essay – Sokorra Lewis

Back in 2009 (gosh, was that really 12 years ago??) I wrote a summery of my history in the world of fanfiction. Today I was going through my old posts, trying to make sure that the categories/tags were correct and deleting some minor posts that really never felt like they fit on this blog. It made me think of how I was doing in the fandom world today.

I’m not going to do an as in depth timeline of fanfics. I have over 100 fics on AO3 now (and I haven’t moved over all my FF.net ones. I should, and probably will sometime soon). There are way too many to do that for, and I doubt anyone is interested anyway.

I haven’t had any more award nominations for my fanfic, but I don’t sense alot of fandom awards anymore, at least not for the fandoms I write, which are getting older. I still write many fandoms (Too many as some of my friends say). Currently my major project is finishing ‘”Looking After You”, an Avengers AU story I started to write back in 2012. Its clearly AU now, because that is what happens when it takes you a decade to write a fic on a series of films that keeps pumping out movies every year. But I am determined to finish it. Its probably one of my longest fics, and I’m kinda of proud of it, despite my embarrisment that I’ve taken so long.

I’ve tried to switch over to some original work as well. For Camp NAno this July, I will be working not only on LAY but on an original story based off a Marvel fanfic I started to write in my head but will no longer work in canon. But I still like the idea, and since many of the characters are not based on actual Marvel characters it is not that hard to transfer them to the original realm. And the two characters that are are not that hard to change either. Hopefully one day I’ll be saying that one is complete and getting published.

I plan on getting things together before the end of this year to make changes to my writing (better organization etc) and to this blog. Right now it has become mostly a review blog, as I work through my pandemic project of a complete watch of Star Trek. However, I will be posting periodic posts about my writing, and book reviews as well as I get things better organized in my personal life so I have the time to meet deadlines when it comes to the blog and writing.

I have also decided to create a second blog for my history posts. I feel they get a little lost on here, so if you have been waiting for more of those posts, I will be announcing the new blog soon, and I welcome you to come read them over there. I will be revising my old posts as I transfer them over so they should be fresh and perhaps have more content then the original. Any posts that have comments will be kept, but if there are no comments I may delete the originals on this blog just to tidy up and kept it from being double posted.

Thank you all for sticking around for whatever topic you came for – be it my writing stories, fandom posts, book reviews or history essays. As always, I welcome your comments.

Good luck to anyone writing in Camp Nano.

When I decided to start a blog series about women from history, Boudica jumped out at me. Not because she was my favorite historical woman, or because she had some major play in history. She just did. So for no reason whatsoever other than ‘because’, she’ll be my first post subject.

Boudica was a British Queen, back during the Roman Empire. At that point England (And Great Britian as a whole) was made up of different tribes. She was part of the Iceni Tribe which lived in what is now modern day Norfolk.

Boudica (also spelled Boadicea, Boudicea, and called Budding in Welsh) was born around 25 AD She was married to Prasutagus, who was the elected ruler or King of the Iceni. Prasutagus had a agreeable relationship with the Roman Empire, enough so that when he died he left his kingdom to both his daughters and the Empire. This of course caused problems.

The Romans had left the Iceni and the other British tribes for the most part alone since Ceaser visited a century before. However, around 43 AD, Emperor Claudius decided to invade, and this time take control. The Tribes eventually had to submit, but instead of leaving them alone for the most part, Claudius left behind his soldiers on the island. Some of the native population continued to rebel, but successive governors of the island sent by rome made things more and more difficult for the Iceni and their neighbors. At one point they no longer had the ability to have any weapons that could be used for rebellion (hunting weapons were still allowed to a point). When Claudius died, his successor Nero had them build a temple in Camulodunum for him, which required the Celtic Icenic to worship their invader. They were also forced to pay for it. Not having the funds to do so, they ended up borrowing money from rich Romans.

Boudica’s eventual rebellion was motivated by different things, depending on what source you were told. Most of the tales of Boudica were Roman, as there was no written celtic history at the time. However, the Romans who wrote about the Queen of the Iceni had different ideas of what motivated her. According to some, her motivations were due to oppression. The Romans, such as Seneca, who had leant money to the Britions called those loans in with force. The Governers took more and more of the freedoms the Celtic populations enjoyed to keep them under control. THis included destruction of their holy lands, which sadly would not be the last time this would happen in history. This got worse when her husband, who had on friendly terms with the Roman Empire, died. Rome decided to take complete control rather then share with the man’s daughters.

Other accounts have more dramatic reasons. According to Tacitus, Boudica was flogged for resisting her estate being taken over by the local leader and her daughters raped. Given that there is no account from the side of the Celtics, or Boudica herself, its hard to know for sure what really happened to her or her people that caused her to decide to seize leadership and rebel.

In around 60-61 AD, Boudica lead Celtic rebels in full rebellion against the Roman invaders. She attacked, and destroyed several cities. One of which was the City of London, which still bears traces of the attack where Boudica’s army burned the city down. Other cities included Verulamium, and Camulodunum (Colchester). According to Dio, she was vicious in her retribution, killing those who remained in the cities. She had a larger army, with an estimate of 230 thousand. However in the end the Roman leader Suetonius was victorious and returned Britain to Roman control. His troops were better trained and better armed, and in the end that seemed to win the day.

Boudica died soon afterwards, with even her death in dispute. In some accounts she ended it by poison, others she died of an illness. She was given a costly funeral by her tribesman. Despite the loss, she was still greatly respected by most accounts. I suppose in a way its amazing that she managed to not only gain the respect of her fellow celts, but enough respect from the Romans that they told stories about her. They won, they could have told any story they wanted. Made her out to be some demon, but they didn’t.

I suppose it confused them. The Romans weren’t particularly equalitarian when it came to gender. Most of the heroines of their tales were either godesses or foriegn Queens. Boudica, Dido, Cleopatra. Women who defyed the Roman idea of Womanhood.

Today it doesn’t seem that far fetched that a group of fighters would go into battle for their Queen. Its happened many times before. Boudica left in imprint on the history of Great Britain, not just as a Queen. She became a symbol of resistance. She became a subject of Art, and inspiration during the Victorian Age.

Tag: essay

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Women of History: Boudica