Boudicca

Boudicca — or Boudica, her name perhaps meaning Victory — was queen of the Iceni tribe of what is now Norfolk and Suffolk. When her husband Prasutagus died, Rome ignored his will and seized the kingdom, flogged her, and violated her daughters. She united the Iceni with the Trinovantes of Essex, and what followed was one of the most devastating revolts in the history of Roman Britain.

In 60 or 61 AD her forces destroyed Camulodunum (Colchester), Verulamium (St Albans), and Londinium (London) in sequence — burning them to the ground and killing an estimated 70,000–80,000 people, according to Tacitus. The charred layer from this destruction is still found in excavations beneath the City of London. The Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus, who had been campaigning in Wales, marched back to meet her. The final battle's location is unknown; she died there, either by poison or illness, by her own hand.

Her legend grew after her death far beyond what the Roman sources record. Victorian Britain made her a national symbol — the bronze statue at Westminster Bridge, queen in her war chariot, was unveiled in 1902. In East Anglian tradition she never left: her spirit is invoked in times of resistance, and the flat fields of Norfolk have been held to still contain something of what she put into them.