The Short but Incredibly Violent Life of Khutulun; or, Who Needs Marriage when you have Ten Thousand Horses?
You know that classic trope of the hard-as-nails Strong Female Character™ who knows how to drink and fight Better Than The Boys™ because she had loads of brothers?
Yeah, this gal puts every single version of that to shame.
Khutulun was the great-great-granddaughter of famed Mongolian warlord Ghengis Khan, who founded the biggest empire in history, and the youngest child and only daughter of Kaidu Khan. She had fourteen brothers, which is Far. Too. Many. Brothers.
As the youngest and femalest of the bunch, Khutulun could have very comfortably hung back and done embroidery or some shit until her parents married her off to someone politically useful and hopefully not completely hideous and insane. But did she? No she fucking well didn’t.
Instead, our girl spent her childhood getting hella good at archery and horse riding and wrestling and cold-blooded murder. All your standard childhood hobbies. Personally, I learned to play the piano, which was lovely but significantly less useful when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, unless you’re in a fight with Wile E. Coyote.
What better way to pass your formative years than *checks notes* shooting down kestrels with your pet cheetah and what looks like a leather oven mitt?
Nowadays, when you have a child who’s abnormally good at violence, this is cause to contact a psychologist or an exorcist (I don’t have kids, I don’t really know how this goes). But for Kaidu Khan, his mad murder daughter was perfect, as he was currently at war with his brother over some disagreement or another, and he relied heavily on his wild death-child for backup in battle.
According to Marco Polo (do we all know Marco Polo? Italian dude who went on an extended gap year to Asia back before that was a thing, then wrote a book about it in jail?), Khutulun would ride at her father’s side into battle, and occasionally swoop into the enemy ranks, pluck one guy from the group at random, straight-up murder him and bring his bloodied corpse back to her dad, “like a hawk”.
What a fucking power move.
Despite her fierce-ass skill in battle, as she got older her parents' main priority was marrying her off (bearing in mind that this was the 11th century, so “older” was probably like twelve or some shit). Because literally what is the point of having a daughter if you can’t score political points by having her shag someone?
My girl Cersei Lannister knows what’s up.
In classic Disney Princess style (if Disney Princesses were really, brutally, unreasonably violent), Khutulun was having absolutely none of this. If she was going to marry, it was going to be for love.
Did I say love? I meant unreasonable violence, obviously.
She agreed a compromise. Yes, she would get married. Happily. But first, the man would have to beat her in a wrestling match.
So the news spread across the Mongol Empire – the beautiful, accomplished warrior-princess daughter of Kaida Khan would marry any man who could beat her, a mere woman, at the fight-sport. Easy.
And quick sidebar: this wasn’t your standard modern wrestling where guys of similar weights roll around in spandex, grabbing at each other’s inner thigh. Mongolian wrestling was an all-out, no-holds-barred brawl, where anyone could fight anyone in any possible way. Think MMA but specifically within famously violent horse-tribes.
So this is the kind of wrestling Khutulun was using as a marriage-test.
If the potential suitors lost, they had to give her 100 horses. Which is… sure, I guess. Girl liked horses.
Years later, our girl Khutulun had 10,000 horses and no husband.
I don’t really know how to give you a visual of that. There are 21 horses in this picture. So just… multiply that in your head, I guess? It’s a lot of horses.
Which, I mean, kind of seems like too many horses. Where do you keep 10,000 horses? How do you feed them? Do they all have names? You didn’t think this horse business through at all, did you? Don’t get me wrong, I love the balls-out power play of making men wrestle you, but look. Now you’re responsible for ten thousand fucking horses. Jesus.
There was one particular dude who was really cocky about the whole deal, and offered her a thousand horses if he couldn’t beat her. At this point, her parents straight-out begged her to throw the match and just marry this guy. You have too many horses already, Khutulun. You don’t need any more horses. Just marry the guy. Please. He seems nice.
Obviously, soon after, Khutulun gained another thousand horses to add to her insane horse army.
Ten thousand horses in, a lot of men started getting really salty about the fact that this woman was not only refusing to marry them, but was also taking all of their horses. So, naturally, they started spreading rumours that she was having an incestuous relationship with her dad.
(In those days, “she must be boning a family member” was the equivalent of "she must be a lesbian” for dickhead dudes who couldn't understand why a woman wasn't fucking them).
My girl Cersei Lannister and her incest twin know what’s up.
At this point, our girl Khutulun was like “ugh, fine, I GUESS I’ll get married” and went ahead and married someone who hadn’t even tried to wrestle her. Now, there’s no concrete evidence regarding who her eventual husband was, so I’m going to pick my favourite theory and present it as inarguable fact.
Obviously, as a Mongolian warlord who was literally never not at war with someone or other, Kaida Khan had the occasional attempt on his life. Once particular attempt had the would-be assassin caught and imprisoned, awaiting execution. This assassin turned out to be a total hottie called Abtakul. Heartbroken that her child was about to die, Abtakul’s mum pleaded with Kaida to be executed in her son’s place, and Kaida was like “yeah sure whatever, a beheading’s a beheading” and agreed. But Abtakul was having NONE of this and INSISTED on being the one to be beheaded.
This fucking family, I swear to god.
Anyway, Kaida, most likely exasperated by this whole “no I am Spartacus” bullshit, freed Abtakul and let him join his army. Abtakul promptly got himself horribly injured and, while recuperating in hospital, met Khutulun, who was like “yep, sure, you’ll do” and married him.
Who says romance is dead?
A few years later, Kaida Khan died, naming Khutulun as his heir (due to her being the most hyper-competent and wildly violent of his children). Unfortunately, this was the 12th century and sexism was very real, so none of her many, many brothers were having any of this. A woman Khan? What next? Women having opinions? Stating those opinions? Doing things that didn’t involve blowjobs or babies? Disgusting.
So instead, Khutulun threw her support behind one of her big brothers, Duwa, on the condition that he would let her run his army. Which worked out for her, because she really fucking loved her some war.
Eventually, Khutulun met an appropriately violent end, at the age of 46, either in battle or following an assassination. Who knows? Not me. What am I, a fucking historian? Look it up.
For a long time, as with most powerful women in history, her story was buried and forgotten about in favour of yet more stories about men. But eventually, a French dude, while writing a biography of Genghis Khan, dug up some shit about her and based a story he was writing on her, called Turandot. Obviously, because men are invariably the fucking worst, Turandot wasn’t about a badass warrior, but a proud noblewoman who eventually gave into love, because ugh.
But today, we now know Khutulun to be a fierce-ass warrior hero who was really, really into horses. Like, really into horses. Waaaay too into horses.