Boudicca (who was also known as Boudica, Boudiccea or Boudicea) was a Celtic Queen who lived nearly 2,000 years ago when Britain was part of the Roman Empire.

At this time, Britain was divided up into kingdoms and each kingdom had its own leader. The Romans quite liked the idea of these kingdoms fighting each other because it meant they were less likely to join together to fight the Romans!

Boudicca married King Prasudagus, who was King of the Iceni Tribe. They lived in a part of England now known as East Anglia. Norfolk is a county in East Anglia.

King Prasudagus was quite friendly with the Romans and in exchange the Romans let him carry on being King and the Iceni tribe lived peacefully.

Prasudagus was worried that this would not continue when he died, so he came up with a ‘good’ idea. He made a Will that left half of his land to his family and the other half to the Roman Emperor Nero. He thought this would be a way of keeping the Romans happy so they would let the Iceni tribe carry on living in peace.

But when Prasudagus died in 60AD, it didn’t work out as well as he had hoped!

The Romans decided they weren’t happy with only half of the King’s land. They wanted everything! So they stole the land that Queen Boudicca had been left by her dead husband and tried to tax people. Also, they were violent to the Queen, her daughters and the Iceni tribe.

The Queen got really mad with them. In fact, she was so mad that she rallied her tribe together and they started to fight the Romans. Other tribes joined with the Iceni and very soon the Romans were in serious trouble!

With Queen Boudicca in charge, the tribes killed as many Romans as they could find and destroyed some of the places that the Romans had built, like Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans).

The Romans didn’t expect to get beaten like this and they got really scared. Some of them refused to join in the fight because they were so scared!

The Romans had taken over large countries around the world, yet Queen Boudicca and the tribes were running rings round them!

The main reason for this was because Boudicca’s battles happened when Suetonius Paulinus, the Governor of Rome, was away fighting the Druids in Anglesey, North Wales. This meant that the Romans who were left behind didn’t have a leader to tell them what to do, but …

when Suetonius Paulinus heard about the Iceni revolt, he decided to come back – which was when things started to go a bit wrong for Boudicca.

The final battle took place in AD61 but nobody knows for sure where it was.

It is said that Boudicca was leading 230,000 men and there were only 10,000 men in the Roman army - but the Romans won!

After the Romans had won the battle, it is thought that they completely destroyed the Iceni’s land in East Anglia. The Iceni people who survived resettled in Norfolk and the Romans made sure they kept a very close eye on them.

You can see a reconstruction of an Iceni Village in Norfolk. For more details, take a look at www.icenivillage.com.

Boudicca thought it would be better to die than become a prisoner of the Romans. When she realised her army was going to lose the battle, she killed herself by drinking poison.

Nobody knows exactly what happened to Boudicca’s body. Some people think they know where her body was buried, but they don’t have any proof.

The Romans stayed in Britain for around 400 years after Queen Boudicca gave them such a shock.

Life became quite peaceful and the British people learned that having the Romans around wasn’t ALL bad! For example, lots of new stuff like perfume and wine arrived from other countries within the Empire. They constructed some fantastic buildings and useful roads, and the new Roman towns had shops and baths.

The Romans, who spoke Latin, also had a big influence on the English Language. If you get the chance to learn Latin, you’ll find out that lots of words we use today come from this language.

The Romans never managed to take over the whole of the British Isles. In Roman times, the Picts lived in the area we now know as Scotland. The Emperor Hadrian had a really long wall built in Northumberland to make sure the Picts stayed in the North. If you’re in Northumberland, why don’t you take a look at the remains of Hadrian’s Wall? Also, they never went to Ireland.

A Roman called Dio Cassius wrote that Boudicca was intelligent and tall. He said she had very long, tawny hair and wore a big gold necklace. Dio Cassius thought she looked terrifying, with fierce eyes and a harsh voice. She carried a big spear to look even more scary!

Some think Boudicca was a hero who protected her people and achieved great victories against the occupying Romans. Others believe she was ruthless and took violent revenge against anyone who stood in her way.

Lots of people have painted pictures of Boudicca and they all look different. This is because everybody seems to have their own opinion about the type of person she was.

Why don’t you and your mates draw your own Boudicca pictures and compare them when you’ve finished to see how different they are?