Celtic Queenship : Speculative.
Some Celtic women did fight; it freaked the hell out of Roman observers. Some historians argue for a warrior Guenevere. Last I checked (15ish years ago), there were two main threads arguing for this. The Northern school version of the warrior Guenevere appeared to consist mostly of neo-pagan, neo-feminist wish fulfillment. The Welsh/Cornish/Brittany version was based on Roman sightings of women warriors and chariot fighters, and on some references in Arthur stories from Brittany (where a lot of Celts fled from the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes). This is tenuous, but slightly better. These claims tend to be framed as speculation, not fact, which in a way recommends them. The argument goes: 1. Celtic queens in Roman times sometimes fought in chariots, and Celtic Queenship in Roman times involved everything Celtic kingship in Roman times involved, like leading the tribe to battle. 2. Celtic culture swung back very quickly after Roman withdraw and the Romanization of Britain was very week in parts of conquered Britain. 3. Parts of the island were never conquered and Celtic cultural and political patterns continued uninterrupted. 4. When the Roman-style government crumbled after the Empire withdrew, people fell back on older patterns of organization (up to this point well documented), including true queenship (speculative). 5. Since some of the lays from Brittany suggest that Guenevere ruled (fairly solid) and imply (more tentative and open to interpretation) that she led people to war, she may have fought in ancient Celtic style, from a chariot.
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