Boudicca

Boudicca led a revolt that destroyed three Roman towns and came close to ending the occupation of Britain. She was the wife of Prasutagus, king of the Iceni in what is now Norfolk, a client ruler allowed to keep his throne in exchange for cooperation. He died around AD 60 leaving his kingdom jointly to his two daughters and to the emperor Nero, a device intended to preserve something for his family. The Roman administration ignored it. The procurator's officials annexed the territory outright, plundered the leading families, called in loans that had been made to British nobles, flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters. She raised the Iceni and the Trinovantes, whose land had been taken for a colony of veterans at Camulodunum and who had been made to fund a temple to the deified Claudius. The governor Suetonius Paulinus was campaigning on Anglesey. The rebels destroyed Camulodunum, killing its inhabitants and burning the temple where the last defenders held out for two days, and annihilated the infantry of the Ninth Legion sent to relieve it. They then burned Londinium and Verulamium, which Paulinus had judged indefensible and abandoned. Tacitus puts the dead at seventy thousand, and archaeology finds a burnt layer in all three towns. Paulinus met her with about ten thousand men in a defile with woods behind him, where numbers could not be brought to bear. The legionaries advanced in wedges, and the Britons' own wagons blocked their retreat. Boudicca took poison. Tacitus and Dio give her a speech, and Dio describes her tawny hair and harsh voice.

• Lived: 25 BCE – 61 CE
• Nationality: British
• Roles: queen, military_leader