Durgavati responded with an army of her own, leading the charge with bow and arrow. After heavy losses and the wounding of her son, things looked bleak. And then, Durgavati was struck by an arrow through the eye. Undaunted and fueled by battle lust, she broke off the shaft and kept on fighting with the arrowhead still embedded in her eye. But Durgavati was hit again, this time in the neck. Afraid of being captured, she commanded her elephant handler to kill her. He refused, and so she grabbed his dagger and took her own life.
The battle was lost, and so was the kingdom.
AMINA OF ZARIA
The eldest daughter of the ruling queen, Amina was the best rider and archer in sixteenth-century Hausaland, the fertile area between Lake Chad and the Niger River in what is now north-central Nigeria. This “pink-heeled” princess, as legends describe her, defended her lands against invasions by other African tribes who had recently converted to Islam.
A wicked archer who could pick off targets in even the farthest hills, Amina rode a horse named Demon that was said to snort fire. With her armies of more than 20,000 men and women, Amina retook lands that invaders had captured and beyond, claiming territory as far as the source of the Niger River. To protect her states, she built a series of fortresses, the remnants of which still exist. In each village she conquered, she took a lover, discarding him when she moved on to the next town.
When she wasn’t making war or taking lovers, Amina forged trade routes through the Sahara. She reigned as queen for 34 years and is still remembered today thanks to the Nigerian schools and other institutions that bear her name.
Olga of Kiev
THE PRINCESS WHO SLAUGHTERED HER WAY TO SAINTHOOD
CA. 890–969
KIEVAN RUS (NOW KNOWN AS UKRAINE)
Princess Olga of Kiev was married to a greedy man. Greedy and, it appears, none too bright. His name was Igor, and he was the unpopular ruler of Kievan Rus, the proto-Russian tenth-century kingdom that took its name from the capital city of Kiev. Igor’s subjects resented his military campaign against the Derevlian tribe, a Slavic kingdom to the west, and the subsequent drain on their resources. And if Igor was unpopular with his own people, imagine how much less the Derevlians liked him. Especially after he violently subjugated them and forced them to pay an annual tribute not just once, as was customary (and implied by the word annual), but twice.
In 945 Igor demanded still more from the Derevlians: more money, more furs, more honey. Prince Mal, their leader, cautioned his comrades: “If a wolf comes among the sheep, he will take away the whole flock one by one, unless he be killed. If we do not thus kill him now, he will destroy us all.” So kill Igor they did, in spectacularly gruesome fashion: they captured him, tied him between two trees, and ripped him in half. Igor’s death left Olga a widow with a three-year-old son, Sviatoslav, barely tall enough to reach the throne, much less sit on it.
Next it was the Derevlians’ turn to get greedy. Emboldened by their execution of the tyrant, they thought, “See, we have killed the Prince of Russia. Let us take his wife Olga for our Prince Mal, and then we shall obtain possession of Sviatoslav, and work our will upon him.”
It was a good plan and it might have worked, except they hadn’t reckoned on one thing: Olga.
BLOODY REVENGE
The story of how Olga handled her Derevlian problem appears in The Tales of Bygone Years, also called the “Russian Primary Chronicle,” a collection of myths and stories that date from the founding of the proto-Russian state. It goes like this:
After they killed her husband, the Derevlians sent 20 of their top men to negotiate with Olga. Olga greeted them graciously and asked why they’d come. Their answer: with her husband dead, how did she feel about marrying Prince Mal? Olga could not have seemed more reasonable. “Your proposal is pleasing to me; indeed, my husband cannot rise again from the dead,” she told them. She then asked the men to return the next day so that she could honor them in the presence of her court. That night, Olga had her men dig a large ditch in front of her castle. When the envoys returned, they were dumped in the pit and buried alive. Before her men shoveled dirt over them, Princess Olga leaned over the edge and asked if this particular honor was to their taste. And she was far from finished.
Her next move was to send word back to the Derevlians, requesting their noblest and most distinguished men to come to her court and accompany her back to their kingdom so that she could join their prince. If not shown this honor, she warned, her people would not let her go. The duped Derevlians complied, and Olga received the noblemen kindly, directing them to a bathhouse where they could wash after the long journey. Once the visitors were inside, she ordered the doors locked and then set the building on fire. Round two.
Apparently, no one was telling the Derevlians that every man they’d sent so far had been murdered. So they weren’t suspicious when Olga sent yet another message. This one claimed that she was coming, and it directed the Derevlians to “prepare great quantities of mead” in the city where her husband’s body was buried, so that she could “weep over his grave and hold a funeral feast for him.” She arrived with a small retinue of soldiers. When the Derevlians asked where all their noble and best men were, she lied and said they were on the way. In the meantime, she suggested they all get down to feasting and drinking. The Derevlians did so, and with gusto; once they were drunk enough, Olga gave the word. Her men fell upon the drunken Derevlians and slaughtered 5,000 of them.
But she wasn’t done yet.
Olga returned to Kiev and readied her “large and valiant army” to attack the surviving Derevlians. Her soldiers cut a devastating swath through the countryside; after the Derevlians’ cities fell to her bloodthirsty horde, the vanquished retreated behind the walls of their principal city, Izkorosten. Olga and her army spent a year trying to take the city by force, but without success. Finally, she devised another plan.
Olga sent a message to the besieged people, asking, “Why do you persist in holding out? All your cities have surrendered to me and submitted to tribute, so that the inhabitants now cultivate their fields and their lands in peace. But you had rather die of hunger, without submitting to tribute.” The Derevlians responded that they’d be happy to give her tribute, but they knew she was still bent on revenge.
Not so, replied Olga. “Since I have already avenged the misfortune of my husband twice on the occasions when your messengers came to Kiev, and a third time when I held a funeral feast for him, I do not desire further revenge but am anxious to receive a small tribute. After I have made peace with you, I shall return home again.” It was indeed a small tribute she requested: three sparrows and three doves from everyone in the city. The people gladly handed over the birds and rejoiced.
But Olga still wasn’t done.
Once night fell, Olga had her soldiers tie cloths dipped in sulfur to the feet of each bird. The winged incendiaries were released, flew straight home, and set every house on fire. She ordered her soldiers to kill or capture anyone who escaped.
Only then was Olga done.
AN UNORTHODOX SAINT
The Tales of Bygone Years was written centuries after Olga’s death, and it’s unclear if the account of her bloody revenge is factual. The story echoes several Viking myths, which seem particularly fascinated with the gory revenge of angry widows. Moreover, if the timing is accurate, Olga would have been a mature mom of about 55 when she went to war. Other sources do corroborate parts of the story, specifically Igor’s grisly murder and the equally gruesome military retribution that followed.
But Olga was a real person, though little is known about her life before the events in her revenge story. What is certain is that she was a member by marriage of the Riurikid dynasty, which was founded in 862 by the Viking warlord Riurik and which ruled Kievan Rus until the 1500s. When Olga came to power, Kievan Rus was still just a loose federation of Vikings, Slavs, and other pagan tribes. After exacting her revenge, she acted as regent for her son with efficiency and strength for at least two decade
s. She was the first Kievan ruler to introduce the use of currency, and her administrative innovations resulted in a more unified nation, with embassies and ambassadors across Europe and the Mediterranean.
She was also the first of her dynasty to convert to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which opened up new commercial and diplomatic possibilities with Christian Byzantine, Moravian, and Bulgarian neighbors. Her baptism in Constantinople in 954/55 is another legendary example of her cunning. The story goes that Constantine VII was so enamored of her that he proposed marriage. But Olga wanted only to trade with Byzantium, not give Constantine an excuse to rule Kievan Rus, so she pointed out that marriage would be impossible because she wasn’t a Christian. If he were willing to perform the baptism himself, however, then she would reconsider; the ceremony was arranged. Afterward, when Constantine reiterated his proposal, Olga replied, “How can you marry me, after yourself baptizing me and calling me your daughter? For among Christians that is unlawful, as you yourself must know.”
Olga’s conversion to Christianity made her a religious minority in her own country, and it eventually made her a saint. Though her efforts to establish the Orthodox church as the religious authority in Kievan Rus did not succeed in her lifetime, she’s still regarded as the grandmother of the church in Russia and Ukraine.
Olga’s brutal revenge story is rooted in her pagan past. In the years after her death, she was revered by the faithful for her piety. Later church biographers would claim that “although she was a woman in body, she possessed a man’s courage,” bestowing the “compliment” that she was as “radiant among infidels like a pearl in the dung.” The whitewashing of her record succeeded—these days it’s Saint Olga the Ukrainians remember. In 1997, an Eastern Orthodox monastic order called the Order of Princess Olga was formed, devoted to the bloody saint of Kievan Rus.
Khutulun
THE PRINCESS WHO RULED THE WRESTLING MAT
CA. 1260–CA. 1306
CENTRAL ASIA
Princess Khutulun’s parents were getting nervous. It wasn’t just that their little girl was a bit of a tomboy; most women in thirteenth-century Mongol tribes were capable of playing rough. What was worrying was that Khutulun was approaching 20 years old, practically a spinster, and still wasn’t married. She refused to wed anyone who couldn’t beat her at her favorite sport—wrestling. And so far, no one could. Even worse, the nasty rumors about why she remained single were starting to tarnish her father’s reputation.
A bold prince who fit all the specs had come forward to accept Khutulun’s challenge; he was so cocksure of winning that he put a herd of 1,000 horses on the line. Khutulun’s anxious parents pressured her to let him win. But would she go to the mat, even for the sake of her kingdom?
READY TO RUMBLE
Khutulun had battle in her blood. Born around 1260, she was the daughter and favorite child of Qaidu Khan, a fierce regional ruler in Central Asia. She was also the niece of Khubilai Khan, the great-great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan, and the only girl in a family of 14 boys. That she took up wrestling is no surprise. But that she turned out to be unbelievably good at it, so good that no man in the kingdom could best her? That was a problem.
Some chroniclers describe Khutulun as “beautiful,” although that might’ve been a bit of artistic license—she was a big-boned, broad-shouldered girl who, from an early age, was taught to ride and to shoot with bow and arrow. In Mongol tribes, both sexes learned to defend their flocks of sheep, and a bow made an ideal weapon for children and women because it required precision rather than great strength to wield. Unlike other Mongolian girls, however, Khutulun also learned to wrestle. She proved to be exceptional at all of it, which endeared her to her father tremendously. As she grew up, her father came to lean on her for strength, support, advice, and battle prowess.
Khutulun’s skills were remarkable enough to attract the attention of outsiders like Marco Polo, the nomadic Venetian merchant whose travel chronicles gave birth to the West’s fascination with the East. But in Mongolian royal tradition, she may not have been so unusual. Besides their skill at archery, Mongolian royal women commanded armies, raced horses, and ruled vast territories. Genghis Khan considered his daughters superior leaders compared to his sons, and he awarded them kingdoms that they defended tooth and nail (oftentimes against their male siblings).
Khutulun was clearly an inheritor of Mongolian X-chromosomal martial strength. When at her father’s side in battle—which was pretty often since Qaidu was perpetually at war with Khubilai Khan’s forces—she was terrifying. Marco Polo reports that at the right moment, she would “make a dash at the host of the enemy, and seize some man thereout as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him to her father.”
Stories of Khutulun’s battlefield prowess were passed around contemporary chroniclers as lurid, tantalizing tales of war-mad Mongols. But among the tribes, it was Khutulun’s wrestling skills that made her a legend. She was unbeatable. Mongols frequently bet horses on wrestling matches, and she reportedly amassed more than 10,000 by winning all her bouts. And as Marco Polo noted, Khutulun, a veritable “giantess,” refused to marry unless her prospective groom could beat her in the ring.
MEET YOUR MATCH
By 1280, enemies of Khutulun’s family were spreading rumors that the reason she refused to marry was because she was not only her father’s favorite, but his lover as well. Then along came that eligible young prince (and his wager of 1,000 horses) to try his luck. He was quite the catch, according to Marco Polo, “a noble young gallant, the son of a rich and puissant king, a man of prowess and valiance and great strength of body,” not to mention “handsome, fearless and strong in every way.” Seeing a way out of an uncomfortable predicament, Khutulun’s parents pressured her to throw the match.
At first it looked like she would. Polo, history’s favorite tourist, witnessed the event and attests that “they grappled each other by the arms and wrestled this way and that, but for a long time, neither could get the better of the other.” But the match was over when Khutulun threw her opponent “right valiantly onto the palace pavement.… And when he found himself thus thrown, and her standing over him, great indeed was his shame and discomfiture.” Khutulun now had no prince, and another thousand horses to feed.
Eventually, and probably to her parents’ great relief, Khutulun did marry. But it wasn’t to a man who beat her on the wrestling mat—it was, gossips claimed, true love. Little is known about the man who finally tamed her heart, other than that she chose him of her own volition. But not even marriage could bring this princess to the mat. She still fought alongside her father, venturing ever deeper into Mongolia and China on punishing military campaigns. When Qaidu died of battle wounds in 1301, there was even talk of Khutulun suceeding him as khan.
That didn’t fly with the rest of her family, especially all those brothers. “You should mind your scissors and needles!” one of them said, according to a contemporary Persian historian. What happened to her next is unclear—her detractors claim that she spent the years after her father’s death “stirring up sedition and strife” in support of her brother’s candidacy for the khan. By 1306 she was dead, either killed in battle or assassinated by a rival sibling.
Khutulun’s death signaled a change in Mongolia and the empire that Genghis Khan had built. She was the last of the wild warrior-women leaders of the tribes. One theory posits that as women began to fall away from leadership, the ruling of the empire was left to increasingly indolent men. As a result, the Mongol empire stagnated and disintegrated. Maybe.
Khutulun’s legend might have been forgotten if not for an exotic tale titled “Turandot,” published in a volume of fables by French scholar François Pétis de la Croix in 1710. Pétis de la Croix came across her story while researching his biography of Genghis Khan, and he transformed the brutish wrestling princess into the beautiful 19-year-old daughter of a fictional Chinese emperor who refused to marry unless her suitor could prove himself her intellectual equal. In
1761, the story became Turandotte, a play by Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi, featuring a “tigerish woman” whose pride is her undoing. Turandotte became Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, the opera he was working on when he died in 1924 (it was completed by a colleague).
In Mongolian culture, Khutulun is remembered by the sport in which she so excelled. These days when Mongolian men wrestle, they wear a sort of long-sleeved vest that is open in the front to prove to their opponents they don’t have breasts. It’s a tribute to the woman wrestler who was never defeated.
Lakshmibai
THE PRINCESS WHO LED A REBELLION (WITH HER SON STRAPPED TO HER BACK)
1834–JUNE 17, 1858
JHANSI, NORTH-CENTRAL INDIA
Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi died in the heat of battle with the reins of her horse in her teeth and a sword in each hand. Or maybe she was turning to cut down the soldier who’d just shot her in the back. Or maybe she was only wounded and survived long enough to distribute her jewelry to her men and have them build her funeral pyre. Accounts vary. However death came, Lakshmibai did die and in death became a legend, a symbol of India’s struggle against colonial oppression.
But the truth is, she didn’t set out to be a rebel. She was the young widow of a maharaja in the state of Jhansi when the Indians rebelled against the British East India Company in 1857, and her intent was to hold on until the British regained control. But when the British labeled her a sympathizer at best and a rebellious whore at worst, Rani Lakshmibai decided to show them just how rebellious she could be.
BECOMING RANI
Before she was Rani Lakshmibai (rani means “princess” or “queen” in Hindi), she was just Bithur Manu, a little Brahmin girl who’d lost her mother when she was very small. Growing up in the luxurious court of the deposed chief minister of the defunct Maratha Empire, Manu played only with boys, and so she did the things they did. She learned to read and write and was taught to ride horses and elephants, use a sword, and fly a kite. She was said to be exceptionally brave. Once, when a rampaging elephant was loose in her city, Manu leapt onto its trunk and calmed the beast before it could do any more damage. It’s unclear how much of this tomboy tale is true—the elephant probably is not—but little Manu was destined for greatness.
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