Boadicia

A character by the name of Boadicia features in both films. Both characters are blonde and celtic, but the contrast between her and her co-star is far more marked in the first movie, where racial prejudice plays a far greater role as will be discussed below.¹ In both films Boadicia is a gentle character, moved, on her arrival at the arena for the first time, by the death of the gladiator who had just helped strip her, and grieving for the death of another gladiator, (in the earlier film he is called Marcus, Flavius in the later movie).

There are again, differences in the portrayal of Boadicia in the two films however. Although both movies use the same plot element of Boadicia sleeping the night before a fight with a gladiator who is then killed before her eyes, the impact of this is noticeably intensified in the second film. Firstly, Boadicea’s back story is considerably enlarged in the later movie, as she is given a big dramatic speech and flashback about the night her lover tattoed her chest by a beach campfire before the Romans slaughtered him. This story explains the attraction between her and fellow slave-gladiator, Flavius, who reminds her of her lover, and allows for the relationship between the two to develop. The relationship develops still further when Boadicia tries to escape from Durostrorum and is comforted and persuaded back by Flavius. When he is then killed in the ring by Septimus, after the night of passion with Boadicea as is his right as a gladiator, the poignancy is considerably deepened, and where the first Boadicea, serving wine to the audience, weeps, the second one screams, and wails, sobbing in desperate grief.

The reason for this change may be explained through attention to one small detail that is changed in the scene in which Flavius dies, for in the 2001 movie Boadicia is serving wine not to an anonymous crowd but to Timarchus, the governor, himself. Similarly, Boadicia’s attempt to run away in the later movie is inspired by her summons to the governor’s quarters and violent rape by him (she is shown afterwards returning with a cut and bleeding face). Thus it seems that the expansion of Boadicea’s story is in order to villify Timarchus still further and to paint him as even more of a sadist; his reaction on Boadicia’s screaming and spilling the wine she is pouring over him is to toss his cup of wine back in her face in fury.

All of this has an impact upon Boadicia’s character, turning her into an ever stronger and more powerful figure. By the end of the film she has developed into a commanding and assertive figure. In contrast to the 1973 movie, it is she rather than her co-heroine who is the focus, as a consideration or the figures of Mamawi and Jessemina will demonstrate.