RED SONYA AND DARK AGNES: ROBERT E. HOWARD’S FIGHTING REDHEADS

With the latest attempt at a Red Sonja movie having been released, here’s another Balladeer’s Blog look at Robert E. Howard’s actual Red Sonya PLUS his other fiery, sword-wielding woman warrior Dark Agnes. 

ROBERT E. HOWARD’S REAL RED SONYA

THE SHADOW OF THE VULTURE – This story by Robert E. Howard, the ONLY Howard story to actually feature Red Sonya, was first published in the January 1934 issue of Magic Carpet Magazine. As I’ve mentioned in many other reviews of old pulp characters, Howard’s REAL Red Sonya was indeed a warrior woman, but not one from his fictional Hyborian Age.

It was Marvel Comics who distorted Red Sonya into “Red Sonja” and placed her as a guest star in assorted Conan stories as well as her own series. That Red Sonja has more in common with female author C.L. Moore’s warrior woman Jirel of Joiry than she does with Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonya.

The Shadow of the Vulture is one of Howard’s historical adventures and it’s set during the 1520s, largely at the Siege of Vienna from September 27th to October 15th in 1529. Red Sonya of Rogatino is a Polish-Ukrainian woman who is more skilled than most men with swords and guns.

The storied red-haired woman has a personal grudge against Muslim Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who was besieging Vienna with over 100,000 soldiers against Vienna’s 21,000. Red Sonya was glad to serve against Suleiman’s armies whenever she could. 

Howard made his character Red Sonya the (fictional) sister of the real-life woman Roxelana, Suleiman’s favorite harem girl in the 1520s. Roxelana would become Suleiman’s chief consort and, in 1533, his legal wife. Roxelana aka Hurrem Sultan was a prominent figure in the Ottoman Empire.

In The Shadow of the Vulture, R.E. Howard made Red Sonya of Rogatino’s vendetta against Suleiman based on his use of her sister as a harem girl. (Sonya could not know the significant future awaiting Roxelana.)

During the Siege of Vienna, Howard’s story depicts Red Sonya fighting alongside the male soldiers. She meets and develops a bickering but friendly rivalry of sorts with Gottfried Von Kalmbach, a knight who seriously wounded Suleiman at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526.

Ever since then, Suleiman has had Mikhal Oglu and his troops trying to track down Von Kalmbach to kill him and take his head back to the Sultan. Sonya and Gottfried’s shared antipathy toward Suleiman forms a loose bond between them and she winds up saving Von Kalmbach from death multiple times.

When Vienna prevails over the Muslim siege and Suleiman’s army withdraws, traitorous Austrian spies for the Ottoman Empire drug Gottfried and plan to turn him over to Mikhal Oglu and his forces. Red Sonya saves Von Kalmbach from that fate.

Next, Sonya turns the tables on Oglu, making him think he can ambush her and Gottfried and thus get his chance to take Von Kalmbach’s head back to Suleiman. In reality, our ruthless heroine leads Mikhal Oglu and his men into a trap that results in their slaughter.

It is Oglu’s head that is sent to the Sultan in Istanbul instead of Von Kalmbach’s. Red Sonya and Gottfried included a mocking note for Suleiman.

DARK AGNES: SWORD WOMAN

SWORD WOMAN – This was the first story about Robert E. Howard’s OTHER red-haired, fiery woman warrior Agnes the Dark aka Agnes de Chastillon, a sword fighting, butt kicking woman in 1500s France. 

Unlike Shadow of the Vulture, none of the Dark Agnes tales were published during Robert E. Howard’s lifetime. Sword Woman, the character’s origin story, saw print posthumously in 1975, 39 years after Howard’s suicide. The author dedicated the short story “To Mary Read, Graine O’Malley, Jeanne Laisne, Liliard of Ancrum, Anne Bonney, and all other sword women, good or bad, bold or gay, who have swaggered down the centuries, this chronicle is respectfully dedicated.”

The opening line is from Agnes’ repulsive and overbearing father – “Agnes! You red-haired spawn of the devil, where are you?” Our heroine’s father is trying to force her into a marriage, convinced it will settle her down. As the ceremony approaches, Agnes asks her older, married sister Ysabel for advice on getting out of her impending nuptials.

Ysabel, obviously NOT happily married, slips her younger sister a dagger so she can kill herself rather than go through with the wedding. As it turns out, Agnes instead uses the dagger to kill her intended husband Francois during the ceremony, then flees into the forest.

She is pursued by her father and others, and when her father just misses her with an arrow he shot at her, she shouts a taunt back at him. He replies “Come back, you slut!” and Agnes answers “To the fires of Hell with you! And may the Devil feast upon your black heart!”

Our heroine leaves the men chasing her far behind, then faces life as a fugitive woman and must be wary of predatory men everywhere. Still wearing her ever more tattered wedding dress, Agnes encounters the seemingly chivalrous man with a past, Etienne Villiers of Aquitaine.

Etienne gets the young lady to confide in him about her plight and he is charmed by her pluckiness. He steals some boy’s clothing to pass her off as a young male in order to lessen at least some of the dangers she faces. Agnes travels with the shrewd rogue on the run and learns the ways of fugitive life. She is well on her way to earning her nickname Dark Agnes. 

When our heroine accidentally addresses Etienne by his real name in front of an innkeeper, that man, Thibault, threatens to turn Etienne over to his pursuers, the men of the Duke of Alencon. Villiers tries to convince Thibault to instead take Agnes and sell her to a brothel.

Dark Agnes turns the tables, killing Thibault and battering Etienne Villiers nearly unconscious in a fight. Having learned another lesson – that even one’s fellow fugitives are not to be fully trusted – Agnes reconciles with the seriously injured Etienne and they resume their life on the lam.

Through Etienne and his underworld friends, Dark Agnes meets mercenary warrior Guiscard de Clisson, who admires her courage and her skill with pistols and blades. He instructs our heroine, refining her fencing skills to their utmost and lets her ride alongside him and his fellow mercenaries.

Before long, Guiscard and his men are attacked from ambush and slaughtered by Captain Renault d’Valence and his troops. When those men have finally cornered the sole survivor, the savagely fighting Dark Agnes, Etienne Villiers arrives in time to help her escape. Agnes and Etienne agree to become comrades in arms, vowing to fight and steal their way through the world. 

I’LL REVIEW ANOTHER DARK AGNES STORY SOON.

FOR MY LOOK AT THE SIX 1930s STORIES OF CATHERINE L. MOORE’S FEMALE WARRIOR JIREL OF JOIRY CLICK HERE.