St Olga of Kiev. Her story is the ultimate revenge tale
I highly recommend people looking her up but in short, her husband was killed by a neighbouring tribe and she sought vengeance.
The neighbouring faction then sought to take over her own, seeing as she was a weak woman and ruling in her dead husbands place as her own son was too young. She invited them to her town as a show of honour.
When the large party of messengers arrived, they were soon attacked and backed into a massive trench that Olgas people had dug the nights before.
Standing over the trench she asked them “If they found the honor to their taste” and buried them alive. But she wasn’t even close to finished with her quest for vengeance.
She sent message back to the enemy saying she would accept an allegiance by marriage. Painting herself as such a feeble woman, that she would gladly relinquish her power to her enemy. But she requested all high chieftains to visit her town, to socialise and garner favour.
The chieftains came, she invited them into the bath house to relax before a feast. They were locked inside and burned to death.
But she wasn’t done. Her next feat is her most incredible.
After taking out most people of power from the other faction. She demanded tribute from their towns and villages… Not in gold, not in any material goods. But in the form of sparrows and pigeons.
Thousands were delivered to her.
The next night, she ordered her soldiers to tie a strip of sulfur to the birds legs, set it alight, and released the birds.
The birds flew back to the houses and homes they had nested in. And burned every village to the ground.
The sky was apparently a blaze of fire for days. Olga emerged victorious, and satiated.
Don’t f**k with Olga of Kiev
She is known, quite aptly, as the patron saint of vengeance and defiance.