Women Fighters

1. I could imagine Idril being a scholar.

2. Who would Fingolfin's Besan be?

3. Luthien I've imagined as a healer. For some reason, I have this concept of Luthien carrying a knife on her, which she'd use for harvesting items she needs for the task at hand, like athelas.
 
1. Agreed.

2. Well, Irime, but we killed her off... so his Besan would be a woman who's high-ranking but not of the royal family. Well, she'd be Aredhel for the first 1-3 episodes, but not long-term. Basically we'd have to invent someone.

3. Agreed.
 
I think it would be cool for Glorfindel to be Irime's son. So we could give him a sister, yeah.

Btw I hope you don't feel bad about nominating Curufin's wife for elimination. I nominated Edhellos, and this problem didn't occur to me until this evening.
 
I agree 100% that the question of 'Does Fingon have a wife?' hinges very much on 'Who is Gil-galad's father?' And that will be a question the Hosts will want to address...eventually. The only time they touched on it (and it was briefly), it was to toy with the idea of having Gil-galad born in Valinor! In that instance, he would have been Fingon's son, but....obviously we did not follow through with that thought and the question remains up in the air.

Eldalotë's role during the Dagor Aglareb will be to act as a trojan horse under the control of Morgoth (Spell of Bottomless Dread) and do something to weaken the Noldor from attack from the orcs along the coast. Whether she opens the gates, or sends the guards away or what has not yet been figured out, but that's her role - Morgoth's puppet mole. It was also suggested that she be given some moment of lucidity later to express her deep regret over all of this, and that perhaps she'd have a moment of 'fighting off' the control to do something heroic later. In other words...she will have a story stretching from the Mereth Aderthad to the Dagor Bragollach (at which point she will likely be killed). It's not a happy story, of course...but it is a story.

I don't see any reason for the Fëanoreans to abandon the practice of having heralds; they just use each other. Maglor is Maedhros' herald, and Curufin is Celegorm's (probably). Caranthir could ask Amras to be his, but Amras turns him down. (So maybe Caranthir just doesn't have one, so has no one to tell him he's making a bad call when Ulfang comes along). Of course, in the Fëanorean camp, everyone is a fighter, so the idea of the herald being solely a healer is not adhered to. But, hey, someone had to teach Elrond how to be a healer, and, well, why not Maglor? (And yes, I realize it could have been someone else.)

Incorporating the role of Besan into this project is exactly the sort of thing we should do to keep from viewing the female characters as extraneous/expendable. If we can't articulate their roles, then they are just nebulously there. If they're officially part of the court/running the household/have a quasi-religious role related to lembas...that gives us something to work with. And just as of course every kingdom needs a ruler and every commander needs a herald ;), we can confidently say that every land needs a Besan.

Fingolfin's Besan is an interesting question. It was suggested that Glorfindel be Irimë or Findis' son, so he'd be Fingolfin's nephew (and Turgon's cousin). That fits him neatly into the family tree, but of course does not provide a close female relative of Fingolfin in Middle Earth. We could add an extra generation in there; Glorfindel could be the son of Findis' daughter, and maybe Findis' daughter is married to a Noldo (non-royal, obviously) and therefore came along.

So....this woman (let's call her Lalwen) would be Fingolfin's niece (as the daughter of Findis or Irimë). In the absence of his wife and daughter, she might be his 'nearest' relative and then step up into the role of Besan. This would be an interesting dynamic, because her husband would be a 'nobody' among the Noldor, but she would have an important role in Fingolfin's court. Their son Glorfindel will of course have an important role in Turgon's court. 'Lalwen' would not become prominent until after Aredhel goes to Gondolin. I realize that "Glorfindel's Mom" wasn't necessarily a character we thought we needed, but....maybe? Alternatively, she could be Glorfindel's sister (as mentioned above). Glorfindel is an adult when they cross the Helcaraxë, so this woman could be his mother or his sister (story-wise).



On the invention of original characters:
We are not forbidden from doing so, but of course any suggested original character will need to be approved before being incorporated into the story. In Season 3, we invented Norn, because it became clear that we needed a 'dwarvish ambassador' and could not just rely on the kings to talk directly to one another all the time. If an existing cast member could fulfill the role proposed for the original character, the Hosts will likely prefer to use the existing character and veto the invented character. But obviously, this is a case-by-case basis. We can propose original characters as we go; some will no doubt be vetoed.

As we have gone through this project, there have been plenty of moments when people have been eager to toss in a beloved minor character. Sometimes, the Hosts have embraced this (in the case of Rog, I think they're 100% on board), and other times they have cautiously accepted this (Rúmil of Tirion was liked as an opponent to Fëanor, but not so liked as to be a voice they wanted to hear at the final torchlit meeting in the square of Tirion). We're including Tevildo and Boldog and possibly even Fankil (though he's a mortal Man now). But while this eagerness is part of the fun, they do often warn us to cool it. We can't include everyone. One of the complaints about the Silmarillion is that it has way too many characters to keep track of. So, given that the starting point is already a difficult cast to juggle without making characters glorified extras...what they really don't think we need is *more* characters. It's not that we *can't* introduce characters who aren't named in the published Silmarillion. It's that sometimes they will veto these suggestions as unnecessary. So, no Argon in this project. Galadriel was the only Finarfinian introduced in Season 2. Her brothers were onscreen, but didn't have any lines. We introduced Finrod as an actual character (rather than a guy standing there in the background or cameo) during Season 3 in Araman. Given that...an extraneous Prince of the Noldor we hadn't gotten around to introducing yet and were intending to kill off as soon as he reached Middle Earth? Nope, nix, cut that. Give those lines on the Helcaraxë to a character we're trying to introduce who we can use later, like Angrod.

The nature of our story is that no character is the main character. Each character has their own story, some brief, some longer, and some vanishing for awhile and then coming back to importance later. We have a lot of people to juggle, and if you drop some, they just stand there in the background with nothing to do. We want to avoid that.

So, the objection to inventing a brother for Penlod was more 'I think we have enough named characters in Gondolin already,' and that's a valid point. That wasn't a geographical location or storyline that needs a new invented character. Whereas in Angband or among the dwarves...we're much more likely to have a role we want to fill with a character who didn't make it into the published Silmarillion. So...if we are in a position where we need a character to fill a role, and there's no existing character to step into that role....it seems much more likely that the Hosts would be willing to consider inventing a character in that situation.
 
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Eldalotë's role during the Dagor Aglareb will be to act as a trojan horse under the control of Morgoth (Spell of Bottomless Dread) and do something to weaken the Noldor from attack from the orcs along the coast.
Slight correction, that attack isn't part of the Dagor Aglareb. It's years afterwards, in between Dagor Aglareb and Glaurung's attack. Unless the Hosts told us to collapse them together into one battle?

But, hey, someone had to teach Elrond how to be a healer, and, well, why not Maglor?
Maglor can't be a healer because he's a warrior. (Did you mean Maglor's wife? She could be both a healer and the Besan.)

The Feanorians need to have some healers. I'm guessing you meant, no member of Feanor's family is a healer? And that's totally true.



I strongly don't want to use up a canon female character for the captive who's never seen again. (Why did the Hosts say in the first place that this person must be female?) We can just give Maglor or Caranthir a son, develop him as a character this season, and then eliminate him in the Dagor Aglareb. Or even give Celebrimbor a brother, though I'd prefer Maglor's son. There's no sense in applying a "No New Characters!" rule to somebody who will never be seen again, regardless. We're not reminding the audience about a long-running character who'll be important again later. If the captive needs to be related to a major character, a son is just as close as a wife. But by sparing the wives, we have a female character who can ... still exist in Season 6 or 7. She'd be the Besan of Himlad, while Caranthir's wife would be the Besan of Thargelian. And we aren't overflowing with non-royal Feanorian characters.

Or else have somebody other than Edhellos be the captive under the Spell of Bottomless Dread. It would be good for one to be Feanorian and one to be from Fingolfin's camp, but... why do they both have to be women?

And just as of course every kingdom needs a ruler and every commander needs a herald ;), we can confidently say that every land needs a Besan.
It's actually stated outright in "Of Lembas", in The Peoples of Middle-earth. I was drawing info from that text.


Edit: Actually it occurred to me that if Irime was designated as Fingolfin's Besan for the Rebellion and trip to Middle-earth, then when she dies her immediate heir could be her own daughter, not necessarily the King's daughter.

Edit2: Another thing that I realized is that since Aredhel would be Gondolin's Besan, that would be one of Turgon's arguments against her leaving. She has a prominent responsibility, she can't just abdicate because she feels like it. And Aredhel would respond that none of the Gondolindrim go anywhere or do anything requiring lembas because they're all cooped up, and anyway Idril can take over.
 
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Yes, we're collapsing them together into one battle. Hard to portray a 'long peace' when you have a full scale battle every other episode of your TV show. So, Dagor Aglareb (Episode 8) and Glaurung's attack (Episode 13). No attack-down-the-coast-at-the-midway-point.

I meant Maglor. Elrond is going to be a herald and a healer, and if we're making the herald a military role that healers fill...some healers are going to have to train to be ready for war. Elrond was in the Last Alliance, and I doubt we're going to portray him as never fighting in that or the time when he saved the refugees from Eregion or the War of Wrath.... I was not saying that no Fëanoreans are healers (obviously, they have healers), but that we've portrayed them as extremely militant-minded all along. Fëanor was running military exercises with nearly all of his people back in Formenos. So much so that I have to imagine they're the sort of society that says the healers also need to train to fight. Perhaps not; but I suspect we won't see many non-combatants there. So, yes, I think that all of Fëanor's sons are fighters, but I also think that they wouldn't see that as a hindrance to taking on the 'herald' role as described by Amysrevenge. And, if a fighter is taking on the herald role, they probably do at least some cursory study of healing. Thus Maglor, though himself a fighter, would be in a position to teach Elrond some healing (if we wanted him to). Obviously, we don't have to do any of that.

In other words, if the Host of Fingolfin follows the 'standard' division of healers and fighters, and creates a 'herald' role for a healer to have a high rank in the military....the Host of Fëanor will do things...differently. They'd twist some things around a bit. It's easier to call things out when there's something to contrast them with, so we should probably not make all elves do this the exact same way.

Yes, I am familiar with Tolkien's essay on lembas. But up until now, there has been no effort to incorporate that into Silm Film. We should probably rectify that....
 
Yes, we're collapsing them together into one battle. Hard to portray a 'long peace' when you have a full scale battle every other episode of your TV show.
That makes sense.

I don't think the Feanorians should make warriors and healers the same thing. And... I don't think it's in character for Maglor. I know fanartists and fanfic writers like to depict him as "gentle" and not warlike at all, but I really don't see him that way at all. In addition to fighting, he's also a hunter during peacetime. I don't think he's a healer type, even if the Feanorians did decide to break with Eldarin tradition.

Surely, we can contrast the Eldarin way with how Mortals do things. And while yes Eldarin healers and women in general are trained to fight in defense of their homes, they are expected to stay out of battle (and hunting) until the last resort. The Feanorians don't want their healers to all die on the battlefield, or lose their "healing mojo". Elrond and Elros doubtless get military experience during the War of Wrath, but I'd rather make dual-healer-warriors notably rare among Elves, not an everyday thing. I'd rather make the twins healers who reluctantly fight when they absolutely have to, but hate battle because it always reminds them of the Kinslaying. They do come to love their foster-father, but they wouldn't take him as their role-model. (Sons of Feanor are terrible role-models :p)

Also, if all Feanorian healers were full-time warriors, then their armies would be 50% female.


Yes, I am familiar with Tolkien's essay on lembas.
I'm sorry if I come across as condescending. It isn't my goal, I'm bad at guessing what people are familiar with.
 
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That makes sense.

I don't think the Feanorians should make warriors and healers the same thing. And... I don't think it's in character for Maglor. I know fanartists and fanfic writers like to depict him as "gentle" and not warlike at all, but I really don't see him that way at all. In addition to fighting, he's also a hunter during peacetime. I don't think he's a healer type, even if the Feanorians did decide to break with Eldarin tradition.

Surely, we can contrast the Eldarin way with how Mortals do things. And while yes Eldarin healers and women in general are trained to fight in defense of their homes, they are expected to stay out of battle (and hunting) until the last resort. The Feanorians don't want their healers to all die on the battlefield, or lose their "healing mojo". Elrond and Elros doubtless get military experience during the War of Wrath, but I'd rather make dual-healer-warriors notably rare among Elves, not an everyday thing. I'd rather make the twins healers who reluctantly fight when they absolutely have to, but hate battle because it always reminds them of the Kinslaying. They do come to love their foster-father, but they wouldn't take him as their role-model. (Sons of Feanor are terrible role-models :p)

Also, if all Feanorian healers were full-time warriors, then their armies would be 50% female.


I'm sorry if I come across as condescending. It isn't my goal, I'm bad at guessing what people are familiar with.
Maglor's more of a poet type, can fight well enough if he needs to, but doesn't like it. After each battle, he might be sitting and writing. I have an idea that he kills Dirhaval during the Third Kinslaying and takes the manuscript for The Children of Hurin, which he entrusts to Elrond before leaving with Maedhros to steal the Silmarils in the aftermath of the War of Wrath. Maybe we have half the fighting force of the Eldar staying back to defend the women and children, with more women there? We learn what happens when the entire fighting force is sent out with no one to defend the civilians.
 
He is a poet and musician, but I don't imagine him being less of a professional soldier for that, or more of a doctor. Fighting isn't the sole thing he does, but it's a major part of his life, in my mind. And he's a hunter, something healers normally never do.

Him finding the manuscript for the Narn and recognizing its value would be neat, though. Alternatively the manuscript might be burned in the fires, and the Narn survive only in Elves who memorized it.

Edit: After each battle, Maglor could memorialize their victory or defeat by singing about it.


It's easier to call things out when there's something to contrast them with, so we should probably not make all elves do this the exact same way.
Do we really need to strongly call out the division between healers and warriors, though? It's part of Eldarin culture, but seldom plot-significant, and calling it out doesn't seem necessary to show female healers and Besain in respected roles. But I think we could call it out in other ways: by having an eager young healer forbidden from going to fight, by Galadriel commenting on Beleg being so unusual for filling both roles, and by Mortals having different customs and asking the Elves "Why do you do this?" Then they can be puzzled by the Elves telling them about healers losing their "healing mojo". Eventually, show the sons of Elwing choosing which path they want to take in life, with the implied or explicit assumption that they can't be both even if they are forced to fight sometimes. (Or even show earlier people, like Gil-galad, choosing?)
 
I think it would be cool for Glorfindel to be Irime's son. So we could give him a sister, yeah.

Btw I hope you don't feel bad about nominating Curufin's wife for elimination. I nominated Edhellos, and this problem didn't occur to me until this evening.
It depends. I chose Curufin’s wife because they needed someone to be in the forges (I had envisioned her working as a blacksmith), perhaps fighting on the inside and responsible for giving Gwindor the means to escape, such as a sword.
 
Eventually, show the sons of Elwing choosing which path they want to take in life, with the implied or explicit assumption that they can't be both even if they are forced to fight sometimes. (Or even show earlier people, like Gil-galad, choosing?)

Oh man, the sons of Elwing choosing. That's some topic.

Probably shouldn't touch on it in general as it goes waaaay of the immediate topic, but in specific sense of healer/warrior, it would seem that this is one of the choices for them to make - I would posit that in their early lives they are both going to excel at both sides (just as they are both excellent Men and excellent Elves in all the best ways). And then later when they are to choose, they are making two choices. I think if he had wanted to, Elrond could have chosen warrior-Elf, and became the High King of the Noldor. It might be nice if that choice is explicitly laid before him, and maybe even some folk are surprised that after he goes Elf, he goes Healer/Herald. Or, rather, explicitly turning down the Kingship is what signifies that choice. But then Elros accepting the kingship of Numenor signifies something different - Men don't have that same healer/warrior dichotomy as Elves do. Maybe his choice is made in the opposite order. He decides to be a warrior and a king, but then it's not a king of Elves he intends to be, but rather of Men. (Oh no, here I go on the wider topic) I think that the Elves would think their choices would be obvious - to be Elves - and that Elros choosing to be a Man would confound them. In contrast, Elrond choosing herald/healer over king/warrior would be entirely understandable.
 
Yeah, there are so many places we can take this story when we get to Elrond and Elros. Elrond is easily the most fascinating character in this entire project, and one who will stick with us moving forward once he appears. One of the marvelous things about Elrond is that he has such a tragic story (he loses everyone he cares about, always, since he was a toddler), and yet he is still 'kind as summer' and wise. He is not angry and bitter, or broken, or self-pitying, or really anything you would expect him to be in his situation. He's learned to accept what happened, process his experiences and turn them into wisdom. He knows so much, and has watched so much history play out....

Anyway, yeah, but his childhood is only lightly sketched in a variety of contradictory passages, so we can go in so many different possible directions with that. We should definitely work out what we want the role of herald to mean independently of Elrond assuming that role later. We are world-building at this stage, deciding how to show elven culture to the audience and 'teach' them how this works.

I'm not sure if the audience is going to go along with the warrior/healer dichotomy unless we put some effort into showing how that works. We'll have to relay on several different scenes and comments to paint this picture and reinforce the mindset. So, do people 'choose' a path, or is it just that their temperaments lean naturally in one direction or the other? I am now envisioning elf-children playing a variation of 'doctors and soldiers'* and arguing over who gets to be the doctor. In other words, does everyone go one way or the other, and does the split happen in childhood or adulthood? Are some elves neither? How strict do we want this distinction to be? In many cultures, gender roles are strict; you don't do something that is the domain of the other gender**. In other cultures, they're more fluid with men 'typically' having some roles and women 'typically' having others, but no one throwing their hands up in horror over exceptions to that. We're planning to divide the roles up not strictly along gender lines, but are the divisions very very strict, so that once you are categorized, it's done? No healer would ever go hunting? We know Beleg will be both/and. We want Idril to have a 'healer' designation (really, a scholar, but non-combatant nonetheless), and of course we will show her fighting in the Fall of Gondolin. Will heralds always be healers, or only 'typically' with some exceptions?

Part of my reason for wanting to show the House of Fëanor behaving somewhat differently is that they are, clearly, rebels in many ways. Fëanor was not very willing to accept things the way they were. Of course, when it came to some issues, he was also very conservative (particularly with linguistics), so I recognize that not everything about them is iconoclastic. But also...there's something...off...about a guy who would start wars in Valinor. Fëanor's militancy is off the deep end. So if elven society is divided into fighters and healers...he's ultra-fighter. At the same time, he's scholarly and creative and good at everything he touches, so very likely to be the exact kind of person to disdain the idea that his being a fighter would make him less good of a healer. And, in turn, he would force those who are 'healers' in his following to become fighters too. Not that they'd actually fight in battles, but that they'd be trained to. Perhaps not, but I think there is room for the Fëanoreans to eschew some of this.

Oh, and Glorfindel's mother/sister would only be Fingolfin's Besan if Fingon isn't married. Otherwise, Fingon's wife (Fingolfin's daughter-in-law) would likely fill that role rather than Fingolfin's niece.



*'Doctors and soldiers' was a game we played in elementary school gym class. I have no idea how common/widespread it was, but it was certainly popular at my school! We played it in a hall on rainy days. The way it worked involved having a large tub of sock-balls (balls made out of socks). The kids were divided into 2 teams, and, depending on the size of the group, each team would have 1-2 doctors (identified by an armband or something). Everyone else was soldiers. You set up a boundary line in the middle of the room , and a line further back near the wall. When they said 'go', the soldiers would grab the sock-balls and lob them at the other team. If you were hit, you had to fall down. The doctors would then run out and grab the downed soldier, dragging them back behind the line. Once you were behind the line, you could stand up and rejoin the game. If a doctor got hit, they had to take off their armband and be converted into a soldier. So, obviously doctors were very valuable, and if a team lost all their doctors, they couldn't regenerate any of their fallen soldiers. The game ended when everyone on one team was downed.
Similar to this: https://www.playworks.org/game-library/medic-dodgeball/

** As an example, in Ethiopia coffee is brewed by women in a coffee ceremony. Men never have a coffee ceremony; they just attend and drink the coffee. This typically happens in families and with neighbors, though it can also be done in workplaces or restaurants. So, when a group of Salesian priests and novices (all men) wanted to have a coffee ceremony as part of a celebration, someone decided that one of the prenovices would make the coffee, but he had to wear a skirt to do it. I know, because he knocked on my door and asked to borrow a skirt ;). It would not have occurred to me that he would have to dress up as a woman to make coffee in this context!
Similarly, when one of my roommates drunkenly bought a chicken, we had to ask one of the guards for help butchering it. In their culture, men slaughter the animals, but women do all the butchering. So, the first guard refused to show us, because that was women's work (and we didn't offer to pay him). Another guard was nice and took pity on us and he showed us how to kill and clean the chicken. Zebeynas (guards) were always men, too.
 
To go into the villains side: should there be a female Balrog or something like that? Or female Orcs?
 
Not to beat a dead horse, but there are opportunities to learn skills to negate an opponent's physical advantages. Here is an 'under 15' sumo wrestling competition. Clearly, one of these children is larger than the other, but...the small guy has indisputable skill.
https://www.facebook.com/Nipponaesthetics/videos/vb.443850386118981/786157645102721/?type=2&theater

A smaller, less-physically-strong warrior does not automatically lose. Sam defeated Shelob. Sure, the odds were certainly against him, but....



As for the villains, we agreed that there would be female followers of Morgoth before the destruction of the Lamps (not just Arien). After the destruction of the Lamps, when they become balrogs, they are monstrous in appearance with no gender markers (ie, if you saw a balrog naked, you wouldn't be able to tell if it were male or female). So, while Gothmog has a male actor and will clearly be male pre-fall, there won't be anything particularly male about Gothmog's appearance once he's a balrog. And...same with the female Maiar who become balrogs.

Presumably, there are female orcs. Though, as Nick has pointed out, their value to their slave masters is primarily their ability to breed more orcs, so they would likely be locked in pits in Angband and not take part in the battles. We can show female orcs on screen in scenes that take place in Angband, though, if we want to.
 
Whether that is mythology or oral history is a matter of conjecture. Since it is what we are told and we have no evidence to refute it, I have no problem thinking it the latter.



Quite a few actually, the most notable being Plutarch.

This is going to be too much offtopic...
I studied pre-history and old history and celts have always been my main field, so this is personal

No, myth is not thev ame as oral history, and therev re no archeological finds or historical records that would support institutions like scathasvschool of war. So itbhas to be classified as myth, and myth does not mirror historical reality, often quite the opposite.

Second... i remember plutarchbdescribing women who did actively BOYCOT fighting by putting themselves between enemy hosts.i do not remember him mentioning them actively fighting, and if they exist, such records are extremely rare... the celtic warrior woman as such was a historical curiosity and if they existed, a rare exception.
 
This is going to be too much offtopic...
I studied pre-history and old history and celts have always been my main field, so this is personal

No, myth is not thev ame as oral history, and therev re no archeological finds or historical records that would support institutions like scathasvschool of war. So itbhas to be classified as myth, and myth does not mirror historical reality, often quite the opposite.

Second... i remember plutarchbdescribing women who did actively BOYCOT fighting by putting themselves between enemy hosts.i do not remember him mentioning them actively fighting, and if they exist, such records are extremely rare... the celtic warrior woman as such was a historical curiosity and if they existed, a rare exception.

All we get from the Celts is oral history, which is often assumed to be myth when it does not line up with the preconceptions of historians. The truth is that the Celts told us that they had such schools, but since historians have decided that is not possible, they will relegate it to myth until some additional proof is found. This is fairly typical any time that historians come up against a description of an event or person which runs counter to their preconceptions.

As to Roman writers, I'm not sure how many I need to quote to satisfy everyone. Tacitus says that Suetonius, who fought against Boudicca, spoke of the large number of women in her force. Diodorus Siculus talks specifically about the courage of Gallic women in battle. Plutarch describes the battle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC where Celtic warriors, fleeing from the Romans under Caius Marius found themselves set upon and killed by armed women from their own camp, who then rushed forward to join their men who were still fighting. If memory serves, they are even described as wrenching weapons and shields from the Romans to use against them. Some random Roman soldier wrote a letter home describing how deadly Gallic women were in battle.

I'm not saying that this was super common, merely that it happened, and I'm not sure why the resistance to this point is so strong. To say that no women at any point in history were able to handle the rigors of battle is to be ignorant of both historical and biological fact. That said, I think there are good reasons why women have been historically discouraged or excluded from the battlefield. I'm just not so set in this belief that I cannot acknowledge what the ancient writers and storytellers said about the world in which they lived.
 
Ill write a pn instead of answering here... much of the confusion is about the definition of the term "warrior" and what warrior and taking part in battles a tually does mean.
i can easily deconstruct very single source you mentioned... did celtoc women fight? Well they defended themselves if need arose, but they did not usually take part in battle, go to war, wear armour and mannish weapons and the like..
 
Ill write a pn instead of answering here... much of the confusion is about the definition of the term "warrior" and what warrior and taking part in battles a tually does mean.
i can easily deconstruct very single source you mentioned... did celtoc women fight? Well they defended themselves if need arose, but they did not usually take part in battle, go to war, wear armour and mannish weapons and the like..

I'm not so sure about deconstruction, but I think you may be interpreting what I'm saying a bit differently from how I intend. I'm not making the case that women amongst the Celts were among the warrior class. I'm making the case that the classical writers did in that they were trained in the use of arms and did on occasion use them. I am doing so specifically to support the plausibility of Boudicca being personally involved in the battles she commanded, which you specifically said probably didn't happen. Archeological evidence continues to support this, with some battlefield cemeteries having as many as 37% of their armed dead being female. I'm not really understanding why this is so controversial.
 
I'm not so sure about deconstruction, but I think you may be interpreting what I'm saying a bit differently from how I intend. I'm not making the case that women amongst the Celts were among the warrior class. I'm making the case that the classical writers did in that they were trained in the use of arms and did on occasion use them. I am doing so specifically to support the plausibility of Boudicca being personally involved in the battles she commanded, which you specifically said probably didn't happen. Archeological evidence continues to support this, with some battlefield cemeteries having as many as 37% of their armed dead being female. I'm not really understanding why this is so controversial.
I say when we get to Men, the gender divide is going to be a lot more noticeable, with most women not knowing how to fight. The only reason Morwen was not taken and enslaved when Dor-Lomin was invaded by the Easterlings was because they feared her eyes.
 
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