once upon a time

Once upon a time If the purpose of nationalist historiography is to construct a past worthy of the present and future then the role of heroic individuals in the course of key historical events and developments and the construction of suitable biographies to support the narrative is essential to the purpose. Episodes of warfare very often provide the most heroic figures, bolstering national imagery and myth with tales of renown as well as introducing a personal life-story element that not only anchors the individual’s biography in a suitable national past but also personalises it in a way that a mere retelling of events cannot. Images of Boudicca, the renowned ‘warrior queen’ who led an army against the might of imperial Rome in Iron-Age Britain, have been deployed in modern nationalist projects from Victorian times through to more recent times. Not surprisingly, the same images have sometimes been used in feminist struggles for liberation of a different kind.
A suitably stylised iconography—most famously represented by Boudicca’s statue at Westminster—is accompanied by a popular biographical representation casting her in the role of leader of her ‘nation’ against the alien occupier and subjugator. That she ultimately failed matters little. Indeed, to have met death in the course of struggle only enhances the individual’s stature. The nationalist romanticisation of Boudicca, however, has not gone unchallenged. Alternative interpretations of her biography depict a violent, vengeful figure who cared as little for most of her fellow Britons as for the occupying Romans. An equally negative version figured prominently in representations of Boudicca in early modern England. These, however, seem to demonstrate more of a discomfort with the challenge to gender roles presented by a female warrior leader in the nation’s past than a concern for the way in which she prosecuted her cause.1 These...