Her emphasis on her grief over her brother, and her account of riding into the battle as a response to that grief, has the quality of personal testimony — specific, emotionally direct, focused on her own experience rather than on the broader tactical situation.

The historians and writers who have drawn on her testimony over the years have sometimes used it more dramatically than the source material supports — adding detail, heightening the narrative, resolving uncertainties in favor of more vivid storytelling.

The honest account of her story distinguishes between what she said and what others have said about her, between what can be documented and what is inferred or attributed.

Even in its documented form — the actual record of her own words as transcribed and translated — her account is extraordinary.