chivalry. Drawing on stories from the Trojan War, it blended classical mythology with Christian moral lessons. The text proved massively popular. So there you are, Tom, from the publisher going, do us a wizard story, but actually

this was really popular this particular book. What do I know? 47 medieval manuscripts survive an unusually high number for a work of the period. Christine also wrote a biography of Charles V. Phrasing the king's wisdom and learning. I mean, it would be unwise to write any other

kind of biography, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of a medieval king who's still alive? Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. He is the best. You won't believe how great this guy is. Can I shock you? despite her Venetian birth, she'd become deeply attached to France,

which is interesting, like she was celebrating in 2024 at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, but she was born in Venice, but she is seen as a big French cultural figure. And like many of medieval writers, she believed in the myth that the French monarchy descended

from the refugees of ancient Troy, a legend that helped link classical antiquity to contemporary European kingdoms. So Christine's work spread widely across Europe. Her writings were translated into English, Dutch, to Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish and German dialects during the 15th century. An English translation of the letter of Athea

was produced by Stephen Scrope before 1406. Her final work. Stephen Scrope? Yes. That's a bad name. That's a bad name, Stephen Scrope. It's the kind of name that would change over the centuries, wouldn't it? It's turned it to Smith.

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Assuming he's French, is he? Yeah, you've got to assume. Stephen, Stefan Scrope or something of that. Stephen Scrope. I'd assume that he's quite, I'd assume he's quite an unpleasant man. It can't be trusted. If you told me this is Stephen Scrope, I think, yeah, I don't need him in my life.

Yeah, so Christine de Pizan's final work written in 1429, celebrated the rise of Joan of Arc, whom Christine saw as proof that women could play decisive roles in history. By the time of her death the following year, Christine de Pizan had accomplished something extraordinary, She had built a literary career in a world that offered women almost no space to do so. And she had used that career to challenge the assumptions of her age. Her weapon was not the sword or the throne. It was the pen. Incredible.

Mad story. Never knew anything about that. Amazing. I feel quite guilty. I feel annoying about Christine's story, actually. It's amazing that I've got this far without reading about her at any point. It is a brave choice when you're trying to work out what's a secure way to. to raise my family.

I'm going to become a writer at a time when people can't read. Fair play to her. She's backed herself as the career choice. Nothing but admiration for that. That's amazing. If there's one thing I've learned from this podcast is that I am so impressed

if someone from the medieval era does anything of historical note. Because it's such a tough time to stand out as a writer or Joan of Arc or even William the conqueror, to emerge from that with a modicum of success

is incredible. I mean, it felt mad going full-time as a stand-up comic in 2008. The world's first professional writer. I mean, that's ambition in a nutshell, isn't it? Let's talk about pirates. And we've discussed fair number of pirates

on this podcast. Blackbeard, Bartholome Roberts, the Welsh pirate, Barty thee, of course. But none quite so famous in East Asia as Zheng Yi-Sao, the wife and widow of the pirate leader, Zheng Yi. Now, his wife, she surpassed him in every way, even though we know her by a name which translates as the wife of Jiangyi. So it's thought her real name was Xi Yang, but no one really knows. It's all a bit awkward. But let's stick with Xi Yang. So she was born in 1775 in the Guangdong region of southeastern China.

and as thought she started life as a tanker, so one of the boat dwellers or the outcasts or expelled people who made their living on rivers and at sea. And in some cases, from these floating brothels called flower boats. So Flowers was a common euphemism for sex worker in that area of China. So there's almost no evidence of her early life. So the common assumptions that she herself was a flower, so an impoverished boat girl, you know, who, been forced into sex work. But that's very difficult to prove because we don't know very much about her.

But it does make sense, given the rest of her story. So in 1801, when she was 26, Shi Yang met and married, Zheng Yi. So he was 10 years as a senior and part of a notorious family of professional pirates who made the Canton-Delton, the South China see their base of operations

and source of wealth. Now, I'll come on to this in a second. They were so successful. It is absolutely... It's incredible how good at being... Pirates they were, right? So Sheeang wasn't so innocent in all of this. They had 100 parrots.

So many, so many peg legs. So she wasn't so innocent and all this. It's suggested by the arrangements made for the marriage that the deal came with strings. She was to get 50% of the business and equal control. So Zhenggi agreed, apparently because he was so infatuated with his bride-to-be, but you think there must be something else going on, right?

Where did Xi Yang get her enormous power from? What really brought these two together? And just why did marriage to Xi Yang serve to amplify Xeng Yi's piratical activity? We might never know, right? It might have been for love. Who knows? I mean, I doubt it, but it might have been, right?

So what happened after Xi Yang's marriage is better soul. So she worked closely with her husband to consolidate the sort of their paratical mafia and the South China scene in July 1805 brought together various factions as the Guangdong

Pirate Confederation That's quite snappy It is quite snappy and it sounds legit Yeah Which is hilarious It sounds like one of those Multinationals

Isn't it That sort of Owns football clubs And rail networks Yeah yeah And all sorts Yeah Yeah

Yeah And he's in charge Of oil in the Middle East Yeah Now they had 400 ships Six fleets All

given coloured flags, notably red, and as many as 70,000 pirates. Now, when I look this up, 70,000 pirates, 70,000 employees, that is the same as the NHS in Wales. Or HMRC. Yeah, yeah. So they were basically running HMRC, but everyone involved is a pirate. That's incredible. So the Confederation developed a gruesome reputation, particularly among Europeans. She, who was always the true power of the outfit, developed a very clever mafiaist.

a business model based on protection rackets, front businesses, including those selling sex and drugs, military power, political engagement, and also she was fiddling the books. So she filled an accountancy as well. It does feel sort of in keeping that a pirate would be fiddling the books, isn't it? I'm not shocked. No, no, no, no. It's quite funny. I'd say that's par for the course, isn't it? We tend to do with cash. So all that was accompanied, all of this was accompanied by fear and actual violence as well as battlefield theatrics. So she's pirates, get this. They drank cocktails of wine and gunpowder

before they went into battle, giving them the capacity to spit fire. You would, shit yourself. Good God. Pirates from, you know, if you know there's another 69,99 of them, but this guy's spitting fire at you. He'd be like, okay, well, we're done.

Now, captured enemies were executed in cruel ways. disemboweling, feet nailed to ships, bodies thrown overboard, all chopped into small pieces. Oh, I would take the chopping. Horrendous, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to get my feet knelt to a ship. Certainly don't want to get disemboweled. Well, it depends how the chopping starts out.

If they're starting with a head and it's over quickly. Edfinite, wallet, yeah, bring it on. If they're moving up solely from the toe, isn't it probably? Yes, yes, good point. Other accounts point to cannibalism, especially the consumption of human hearts. On board ships, though, on party, the Welsh pirate we discussed

was a bit like this. The pirates were subject to very specific rules, so women prisoners could not be sexually assaulted. Any crew member doing that would be killed. If the sex was consensual, both were killed. If the pair agreed to marry instead, they would have to be faithful. Captains were allowed to be polyamorous.

Of course, there were... Any pirate found hoarding loot would have his ear cut off. If it happened again, then the rest of his head was lost. But there were health benefits. and a retirement plan. So how bad was it? Really? It was a retirement plan?

It was a retirement plan. It does. From the name to the policies, it feels like a conglomerate, doesn't it? It feels like... It doesn't it? It doesn't feel like you definitely may be making retirement though, does it?

I don't know how... No, absolutely not. But if you're extremely lucky, then there was, there was a retirement plan in place. Now, it might have all gone belly up in 1807 when Zheng died in rather curious circumstances. He was blown overboard. during a gale off the coast of Vietnam.

So it just so happened that Xi Yang had already taken another younger lover and manoeuvred for power in her own right. That's not a dignified way to go, is it? Yeah, now it makes it, because his last word would have been, whoa, oh, shit! So it makes you think of all those Russian generals who sort of accidentally fall out of windows when they're in disgrace.

But anyway, speculation will be sure, but I doubt we're far off the mark. So what is true, that Xiang outlived her rivals by outsmarting them and remained in power despite the death of her husband. So her relationship with the Red Flag Fleet commander Zhang Bao Tsai, or Zhang Bao the Kid, was to become common knowledge not long afterwards. This might not seem to weird at first,

but the Red Flag Fleet had two to four hundred ships and thousands of men's, so a contemporary account but the figure in 1809 at about 80,000. Incredible. So it could be attributed, you know, to power. but Zheng Bao was the adopted son of Zheng Yi and Xi Yang whom Zheng Yi had first kidnapped when the boy was 15 so they were keeping it in the family Oh wow

Yeah It was his adoptive It was her adoptive son Yes Not great Not ideal So Zhengbao was the adopted son of Zheng Yi He's fallen off the boat

And Xi Yang, his adopted mother Is they got married It was a different time Human hearts. So they got married in 1810. That was the year the Confederation was finally broken apart through a concerted effort by the British and Portuguese fleets and by the Chinese government.

So Zhang Bao covered it the Chinese throne, which put everyone in danger. So astute as ever, Xi Yang, she saw amnesty and peace, not as a defeat that has an opportunity because she was as much of a politician as she was a pirate. So she secured safety for herself. And Zhang Bao, who was given a government position

instead and went into retirement as the proprietor of a gambling den and assault dealership. Wow. So although Zhang Bao, her son slash husband, died in adopted son, died in 1822. She Yang was to live this way until 1844. Wow. So she outlived him. Yeah. So gambling was obviously, it was hardly an innocent endeavour.

So it ran together with opium and alcohol. and these two added to She-Yang's infamy and income. So salt too was often smuggled. So over her life, she moved from the margins from undeniable extreme poverty and probable sex works become one of the richest women in East Asia

and the most powerful pirate in terms of ships and men in history. Amazing. I mean, she's hardly unknown. She even appears in one of the pirates of the Caribbean films under another transcription of her name. Ching Shi, aka Mistress Ching.

So Zhang Bao appeared there as Sauffeng, but the remarkable thing is probably that Xi Yang managed to die in her own terms, not of violent, but of old age, having outsmarted every one of the men in her life. Remarkable. That said, one one a metre. No, it's amazing, but there are some crucial things that do. They stick in the mind, don't they? They really do.

They really do. The nailing of the feet to the wood. The marrying of the adoptive side. Yeah, the breathing fire. I mean, the whole shebang. I'm not loving it. But I'm not telling it to her face. No, but yeah, she was the richest sort of pirate in history.

Wow, that is incredible. Yeah, she died at the age of 68 or 69. Fascinating. Well, that's it for O-WR-Time this week. If you want even more O-WR-Time, though, there are bonus episodes to be enjoyed over on the O-Water-Time patron to sign up. You can go to patreon.com forward slash O-Water Time. You get two bonus episodes every month.

And as today has proven, if you want to suggest your ideas, sign up to the Patreon and you can suggest those ideas via there. And once a month we will do an Oh Water Time full-time episode. We will see you guys very, very soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else.

Add free plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets, and access to the Oh, What a Time group chat. Plus, if you become an Oh What a Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh what a time.