"Perhaps the existence in different cultures of war-making goddesses – Astarte, Athena, Kali, the Valkyrie – or the legends surrounding warrior queens such as Zenobia of Palmyra is a recognition of women’s potential. It is also a way of limiting it to divine or perhaps unnatural women. From Boudicca, the British queen of the first century ad, who is often portrayed in her war chariot, to the Rani of Jhansi, who led her troops against the British in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, many cultures have stories, some legend and some based on fact, of individual women warriors. Some have fought as women but many disguised themselves as men, including Deborah Sampson, who was in the American War of Independence, and Lizzie Compton and Frances Hook in the American Civil War, who kept reenlisting when their identities were discovered. Just like the women warriors in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Wonder Woman and Kill Bill, however, they are exceptions, seen as outside the normal order of things where war is the male sphere."