When the words “Warrior Princess” march their way into a conversation, there’s really only one woman people think of and that’s Xena. As awesome as we think Xena is, we think it’s sad that the only princess capable of ripping out a man’s throat that people are aware of is a woman who doesn’t actually exist. So today we want to talk about Khutulun, the undefeated warrior princess of the Mongol empire.
Born in 1260 A.D. to a noted leader of the Mongol people, Khutulun’s upbringing could have been very civil and privileged if she’d wanted it to be. Unfortunately for every male testicle within kicking distance, Khutulun only felt life was worth living if she was constantly kicking guys in the sack so hard they nearly choked to death on their own sex organs. She threw herself into the three primary pursuits of the Mongol people, horse-riding, archery and wrestling as soon as she was able to. Rather luckily for Khutulun she just so happened to grow up with 14 willing wrestling partners, or brothers as they’re sometimes known to us normal folk.
Now we’re going to guess that a lot of people reading this grew up having their ass handed to them by an older sibling on a near daily basis. Now imagine growing up with that multiplied by 14. Khutulun dealt with that every single day. Perhaps due to the fact she had to take part in half of a (literally!) Royal Rumble before she was even allowed to eat breakfast, Khutulun became an amazing wrestler by the time she reached womanhood. She also became an incredibly adept warrior, but we’ll talk about that later.
RELATED: The manliest death in history
Keen to prove herself as a great wrestler and not just a pretty face, Khutulun took to entering herself into public wrestling competitions, all of which she won, eventually earning her a reputation as a wrestler “no man could throw.” Though we’ve covered wrestling on this site many times before, Mongolian wrestling was a little different to any of the forms of the sport you’d likely be familiar with so we’ll explain it in a little more detail. For a start there were no weight divisions, so the sport was inevitably dominated by the largest men around. There were also no ring outs in Mongolian wrestling and you fought until one opponent hit the ground, meaning rounds could last seconds, or hours, depending on the relative skill of the competitors involved.
Now in Mongol culture, strong women were highly revered and Khutulun was about as strong as they came, so it’s no surprise that the princess had dozens of suitors who wished to marry and perhaps engage in a private, horizontal wrestling match with her. Despite being what was effectively royalty, Khutulun would consider a proposal of marriage from any suitor, as long as he agreed to a single stipulation: he had to best her in a wrestling match.
To avoid hordes of men constantly trying to power-bomb her when she was going about her business, Khutulun also demanded that any man wishing to challenge her also had to wager 100 horses. Though records of individual wrestling matches are few and far between, we do know that by the end of her life, Khutulun owned 10,000 horses, which meant she had almost as many horses as the freaking emperor of Mongolia and she earned every single one in one-on-one combat.
One particularly notable example involved Khutulun judo-flipping an actual prince who was so confident in his victory he wagered a thousand horses on himself. When he inevitably lost to the force of nature that was Princess freaking Khutulun, rather than accepting his loss like a man and recognizing that Khutulun was indeed a mighty warrior worthy of his respect, he was unable to take the shame of losing to a woman and ran away, leaving behind a thousand horses for Khutulun to add to her ever-growing pile of equine glory.
But we digress, Khutulun also took as little crap on the battlefield as she did in the ring. Marco Polo described how she’d ride up to an opposing army’s leader mid-combat and pick him up to carry him back to her father, effectively winning the battle on the spot. That wasn’t something she did once by the way; that’s what she did every single time!
Not pictured: The mountain of vanquished foes she stands atop.
Her enemies were so pissed with Khutulun up and kidnapping their soldiers whenever she felt like it that they began to spread malicious rumors that she was involved in an incestuous relationship with her father and that’s why she refused to take a husband. The fact that Khutulun had, had a standing challenge to every man in the world to marry her for the last decade seemed totally lost on these rumor-mongers. Nevertheless, to quell the rumors and save her father the heartache they brought, Khutulun married a man of her choosing without wrestling him. Though Khutulun had eventually been forced, in a sense, to take a husband, she’d never been forced to submit to a man and she’d never been bested in wrestling.
Today, in honor of Khutulun and her many victories, Mongolian wrestlers bare their chest to prove that they are male, signifying that they’re not worthy of being mistaken for Khutulun, the greatest wrestler of them all. Also, if anyone from Disney is watching this, you should totally make a movie about Khutulun. Young girls need a role-model like this. Unless of course you feel like showing one of your other princesses elbow-dropping a misogynistic @$$#()!% from a 1000 foot high pile of horses, either is fine, but we expect a royalty check for the latter.
Karl Smallwood is a freelance comedy writer you can hire! His work has been featured on Cracked, Toptenz and Gunaxin. You should probably click those links to make sure he isn’t lying. He also runs his own website where he responds to the various pieces of hate-mail he’s gotten over the years, in fact, he got so much hate-mail that he wrote a book about it that you can buy on Amazon. When he isn’t writing, Karl also Tweets and uploads pictures of himself drinking on Facebook.
Karl finds badassery everywhere, including potatoes.
“Greetings, fellows! ‘Tis I, your illustrous friend, Sir Potato!”
