Action Girl/Oral Tradition/Folklore

Examples of Action Girls in Folklore include:

• In The Death of Koshchei the Deathless, Princess Marya Morevna is apparently a fierce and vicious warrior. However, she does come off as a bit of a Faux Action Girl when Koshchei the Deathless kidnaps her, turning her into a Damsel in Distress and forcing her Non-Action Guy husband to go on a quest to save her.
• In some depictions, Maid Marian of the Robin Hood legends. There's even a ballad (one of the Child Ballads) where Marian went to seek Robin, armed and in man's clothes, and when she met him, he was also in disguise -- so they fought, for "at least an hour or more", before recognizing each other.
  • Ironically, Marian started out as an Action Girl only for much later Hollywood adaptations (as in Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood) to cast her as the Damsel in Distress. Only recently has she regained her original Action Girl status (Judi Trott in Robin of Sherwood and Lucy Griffiths in Robin Hood), though just as often she comes across as a Faux Action Girl (as in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves).
• The character of Hua Mulan, known for joining the army in place of her elderly father and too-young brother, fighting to the West of China, then going home and eventually dying of old age.