The Warrior Queens

by Antonia Fraser

  The Shame Syndrome can in turn lead on to the popular estimate of the Warrior Queen as being the ‘Better-Man’ (of the two: if a husband such as Frederick of Prussia and a wife such as Louise is involved). Or it can lead to the Warrior Queen’s own protestations of being ‘Only-a-Weak-Woman’: ‘just a lady and timid too’ as the beautiful, bold Caterina Sforza declared herself, in order to show up her superior strategic skill. This pose of being ‘Only-a-Weak-Woman’ is of course also convenient when trouble looms: for the Warrior Queen can hope to avoid responsibility at the same time. Hence wily Zenobia was able to live on in her Roman villa, swift female dromedary forgotten, on the grounds that ‘many persons’, i.e. her male advisers, ‘had seduced her as a simple woman’ into mounting her campaigns.19

  Since none of these poses, attitudes or expedients would be possible without the existence of the masculine audience at which they are aimed, all of them merely serve to emphasize the Appendage Syndrome. Very few outstanding women in history have achieved or been granted their place without the benefit of some kind of male-derived privilege, generally that of descent, whatever glorious destiny has ensued. This is certainly true of the Warrior Queens, up to the second half of the twentieth century.

  Understandably, most Warrior Queens have underlined their claims as honorary males by emphasizing such connections. ‘I am descended from mighty men!’: Thus Boadicea boasted in her last speech, at least according to Tacitus.20 It is a pattern – that of Elizabeth I, ‘Great Harry’s daughter’ still, to the end of her long reign – which has been pursued. For such emphasis, like the pose of being an honorary male, once again enables the Warrior Queen to preserve her place within the natural order. She must never forget that the original importance of the Amazon tribe to the Greeks was as a tribe of unnatural as well as belligerent females, unnatural because they were outside the control of men, and nobody’s appendage.

  It is however in the confrontation with the whole treacherous theme of motherhood and the unsuitability of the mother to do battle, that the wits of the Warrior Queen have had to be most subtly exercised. In this connection it is significant how many successful Warrior Queens – in the eyes of the world – have been seen to be acting on behalf of their children. Even Cleopatra drew about her the authority of co-rulership, according to Ptolemaic custom, with her infant son. This is one extension of the Appendage Syndrome which carries with it considerable allure. For there is nothing in the slightest bit unnatural about the mother’s defence of her young, which can even be quite blatantly aggressive without incurring the taint of ‘masculinity’. The rape of Boadicea’s daughters, the imagined agonies of the mother as a result, provide after all the most sympathetic explanation for the atrocities which followed her uprising.

  Otherwise a protective and appealing maternity casts a pleasant gloss on what might be the harsh picture of a Warrior Queen, as Maria Theresa realized when she sent a picture of herself with her son to General Khevenmüller with the poignant question: ‘What do you think will become of this child?’ No wonder the troops the next day at Linz, shown the picture and read the letter, roared their enthusiasm! The persistent legends concerning the Rani of Jhansi riding into battle with her adopted son Damodar on the horse behind her, and similar depictions, even if not accurate, belong to the same tradition as does the legend of her dying words ‘Look after Damodar’, spoken in a temple (although, as has been seen, a variety of independent witnesses confirm that she died in the heat of battle). In the nineteenth century Agnes Strickland summed up a widespread feeling of approval for the Mother–Warrior when she described Stephen’s wife, ‘good Queen Matilda’, as avoiding ‘all Amazonian display’ by acting in the name of her son.21

  There is another way of handling the whole matter of war and woman’s maternal role in terms of war and that is – triumphantly ignoring the ‘unnatural’ taint – to make of it something boldly transcendent. It is this which accounts for the palpitating thrill which the idea of the Warrior Queen arouses, threat as she may be. The most successful Warrior Queens have always been those who pre-empted the obvious disadvantage of their sex in this field by turning it into an apparent advantage; and biological motherhood is after all the one role which is totally closed to man. Thus the role of the fighting mother in wartime can be put across as primordially patriotic, instead of primitively distasteful, that of Catherine the Great for example, being hailed by her troops as the ‘Little Mother’ of Russia. Soon the ‘Mother of her Country’ begins to be seen in a supernatural rather than an unnatural light: a goddess, a Mother–Goddess perhaps, and by extension a Goddess of War.

  The supernatural aura of the Warrior Queen has the further effect of sanctifying the nation’s struggle in its own eyes: and all through history it is always good for morale to be fighting a holy war. When Judith struck off the head of Holofernes, according to the tenth-century poem, she ‘ascribed the glory of all that to the Lord of Hosts’. A kind of pious patriotism, like the stance of outraged motherhood, gives moral authority to many a Warrior Queen, enabling her to become a Holy Figurehead of her nation’s aspirations, as the Arab Lady of Victory with her long hair and her lute in the forefront of the battle embodied an appeal to valour, honour and passion.22 When the Warrior Queen is successful in her dominion, the way is paved for the idea of the golden age of the nation – especially golden since over it presides a goddess.

  The type of goddess most usefully personified by a given Warrior Queen alters, of course, from country to country, age to age and civilization to civilization. If Boadicea represented some kind of Celtic war-goddess and Queen Jinga of Angola an ancient African mother–deity, then Isabella the Catholic was elevated as ‘the new Eve’, the madonna of her country. This is a conspiracy into which the male population enters willingly: given that circumstances have brought about some form of female rule in war, a supernatural woman leader is infinitely better than an unnatural one.

  There is certainly a sexuality at the heart of this conspiracy, as the ancient goddesses, those creations of the universal subconscious, were generally creatures of human sexual feeling and appetite if of divine power and strength. Very few Warrior Queens, whatever the true facts of their lives, have been allowed to enjoy an ordinary female sexuality in terms of the propaganda spread about them. The Chaste Syndrome being marked, the Warrior Queen has been depicted, where possible, as a virgin by her supporters (and sometimes where not possible, as in the case of Zenobia and Matilda of Tuscany): virginity too having its own connotations of sanctity. For Gibbon, for example, Zenobia’s ‘chastity’ meant that her ‘valour’ surpassed that of Cleopatra: an interesting argument if not exactly a logical one. Conversely by the Voracity Syndrome, accusations of lust (so much more exciting in a queen regnant than in a king, where prodigious amours tend to be taken rather wearily for granted) are used to vicious political purpose, as in the case of Caterina Sforza, denounced by the same ruler – the Pope – who wanted her possessions for his son Cesare Borgia.23 It was axiomatic to many of the nineteenth-century British that the Rani of Jhansi must be ‘the Jezebel of India’, just because she was an outstanding warrior leader: another interesting if once again illogical argument.

  Yet the overriding impression of the personal lives of the Warrior Queens, if one may generalize for a moment, is of austerity, even puritanism, Tamara of Georgia, Isabella of Spain and the real Rani being far more typical in this respect than the admitted exceptions such as Caterina herself, Catherine the Great and Semiramis; details of the latter’s life are however sufficiently veiled in time for it to be quite possible that she never actually possessed the rampant voracity which has enabled her legend to survive. That overriding impression may be put against another subtler one, to which it is most likely to be connected: there is no lack of personal ambition among these Warrior Queens, whatever the fluttering protestations which contemporary social standards may have called forth from some of them. And ambitious women have seldom so far had much time to spare to be grandes amour
euses, with so many more demanding problems to tax their time: preferring to bond men to them by a more ethereal kind of loyalty (in short, acting out their own version of the goddess).

  Is it not just this appreciation of the Warrior Queen which continues to make her an inspiration to women as well as a source of threat and excitement to men? Whether or not woman’s nature is in truth more pacific and more tender than that of the other sex, the Warrior Queen is secretly seen by women as one who has made a dazzling job of a position so seldom granted to one of her own sex. Boadicea is a heroine, cruel knives on her chariot notwithstanding: and it can be argued that women need heroines even more than men need heroes because their expectations of independence, fortitude and valour have generally speaking been so much lower.

  So Queen Boadicea still towers above her reckless horses on the banks of the Thames. In her case the hand that once rocked the cradle now drives the chariot and shakes the spear and ‘yet though overcome in hapless fight’ she does so in manifest victory. Secure within her monument constructed equally of Thornycroft’s bronze and history’s myth, her conduct is no longer unnatural but triumphant. Her glory may be expected to endure.

  Reference Notes

  Bibliographical details of each book or article are given at its first point of entry (the place of publication is London unless otherwise stated). Thereafter, only a short entry is given, with a note indicating where the first full reference can be found in brackets, i.e. in Chapter Four, note 6, ‘Tacitus (III–I), p. 265’ refers back to Chapter Three, note 1, Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, translated and with an Introduction by Michael Grant (revised edn 1977 pbk).

  Chapter 1: A Singular Exception

  ‘Flashes afresh …’ is a quotation from Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Aubade’.

  1 Research carried out at the Colindale Newspaper Library fully confirms this.

  2 Jonson, Ben, The Masque of Queenes, with the designs of Inigo Jones (1930), p. 35.

  3 Cit. Dudley, Donald R. and Webster, Graham, The Rebellion of Boudicca (1962), p. 130; Webster, Graham, Boudica: The British Revolt against Rome AD 60 (1978), p. 15.

  4 See Courteault, Paul, ‘An Inscription Recently Found at Bordeaux’, Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. XI (1921), pp. 102f. for a votive altar to Tutela Boudiga; Webster (1–3), p. 15.

  5 Ubaldini, Petruccio, Le vite delle Donne illustri del regno d’Inghilterra, e del regno di Scotia … (1591); ‘Le Vite e i Fatti de sei Donne Illustri’, British Library MS 14A XIX. Translated by Angus Clarke.

  6 Ogilby, John, Africa etc … Collected and translated from the most authentic authors (founded mainly on the work of O. Dapper), 2 vols (1670), Vol. II, pp. 564–5.

  7 Joan Kelly’s Cancer Journal, cit. Kelly, Joan, Women, History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago 1985), p. XV; interview with Graham Turner, ‘Feminists Count the Cost’, Sunday Telegraph, 22 February 1987.

  8 Pisan, Christine de, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, or The Book of the Three Virtues, translated and with an Introduction by Sarah Lawson (1985 pbk), p. 51.

  9 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, 2 vols (1875), Vol. II, p. 179; Gibbon, Edward, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by J. B. Bury, 7 vols, Vol. I (1896), p. 27.

  10 E.g. Hacker, Barton C., ‘Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe’, Signs, Summer 1981.

  11 Cit. Abbott, Nabia, Aishah: The Beloved of Mohammed, Preface by Sarah Graham-Brown (1985), p. 176.

  12 Gibbon (1–9), 1, p. 149.

  13 De Gaulle, Charles, The Edge of the Sword, translated by Gerard Hopkins (1960), pp. 13–14.

  14 Tacitus, Germania, Chs 13–14, cit. Keen, Maurice, Chivalry (1984), p. 55.

  15 de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex (1972 pbk); p. 21.

  16 Troyat, Henri Catherine the Great, translated by Emily Read (1979), p. 183.

  17 A Comment on Boadicia by W. Rider AB, late Scholar of Jesus College, Oxon (1754); Wapshott, Nicholas and Brock, George, Thatcher (1983 pbk), p. 240; Mrs Thatcher, by substituting the word ‘failure’ for ‘defeat’, slightly misquoted Queen Victoria.

  18 Young, Hugo and Sloman, Anne, The Thatcher Phenomenon (BBC Publications, 1986), p. 40; Denis Healey returned to the charge in the 1987 election (13 May), calling Mrs Thatcher ‘the Catherine the Great of Finchley’.

  19 Boccaccio, Giovanni, Concerning Famous Women, translated with an Introduction by Guido A. Guarmio (1964), p. 5.

  20 Campbell, Joseph, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (1974), p. 519 note; Leigh Fermor, Patrick, A Traveller’s Tree: A Journey through the Caribbean Islands (1950), p. 374.

  21 Carras, Mary C., Indira Gandhi: In the Crucible of Leadership. A Political Biography (Bombay 1980), p. 47; Breisach, Ernst, Caterina Sforza: A Renaissance Virago (Chicago 1967), p. 24; cit. Duff, Nora, Matilda of Tuscany (1909), p. 77.

  22 King, Betty, Boadicea (1975), p. 9.

  Chapter 2: Antique Glories

  1 See Ross, Anne, Pagan Celtic Britain: Studies in Iconography and Tradition (1967), Ch. v, pp. 204f.

  2 The Mabinogion, translated with an Introduction by Jeffrey Gantz (1976 pbk), p. 52.

  3 Ross, Pagan (II–I), pp. 219, 152.

  4 The Tain, translated from the Irish epic by Thomas Kinsella (Oxford 1970 pbk), pp. 52f; I have preferred this lively unbowdlerized translation.

  5 Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene, Introduction by J. W. Hales, 2 vols (1910), Vol. I, p. 381.

  6 Diner, Helen, Mothers and Amazons (New York 1965), p. 27.

  7 Lefkowitz, Mary R., Woman in Greek Myth (1986), p. 177 and ‘Influential Women’ in Images of Women in Antiquity, edited by Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt (1983), pp. 49–64; Pomeroy, Sarah B., Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (1976), p. 13 and ‘A Classical Scholar’s Perspective on Matriarchy’ in Liberating Women’s History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, edited by Berenice A. Carroll (Chicago 1976), pp. 217–24.

  8 Todd, Malcolm, Roman Britain 55 BC–AD 400: The Province beyond the Ocean (1981 pbk), p. 36.

  9 Sobol, Donald J., The Amazons of Greek Mythology (South Brunswick and New York, 1972), pp. 90ff.; Warner, Marina, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (1981), Ch. x, pp. 198f.; see also Briffault, R., The Mothers, 3 vols (1927), Vol. II, p. 457 note 2 for a convenient list of references on this subject.

  10 Lefkowitz (II–7), p. 133.

  11 The Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus, 2 vols (1956–7), Vol. I, pp. 199–203; Virgil, The Aeneid, translated into English prose by W. F. Jackson Knight (revised edn 1958 pbk), pp. 299, 200.

  12 Heywood, Thomas, Gynaekeion or Nine Books of Various History Concerning Women (1624), p. 226.

  13 Knox, John, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment of Women, edited by Edward Arber (1880), p. 13; for the mignons see Davis, N. Z., Society and Culture in Early Modern France (1975), p. 133.

  14 Correspondence de Napoléon 1er, Vol. XIII (Paris 1863), p. 326.

  15 Kelly, Amy, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1950), p. 34.

  16 Cit. Kelly, Eleanor (II–15), p. 38.

  17 Green, David, Queen Anne (1970), p. 101.

  18 Green (II–17), pp. 109, 154.

  19 London Independent, 10 December 1986.

  20 Duff (I–21), p. 274.

  Chapter 3: The Queen of War

  1 Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, translated and with an Introduction by Michael Grant (revised edn 1977 pbk), p. 330.

  2 Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th edn 1974), Vol. II, p. 983.

  3 Herodotus, The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, revised by A. R. Burn (1972 pbk), p. 115; The Elegies of Propertius in a Reconditioned Text, translated by S. G. Tremenheere (1932), p. 229.

  4 The Works of Voltaire, 22 vols (New York 1927), Vol. IX, p. 173; Diodorus Siculus (II–II), p. 153.

  5 Herodotus (III–3), pp. 123f.; Dewald, Caroline, ‘Women and Culture in Herodotus’ Histories’, in Foley,
Helene B., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York 1981), pp. 91–125.

  6 Boccaccio (I–19), p. 104.

  7 Herodotus (III–3), pp. 8, 14, 475f., 554.

  8 Moraes, Dom, Mrs Gandhi (1980), p. 133; George Brown, cit. Observer, 24 April 1988.

  9 Aylmer, John, An Harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subjectes against the late blown Blast … (1559).

  10 Heywood (II–12), p. 204.

  11 See Grant, Michael, Cleopatra (revised edn 1974 pbk), passim, which is the basis of these dates and also much of the following passage.

  12 Grant (III–11), p. 37.

  13 Lefkowitz (II–7), p. 57.

  14 Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Empire: Six Lives, translated by Rex Warner (1972 pbk), p. 290.

  15 Cicero, Letters to Atticus, translated by E. O. Winstedt, 3 vols, Vol. III (1918), pp. 337–9.

  16 Cit. Grant (III–11), pp. 184–5.

  17 Cit. Grant (III–11), p. 261.

  18 Grant (III–11), p. 208.

  19 Horace, Odes, translated by James Michie (1964), 1, 37, p. 87.

  20 Nine Lives by Plutarch, Makers of Rome, translated and with an Introduction by Ian Scott-Kilvert (1972 pbk reprint), p. 280.