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  • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialMEnglish
    2·
    14 days ago

    Hey, cool! FauxPseudo art!

    Btw, the Boadicca graphic novels (well, at least the ones I tried) turned out to be a disappointment. Just some by-the-numbers storytelling, solid but unremarkable art, and so far they haven’t really explored her character very well. TBF, I guess not much is really known about her, so they’d have to invent a lot. Still, I was hoping I could find some inspirational stuff to help out with your project.

    Oh well. I think there’s one other series which I might just check out (at least briefly) to see what it’s like…

    • FauxPseudo @lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      That sucks. Just about every fact we have can fit on one piece of paper and almost all of that is about where she was and how many people died as a result. So any story is going to include a lot of speculation. Fact: She had two daughters. Speculation: their names and ages. That kind of stuff.

      • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialMEnglish
        2·
        14 days ago

        You know, in light of that, I’d say I was a little harsh in my above evaluation. The books did cover much intrigue between her tribe and the Romans, and between her tribe and others in pre-Britannica, both the ones more passive, more quarrelsome, plus one or two leaders who absolutely wanted to unite the island’s peoples’ together to kick the Romans’ arses.

        It also covered the relationship between Boadicca / Boudicca (etc) and her father, plus her and her future & later husband. It also addressed the generally low amount of respect that both the tribes and the Romans accorded to women being involved in discussions of significance. Of course, what set her apart is that she was also a priestess of the local Celts, just a slight cut below their druids.

        So yeah, given how evidently little info there was about her, I’d say the books’ creators actually did a good job with coming up with plausible material, even if reading-wise they’re still kind of dry-ish. It’s also pretty clear that the first two books nicely set up the premise of her being a more and more important figure in Celtic resistance, very likely to be seen in tomes 3-4, not yet published.

        Let me know if you’re looking for any particular angle of inspiration, and it might actually be there. I could kill two birds with one stone perhaps, and make a post about such at EGN.

        • FauxPseudo @lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
          3·
          14 days ago

          The kind of material I’m looking for is while they were were romanized celts how much of each were they? She was a noble woman so would she be doing a Roman hair style or would that have been dropped the moment she decided to go to war? Would she have had tattoos? What’s the right amount of jewelry? Would she have worn chainmail in battle? What’s the proper size for a first century Celtic chariot horse? Would the horses have been armored? What does Celtic horse armor look like? She definitely had a spear but would she have also carried a sword?

          All the visual things. I have lots of examples of period Celtic metal art but because the Iceni were more romanized than other celts how did that change the appearance of their textiles?

          • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialMEnglish
            2·
            14 days ago

            The kind of material I’m looking for is while they were were romanized celts how much of each were they?

            From the period I read, Roman slavishness was still in its infancy. That covered the direct transition from Claudius to Nero. I.e., “Romanizing” was pretty much a slap in the face for most tribes, at that point.

            She was a noble woman so would she be doing a Roman hair style or would that have been dropped the moment she decided to go to war?

            The GN’s were poor upon such details, and again, the first two were pretty-much focused on setting up the whole situation, where she hadn’t gone to war yet. But they did make an important point that her husband was humiliated so very badly that he retreated for a long time in utter shame (he literally got publicly bathed in shit by the Romans), directly leading Boudicca to take up the tenuous Celtic, regional reigns, in his absence.

            From my read of history, that’s actually happened many times over the years, here & there, so it does seem quite plausible.

            Most of the other Q’s I’d think are worth asking of PugJesus or r/AskHistorians, or similar expert. Maybe even an LLM. The books skimp on such details, sadly.

          • PugJesus@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            8 days ago

            Hey! Just saw this because my name was mentioned below, lmao.

            NOTE: I’ll mention when a point is brought up specifically by Cassius Dio, a Graeco-Roman history of the period. He is… not unreliable, per se, but fond of narrative tropes and writing ~150 years after the rebellion, so take it with a grain of salt.

            I’m not an expert on Roman Britain or Celts, but I can offer some general details here! Boudicca would have been very Celtic, and probably not Romanized at all, except perhaps a familiarity with (rather than adoption of) Roman customs and Latin. She would’ve had a Celtic hairstyle both before and after she started her rebellion, almost certainly, with Dio noting that she had very long and fair (not brown or black) hair. Tattooing is a hotly debated subject about Roman-era Britons. Julius Caesar in the previous century said the Britons practiced tattooing, but he was also only in Britain for a few weeks. If not tattooed, she may have worn war paint or practiced scarification.

            Jewelry would probably depend on how much you think of her as a warrior and how much as a noblewoman. In either case, a torq and bracelets would have been almost necessary for anyone of her status, warrior or not; she is noted by Dio to have worn a large gold torc. Chainmail, almost certainly if she intended on going into battle, but it’s not always agreed whether she outfitted herself more as a warrior, or more as a queen when commanding the rebellion. Chainmail, however, was expensive, and most of the Britons would not have been able to afford it; Boudica notes (according to Dio) this fact in an attempt to hearten her troops (saying that a shield is as good as armor in the hands of the brave).

            The horses would almost certainly not have been armored. I’m not an expert on cavalry, but I know that barding was basically unknown in Europe until Late Antiquity, when the Romans began adopting aspects of Persian cavalry practices. She almost certainly would have carried a sword, as Britons of the period are noted as highly valuing their iron swords, made for slashing, and sword ownership remained a symbol of noble status even though endemic warfare under Roman occupation was less common (with the Romans even having banned public wearing of arms by Britons after the invasion, though I don’t remember if that was still in effect by the time of Boudicca’s rebellion).

            Textiles definitely would have remained distinctively Celtic. Roman clothing styles and production techniques generally penetrated the provinces only slowly, as the Romans didn’t really give a damn what the provincials wore, and the provincials (at least those not angling to suck up to Roman authorities in hope of citizenship), especially up north, were generally uninterested in Mediterranean Italian clothing. Textiles were not major on the Roman market, as much weaving and clothesmaking was still done at a familial level, even in Roman families.

            Hope that all helps!