Boudicca's Daughter by Elodie Harper
What’s your Roman Empire? Because mine might just be Elodie Harper’s latest novel, Boudicca’s Daughter. Author of The Wolf Den trilogy, Harper knows what it means to take us back in time to a different Ancient Rome than the one we are used to seeing on the big screens, focusing instead on women’s Ancient Rome.
She does this again with Boudicca’s Daughter, shedding light on the little-known story of Boudicca, the warrior queen of the ancient British Iceni tribe, and what happened to her and her daughters during and after their failed uprising against the Roman Empire.
A History Unknown
Harper points our attention to the story of Boudicca and her two daughters, who are crouched behind her in the statue on Westminster Bridge in London, which helped to inspire the novel. Apart from the inclusion of Boudicca’s daughters in the statue, their story is left out of the history books.
No one knows what happened to them. In the historical account of their rape, the incident that is said to have started the uprising, the girls are never even named. Harper creates a story for them that feels just as real as the facts that she weaves within it.
A Woman’s Rome
Boudicca’s Daughter opens with the origin story of Boudicca, whose real name is Catia. It is told through alternating perspectives, Catia’s, as well as Solina’s, her eldest daughter and the main protagonist of the epic tale.
Immediately, we see the strength and fierceness of these women. Solina and her sister Bellenia have been raised to fight since they could walk. But as the uprising begins and they fight and sack British Roman villages, Solina watches her sister fade away and her mother turn from Catia into Boudicca, a woman she can hardly recognize.
After the uprising, Solina struggles with survivor’s guilt and coming to terms with her new identities as a captive, a slave and a foreigner after she is taken from her beloved home to Rome. Under the rule of the Emperor Nero, Rome is a volatile lion’s den all of its own. In this new and unknown territory, Paulinus, the Roman general who captured Solina, becomes the only familiar face she knows. Even in Rome, constantly surrounded by powerful and dangerous people, her warrior spirit cannot be quelled.
An Epic of the Morally Gray
All of the characters share an immense complexity, making the alternating perspectives a necessity. Harper focuses on the moral grayness in a world filled with lies, ulterior motives and feelings that constantly get left unspoken.
Solina is an extremely smart woman who is able to use her strengths to her advantage again and again. Her cunning becomes incredibly important to her survival, whether it be thinking two steps ahead in battle or using her druidic gifts to her advantage. She is always planning her next move, always looking for her enemy’s motive, and anticipating the thoughts and feelings of those around her.
The Powerful Personal Identity of a Survivor
Boudicca’s Daughter is an epic story that has it all. In addition to intense and lively action scenes that will transport you to the battlefield, it is incredibly introspective, dealing with many hard but universal themes of humanity.
It delves deeply into the complexities of being an eldest daughter, of the difficult dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship. It explores the life-long guilt of a survivor and what it means to lose everything and everyone.
It touches on the duality of humanity in nearly all ways: war, hatred, love, forgiveness, shame and honor. Every character is forced to face their choices head-on at one point or another.
While the epic tale takes Solina’s life to an unrecognizable place by the end, it all comes completely full circle to who she is and will always be. Solina’s story reminds us that we should never forget the power of who we are and where we came from.
About Elodie Harper:
Elodie Harper is a bestselling author whose Wolf Den trilogy has won wide acclaim. The first book The Wolf Den, was a book of the month for both Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, won the Glass Bell Award and was shortlisted for Page turner of the year at the British Book Awards. The second in the series, The House with the Golden Door, was a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller.
Elodie’s first standalone novel set in the ancient world – Boudicca’s Daughter – publishes in the UK and US in August 2025. Alongside her career as a writer, Elodie worked many years as a reporter at ITV News, and before that as a producer at Channel 4 News.
