Back in 2022, Andi King looked like she had walked off the set of a Viking drama. She was six foot tall, 17 stone, with big muscles, a beard, braided hair and tattoos inked onto the shaved sides of her head. People used to take a second look at her in the street – they'd sometimes even cross it to avoid her.
She looked intimidating, but she was lying to herself. Underneath all of that was a woman who had been there her whole life. After 52 years of being this Viking, she finally started her transition.
Early signs and hidden identity
Looking back, King feels a mix of euphoria that she can finally be herself and a tinge of sadness at the decades missed where she felt trapped. She was three when she first asked her mum why she was in a boy's skin and not a girl's. 'Because you are a boy, Andrew,' her mum said. Somehow she already knew that her mum was wrong.
At pre-school, she got in trouble for dressing up with the girls instead of playing football, and doctors, parents, and teachers agreed she would grow out of it. But she didn't. As a kid, she would wear her t-shirts as a skirt in bed, graduating then to her mum's actual clothes once she was old enough to be left alone in the house.
By the time she was 18, when she got a wage and a car, she ordered women's clothes from catalogues, hid them in the boot and drove to a quiet beach on the weekends to walk the sand as herself after dark. It was liberating. Then on Monday she'd return to being the man she didn't feel like.
Building 'Andy the Viking'
When the internet arrived, she found a word for what she was: transsexual, as it was used at the time. She read about hormones and surgery, but didn't have the courage at the time to take the plunge. She was scared of the effect it would have on her life – she wasn't prepared for how everything would change – so she embraced the wrong body.
So she built Andy instead – bouncer, martial arts enthusiast, gym obsessive – an alpha male. Working in the Philippines a few years later, she became known as 'Andy the Viking'. But he was her armour and sometimes her work meant she was caught up in violence – she is ashamed to say she revelled in it.
By 54, she was drinking heavily and self-harming, all while holding down a high-flying financial job. She was struggling with who she was – the Viking was starting to kill her. She had been with her partner for 20 years by that point, and her partner watched all of it, powerless to stop.
Decision to transition and family support
A week before her 55th birthday in 2022, something shifted. She knew she was deteriorating and didn't want to die in a man's body. So she made the decision in the kitchen, there and then – she was finally going to transition. No going back, no reverse gear.
Her partner was shocked, confused and devastated, but promised they would work through it. King was fortunate – her job's private healthcare covered the hormone treatment and gender affirming surgery she needed. When she told her boss and colleagues, they were right behind her. So were her sons and her brother – telling her 'as long as you're happy, that's what counts'.
Her mum needed longer, so King ended up telling her in December 2023 – pragmatic and devastated in the same breath, she said she couldn't face seeing her 'with boobs.' So they stopped seeing each other, however they talked every week for three years, about nothing much, while King had nine facial operations and implants, all paid for herself.
Everything changed when, two days before her birthday this June, her brother talked her mum into a pub lunch. It was the best present she's ever had. They spoke, King cried, and her mum held her – later, her mum told her it was incredibly hard, but she loved her no matter what.
Life after transition
King's partner had the hardest job of all – the Andy she'd committed twenty years to had just blown her life apart. He died that night and she had to decide whether to walk away or stay. Luckily, she did the latter. They live together now as best friends, in a relationship that isn't intimate anymore but is still, somehow, everything. King says she couldn't do any of this without her partner, who supports her wholeheartedly.
King can understand why she assumed that character – to build the most masculine man that she could. But she doesn't look back with regret – she's had a good life, she has her family, she's travelled the world and the past is impossible to change.
Through the process, she found out that transitioning isn't just about hormones and surgery. She had to learn to walk, talk, dress, and exist as the real her, from scratch. Going to a shopping centre, passport control, or wearing a bikini on a beach was no easy feat. 'Trust me, nobody wakes up deciding being trans sounds fun – it's one of the hardest things you can be.'
Being a woman was never just about the body she was born into – it's about what's inside, about how she feels. She spent 55 years finding the courage to say so. Andy the Viking was the armour, the fists, a shield of a false identity. But the only person he was ever really fighting was her.
