Main ||  Previous page ||  Next page
		The gauntlet stayed in Cathain's family for several generations.  Her great-grandaughter seemed to have used the Witchblade to help the Romans build their empire; apparently she fell in love with a Roman soldier, and she fought along side him.  It was during one of these battles, that the Blade passed to the next acknowledged wielder ~ Septima Zenobia.  Zenobia ripped the Wtichblade from the wrist of Cathain's kin, and took it for her own ~ and the gauntlet served her. Septima Zenobia governed Syria from about 250 to 275 AD.  She led her armies on horseback wearing full armor, and during Claudius' reign defeated the Roman legions so decisively that they retreated from much of Asia Minor.  Arabia, Armenia and Persia allied themselves with her and she claimed dominion over Egypt by right of ancestry.  Claudius' successor Aurelian
Bladewielders
sent his most experienced legions to conquer Zenobia but it took almost 4 years of battles and sieges before her capital city of Palmyra fell and Zenobia was paraded through the streets of Rome in chains.  Zenobia, beautiful, intelligent, and still considered a woman of higher class, married a Roman senator and presumably spent the rest of her life at his villa near Tibur (now Tivoli, Italy).  Her daughters married into influential Roman families and her line continued to be important in Roman politics for almost three centuries.  Supposedly, torn by the idea that the Romans would gain possession of the Blade, but not able to dispose of it, she asked a trusted servant, a eunuch, to protect the bracelet until she could reclaim it before she was captured.   Instead, he sold it to an Oriental merchant. For almost a thousand years after Zenobia, there is little recorded activity about the Witchblade, and no true Bladewielders were idenified.  Two theories prevail ~ first, that the Blade spawned the Oriental martial art sects known as Samurai, and the other that the activities of the Samurai masked those of the Blade.  The next known Bladewielder was a Samurai woman named Itagaki.  There is another, who may have been a possible wielder ~ a young Chinese woman named Mu-Lan.
One of China's more famous woman warriors lived and fought in the  in the fifth century AD.  Her name was Hua Mu-Lan (yes, the same girl made famous again in Disney’s"Mulan" ~ it was based on a true story). As the story goes, Mu-Lan’s old and sickly father was conscripted to go to war. Hua Mu-Lan knew it was out of the question for her father to go and her only brother was much too young. She decided to disguise herself as a man and take her father's place. Her father rejected the offer, but she insisted. Mu-Lan cut her hair, put on her father's armor and joined the emperor's troops using her father's name. For over ten years, she fought as a man without her true identity being discovered. Her bravery at the front lines and extraordinary fighting skill impressed the emperor, who summoned Mu-Lan to the royal court ~ he wished to appoint her to high office as a reward for her outstanding service.  Hua Mu-Lan declined his offer and accepted a fine horse instead. After a decade, Mu-Lan returned home and resumed her life again.  A play written in her honor, one of many different works telling her story, ends with the following lines: "She had much fighting ability, and could act the leader. Her body passed through one hundred battles, always at the front, and compared to the fiercest soldiers, she was still better."
						Hua Mu-Lan
Main ||  Previous page ||  Next page