Boudicca

"Fiery hair and fiery heart
Our Boudicca burned the Roman camps
And danced in the flames"

―Tribute to Boudicca

Boudicca (died c. 61 CE), alternatively Boadicea, was a queen of the Celtic Iceni tribe in Britannia who led a bold yet failed uprising against the invading Roman Empire around 60 CE.

Biography

Boudican revolt

Boudicca's husband Prasutagus was a client king of Rome, being allowed to be nominally independent. Upon his death however, the Romans defied his will, and dispossessed his family of land, goods and the tribe itself, while both Boudicca and their daughters were raped and beaten.

Determined for revenge, Boudicca raised an army and led a rebellion with the Iceni across Britannia. In addition to mutilating statues and desecrating the Roman tonbs, Boudicca also sacked the cities of Camulodunum, Londinium, and Verulamium; Londinium in particular was said to be burned to the ground.

Boudicca eventually lost to the rallying Roman troops in what is now the Midlands of England. Rather than allowing herself to be captured, Boudicca instead took poison to end her life. The Britons celebrated her efforts against the Romans and buried her within an Isu vault in East Anglia.

Legacy

In 824, Azadeh described Mared to Roshan as "a warrior woman who thinks she’s the next Boudica", being surprised when Roshan mentioned she knew who Boudica was. In 873, the Anglo-Saxon friar Harold recorded Boudicca's exploits in his Annals of History, describing her as "a woman, painted in blue, screeching like an eagle, blood on her teeth, death in her eyes." Boudicca's sack of London was later mentioned by the dying Order of the Ancients admiral Vicelin to the Raven Clan Viking Eivor Varinsdottir, who would go on to find the queen's tomb and claim both sets of bracers and greaves from locked chests after bypassing Manius' numerous traps.

More than a millennium after Boudican revolt, as of 1714, a wax statue of Boudicca had been placed in the Mrs. Salmon's Waxworks located on Fleet Street in London.

In 1916 during World War I, the British Assassin Lydia Frye found Boudicca's Torque in a locked chest in London.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (first mentioned)
• Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization (mentioned only, as Boadicea)
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (ghost only)
• Assassin's Creed: Mirage – Daughter of No One (mentioned only)