by Jason Porath
After her death, she was forgotten for centuries. She only began her comeback in 1710, returning to historical prominence when a Frenchman named François Pétis de la Croix, while putting together his biography of Genghis Khan, wrote a story based on Khutulun. This story was called “Turandot,”* but it was greatly changed from the facts of her life. In it, the eponymous Turandot challenged her suitors with riddles instead of wrestling matches, and if they failed her challenge, they were killed.
Centuries later, in the early 1900s, “Turandot” was turned into an Italian opera—except, getting even further from Khutulun’s actual history, the opera was about a take-no-nonsense woman finally giving in to love. Ugh. She has since appeared in the 2014 Netflix original series Marco Polo, where she is portrayed as slender and waifish when she was anything but.
Mongolia continues to honor Khutulun to this day. The traditional outfit worn by Mongolian wrestlers is conspicuously open-chest—to show that the wrestler is not a woman, in deference to the undefeated Khutulun.
• ART NOTES •
The scene is set at night as a reference to Khutulun’s Turkish name of Aijaruc (used by Marco Polo), meaning “moonlight.”
She wears a silver medal around her neck. This is a gergee (also known as paiza): a medallion given by the Great Khan that signifies the power of the holder. It was usually reserved for men. Most women instead used seals to signify their status—Khutulun is the only woman ever mentioned as owning a gergee.
Her outfit is not a wrestling outfit by any stretch, but Mongolian fashion is so fascinating and colorful that it had to be shown off. The outfit in question is based on a man’s outfit, but given that Khutulun had many masculine qualities, it seemed in line.
The idea for her pose was inspired by portraits of noblewomen sitting demurely with their hands in their laps.
The background is filled with horses and yurts—the Mongols of Kaidu’s tribe almost certainly slept in yurts. Well, technically, the Mongolians called them gers, but this author loves the word yurt (which is Russian). Apologies, ancient Mongolia. It cannot be helped. Yurt. Yurt yurt yurt.
They are, of course, on the Mongolian steppe. The wrestling match described by Marco Polo actually happened in a palace, but capturing Khutulun’s nomadic nature was more important. Also, moonlight.
Tatterhood
(NORWEGIAN FAIRY TALE)
The Princess Who Rode a Goat
Once upon a time, there were a king and queen who had no children. The queen’s biological clock was ticking something fierce, so she took in a girl to raise. Everything was pretty cool!
Then one day, a beggar woman and her little girl came by the castle. The queen’s adopted daughter began to play with the beggar girl, even bringing her up to the queen’s quarters. The queen was not pleased and told the beggar girl to bugger off. The beggar girl quickly responded that her mother was capable of magic and could help the queen have children of her own if she wanted. This was undoubtedly hurtful to the adopted daughter. Jerk move, beggar girl.
But the queen was impressed by the impassioned rant of this random underage trespasser and summoned the beggar woman to her quarters. There, she asked if what the woman’s daughter had said was true, but the woman demurred and said that her daughter was prone to making up stories. The beggar girl then took the queen aside and whispered in her ear, “Get my mom plastered—then she’ll help you out!”
And so, before long, the queen had the beggar woman three sheets to the wind and ready to do her bidding. The beggar woman gave the queen some instructions: Before you go to bed, bring in two pails of water, wash yourself in them, and then throw the water under the bed. The next morning, there will be two flowers, one beautiful and one ugly. Eat the beautiful one, but leave the ugly one be.
It is at this point that the story ceases to mention the adopted daughter. Poor adopted daughter. You deserved better.
So the queen did as instructed, and, as you might expect, the next morning there were two flowers. She chowed down on the pretty one, and it was mind-blowingly delicious. So delicious, in fact, that she couldn’t help but down the ugly one as well. It was . . . less than delicious.
Soon thereafter, the queen became pregnant, and she gave birth to the ugliest baby on earth. This baby came out with a wooden spoon in its hand, riding a goat. Presumably the labor was equally horrifying. As soon as she was out the baby cried, “Mama!”
“If I’m your mama,” said the queen, “God help me mend my ways.” The queen was also kind of a jerk.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said the hideous, spoon-wielding, goat-riding baby, who could somehow also immediately talk. “You’re about to have another girl, who’s better-looking.”
True enough, she did! Out popped another girl, who was lovely and sweet and everything the shallow queen had hoped she would be. From that point, the twins were inseparable. The older goat-riding twin they called Tatterhood, because she wore a ratty hood everywhere. The nurses repeatedly tried to seal her away in various parts of the palace, but the beautiful younger sister couldn’t bear to be separated from her.
Their childhoods were pretty standard, simple stuff, until they were approaching their tween years. That was when, one Christmas, they heard a terrible clattering about the palace. Tatterhood asked the queen what was making the noise, to which the queen answered, “Oh, it isn’t worth asking about.”
It was actually a pack of trolls and witches. They were celebrating Christmas in the traditional way set forth by Christian doctrine: by breaking everything in someone else’s house. Apparently they did this regularly, to the point where the queen did not even deem it worthy of conversation.
Tatterhood grabbed her wooden spoon and, ignoring the pleas of her mother, went out to drive off the witches and trolls. She told her family to seal up the room while she beat the snot out of their uninvited guests. Judging from the ensuing cacophony of shrieks and groans, she did a pretty good job of it. However, the younger sister, who could not bear to be separated from Tatterhood, opened the door a crack to see what was going on—and pop! A witch instantly replaced her head with that of a calf.
She ran back into the room on all fours, mooing loudly. Tatterhood, having driven off the unwanted guests, saw what had happened. She was frustrated, telling her mom and sister, “Come on, guys! You had one job! Sigh. Fine, let’s go, sis, I’ll fix this mess.”
The two set sail after the trolls and witches in search of the younger sister’s head. They did so alone—no sailors, no help, just the two of them (and a goat) crewing a massive boat. When they got to the witches’ castle, Tatterhood quickly spotted her sister’s head and snatched it away. This brought the attention of the witches, who swarmed her. However, after getting repeated head-butts from the goat and smacks from Tatterhood’s spoon, the witches gave up and let her go.
Tatterhood got back to the boat, swapped her sister’s cow head for her actual head, and the two sailed off into the sunset.
Now, this is where the story should end. It doesn’t, but it should. If you’re reading this to a child, stop now. But for completion’s sake, and if you are intent on having disappointing ends to awesome stories, here you go.
The sisters wound up in a faraway kingdom. Upon their arrival, the widowed king instantly fell for the beautiful sister, but she wouldn’t marry him unless he found a match for Tatterhood too. So the king set Tatterhood up with his son, who was . . . less than enthusiastic at the prospect of marrying a famously ugly goat-rider. But without much of a choice, he agreed, and soon he and his dad were off to the church with the two sisters.
On the way, Tatterhood asked him, “Why don’t you talk?” to which the prince sulkily replied, “What should I talk about?” She suggested, “Well, why don’t you ask me why I ride upon this ugly goat?” So he did. And she answered, “This is no ugly goat, but the most beautiful horse a bride ever rode.” And sure enough, it was.
They repeated this exact line of conversation for her spoon (which became a
wand), her hood (which became a crown), and her face (which became ten times more beautiful than her sister’s).
She was beautiful all along, she married a shallow douchebag, her sister became her mother-in-law, and they lived happily ever after, blah blah blah, terrible ending.
So, seriously: adventures. They sailed off for more adventures. That’s the new official story. It’ll be our secret.
• ART NOTES •
As this is a Norwegian fable, Tatterhood is here depicted standing over Norwegian-style trolls—themselves inspirations for the tall-haired troll toys popular in the 1980s. No witches are seen in the picture mostly because witches get a bad rap. There are a lot of very nice witches out there.
Agnodice
(4TH CENTURY BCE, GREECE)
The Secret Physician of Athens
In ancient Athens, women weren’t allowed to be doctors,* which resulted in some problems. Male physicians had some pretty strange ideas about female anatomy—a popular theory posited that the uterus would regularly just get up and mosey around the body, wreaking havoc as it went. With such spot-on medical knowledge ruling the roost, many women understandably had reservations about trusting their local medical professionals.
Agnodice was not having any of that.
Fed up with seeing women risk life and limb because of stubbornly ignorant doctors, Agnodice decided to become a doctor herself. She cut her hair short, moved to Alexandria, Egypt (where women were part of the medical community), and started studying. By the time she came back to Greece, she was a full-fledged professional—but knowing that women weren’t allowed to practice, she started posing as a man.
Agnodice soon became a hugely popular gynecologist, although her method of getting new patients was . . . unorthodox. When she approached a woman who was going into labor and was subsequently turned away for being a man (since only women helped women through childbirth), Agnodice simply hiked up her robes, flashing the unsuspecting pregnant woman. Wowed by the sudden revelation of the physician’s genitalia, the woman generally agreed to take on Agnodice’s services. And for a while, everything was great!
Unfortunately, Agnodice’s success brought her enemies, which led to her being put on trial. Her fellow physicians (all male), smarting from lost business and thinking her male, accused her of seducing her clients (and, in a classy follow-up, charged said clients with “playing sick” to cheat on their husbands). They put her on trial before an all-male court, whereupon she repeated, to great shock and some delight, her time-honored tradition of surprise sex organ revelation.
However, flashing the court didn’t achieve the desired effect, and the subsequent deliberations focused on the severity of her crime—one punishable by death. But just as it looked as if her goose was well and truly cooked, her salvation arrived in the form of her clients. Storming the court, a crowd of women forcefully praised her ability as a doctor, while simultaneously browbeating those who sought to string her up.
In the end, the legion of surprise witnesses was victorious: Agnodice was let free, and the law was amended to allow women to practice medicine in Athens.
Agnodice’s story, now the better part of 24 centuries old, is nigh-impossible to verify. Several aspects of the story seem implausible. For one thing, the “sudden reveal skirt flip” was a popular feature of many contemporary myths. For another, Agnodice’s name means “chaste before justice”—which seems a bit on-the-nose for someone’s actual name. But regardless of what is true and what is exaggeration, the story of Agnodice served as inspiration for women throughout ancient Greece and continues to do so today.
Te Puea Herangi
(1883–1952, NEW ZEALAND)
The Reluctant Royal Who Became the Maori’s Greatest Leader
Most little girls, at some point in their childhood, want more than anything in the world to be a princess. Te Puea Herangi, who technically was one, wanted to be anything but.
To say that Te Puea was a difficult child would be the understatement of the century. Born into the Maori royal family of the Waikato district, she behaved with anything but refinement. Bossy to the point of cruelty, she’d order around adults and beat other kids with sticks because she knew she could get away with it.
This behavior only intensified when she entered her teens. Believing herself to have tuberculosis and not have long to live, she shirked her royal responsibilities and began a hedonistic binge that lasted for years. She cut herself off from her family and began dating a number of men (including pakeha [non-Maori]),* drinking heavily, and constantly fighting.
And then she turned it all around.
After her uncle personally appealed to her to rejoin her community, Te Puea returned and began mending fences. Despite facing resentment from those around her for her past behavior, she became a model citizen, ceasing her drinking habits, dressing in sackcloth, and working seven days a week—a schedule she’d keep for the rest of her life. Her work efforts were varied and included:
• When World War I broke out, she refused to let the New Zealand government conscript her people for a war that didn’t concern them. When the government overruled her and began conscripting Maori men by force, she’d travel to the training camps and sit outside, giving them encouragement. She made similar efforts during World War II, raising money for the Red Cross rather than supporting the war effort.
• After a flu epidemic, she arranged homes for 100 orphans, set up makeshift clinics (as most Maori did not trust pakeha-run hospitals), and started making plans for permanent ones.
• Realizing Maori towns desperately needed revitalization in an area away from the damp marshes that were breeding grounds for illness, Te Puea raised funds to buy and develop a new settlement. She supervised the cutting of trees, laying of cement, and cultivation of farmland. She kept meticulous finances and even levied taxes. Her efforts paid off spectacularly: cases of illness dropped significantly, and the Maori became much more economically self-sufficient.
Having been raised with bitter, difficult memories of the 1860s war against the pakeha, Te Puea decided the best thing was to bury the hatchet once and for all. In a very controversial (yet practical) deal, she accepted a suboptimal amount for reparations, just so that her people could move on.
She worked hard to build better relations between Maori and pakeha. Feeling that Maori could show the pakeha what was good in them, and vice versa, she smoothed over numerous cultural misunderstandings, particularly over the amount of worker leave required for Maori funeral rites (at least three days, sometimes much more).
Lastly, Te Puea stayed ever vigilant that no one would ever repeat the mistakes of her childhood. She tried abolishing smoking and drinking among her people, to moderate success. She was strict to the point of demanding, especially with her many adopted kids (she was never able to have any of her own). Nevertheless, she was widely mourned when she died, her funeral rites lasting a week. The media, calling her “the greatest Maori woman of our time,” hailed her as “Princess” Te Puea—a title that was usually used by pakeha but never by Te Puea herself, who disliked it to the end.
Moremi Ajasoro
(12TH CENTURY, NIGERIA)
Spy Queen of the Yoruba
The kingdom of Ife had a problem. Prosperous and green, its full storehouses had rapidly become the envy of its neighbors, the Igbo.* So the Igbo hatched a plan to steal from the Ife—unable to take on their neighbors by force, the Igbo instead dressed up as Egungun, messengers from the dead.
Now, you may be saying to yourself, Oh, come on, who would actually fall for that sort of thing? Well, imagine otherworldly heaps of cloth and color, with no discernible head, limbs, or human form. Look up pictures if you have the time (this book will still be here). Now picture hundreds of those running out of the forest at night, screaming and hitting people with sticks.
It’s little surprise the Ife ran for the hills when the “Egungun” raided them.
After months and months of this, an Ife princess named Moremi Aj
asoro began to ask questions. “Why do they need food if they’re spirits? Where do they go?” Although it was utter heresy to confront the spirits, especially for a woman, Moremi insisted on staying put during the next raid.
True to form, the Igbo came again, and the Ife all ran away—save Moremi. The Igbo, impressed by her bravery and beauty, brought her back to their city, where she was married to their king. There she learned that they were just men in costumes made of tree fiber. She played the dutiful wife for many months, learning the Igbo ways. Finally, feeling that she had learned enough, she got the king drunk on palm wine and escaped.
The journey back to Ife was long and fraught with peril. She spent the nights up in trees, trying to avoid wild animals. After many days on foot, she made her way back, where she was reunited with her true husband, Oranmiyan. And they devised a plan.
When the Igbo came on their next raid, the Ife greeted them with torches, setting their (very flammable) costumes on fire. The Igbo were utterly unprepared and ran back into the forest. They never returned.
The story does end on a bittersweet note, however. Prior to initially confronting the Igbo, Moremi had asked the river god Esimirin for his favor to stop the raids. Once she and her tribe had driven off the Igbo for good, she proceeded to sacrifice all manner of animals to Esimirin, but nothing would satisfy the river god—save Moremi’s son. So she dutifully offered him to Esimirin. However, instead of drowning in the river, the boy miraculously stood up, just as a great glowing vine rose up to the sky. He climbed up it and disappeared into the sky, now under the protection of the sky god Olorun.