Top Ten Tuesday!

It's Tuesday, and time for another TTT that I can participate in! Thanks as always to The Broke and the Bookish for hosting this weekly feature.

This week's topic is "Ten Characters Who Would Make Good Leaders". It is pretty open-ended, as it is up to each individual blogger just exactly who or what those characters might be leading. Given my non-fiction tendencies, my list will be about those who I consider to have been good leaders. This doesn't mean they were always great people because most of them weren't. However, I am looking at them from the perspective of a leader as someone who lead or could have lead their country in some way. Whether that means they were leading their countrymen on Crusade, or leading the government and officials against a wayward son trying to steal his brother's throne, all lead at some point in their lives.

Here they are, in no particular order. I have also chosen to say relatively little about them, compared to my normal novellas. I'd like their names to simply (mostly) speak for themselves.

1. Eleanor of Aquitaine

(General bad-ass. Got shit done while Richard was in the Holy Land. Continued to get shit done when he was captured, when he returned home, when he died, and when John inherited the throne.)

2. Boudica, Boudicca, Boudicea, Bouddica

(Girl was FIERCE. Commanded an army in the tens of thousands, though Roman estimates put that number beyond 200,000. Avenged the rape of her daughters and her own public humiliation by slaughtering a bunch of Romans.)

2. William Marshal

(Served the first five Plantagenet kings: Henry II, Henry the Young King, Richard, John, and Henry III. Lead troops into battle into his late 60s.)

3. Harold Godwinson

(Last true Anglo-Saxon king. Sorry Edgar. If only he had waited for reinforcements instead of immediately marching to Hastings from Stanford.)

4. Alfred the Great

(The man who paved the way for England to become united under his grandson Athelstan. He was able to repel the Danes time and again, and lay the groundwork for the future kings.)

5. Henry II

(I mean, whatever. He was only one of England's greatest kings, even though he was a lousy husband.)

6. Richard I and Saladin

(Had to put these two together, because I feel like they really brought out the best in one another. And by best I mean who could be the most slaughter-y. They sent each other gifts throughout their battles, though they never met in person.)

Happy Reading!

Sarah