A Critical Look At The Book At Her Majesty’s Request
Sarah Forbes Bonetta screwed her face into a look of disdain. She then turned to Princess Alice where she was walking beside her.
“Offer me comfort, Alice… Please assure me that all will be right in the end.”
“Must one lie to one’s friends?” Alice retorted, smiling.
“But of course… And said one must do so happily if they are black,” Sarah replied.
“Ah, Othello… Yes, well, Mr. Shakespeare’s Black royal wasn’t such a one as you are, Sally,” Alice shot back.
“I should say so,” Sarah said, beginning to walk again. She then continued ruefully: “At least HE got to marry whom he wanted…”
When all is said and done, Women’s History Month for the year 2025 was a mixed bag of steps that were taken forward and steps that were taken back as far as Africa is concerned; while the continent got its latest female national leaders in the persons of President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and Vice-President Lucia Witbooi of Namibia, March 2025 also saw the coming to public light of the sex scandal involving Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan of Nigeria and her direct superior, the senate president of her country, Senator Godswill Akpabio.
In the former case, the anti-Apartheid veteran Ms. Nandi-Ndaitwah was elected to become the fourth president of her country since Independence in 1990, following the death in office of her colleague and predecessor, President Hage Geingob. After she was sworn in, one of her first acts was to install Ms. Witbooi as her deputy. Prior to becoming a politician, the new vice-president had been a teacher.
In the latter case, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan came forward to claim that she was being both harassed and victimized by Senator Akpabio as a result of her refusal to submit to his sexual advances, and rather than lead to a thorough investigation, this ended in her being temporarily expelled from the legislative chamber as a punishment. This was done to a woman that was already one of a very small number of female Nigerian lawmakers that their country could boast of having prior to the event.
While both of these things were occurring in different parts of the Commonwealth of Nations, I spent a day in the middle of the month reading At Her Majesty’s Request, the biography of the Saro princess and Victorian socialite Sarah Forbes Bonetta by the author Walter Dean Myers. As a result, once I was through with it, I was left feeling in their wakes that the agency that Miss Forbes Bonetta was afforded more than a century ago – after being liberated from slavery, she was famously taken to London, where she was ultimately adopted as a ward and goddaughter by no less a personage than Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India herself – was much like that that a female African senator (or president) would have today.
Even after all of these years, having such a position (much like being a Victorian ‘lady’) would nevertheless likewise require a constant balancing act, a walk on a tightrope that could mean the difference between historic glory and a short and ignominious end in failure. In this article, I’m going to do two things as I explore this further; I’ll critique the book itself in the main, exploring what I feel are its strengths and weaknesses, and I will also use the opportunity to further discuss how far the African woman in the public eye has come since Miss Forbes Bonetta’s day, and how far there is left to go before we can say that she has truly achieved equity and empowerment.
Sarah
Even without the exoticism of being the protogèe of the world’s most powerful woman, Sarah Forbes Bonetta’s life was almost too fantastic to be true: Born into the Egbado clan of my own Yoruba tribe in ca. 1842, her parentage marked her out for leadership from the very start; although her exact background is unknown, it is believed that she belonged to a royal family due to the aristocratic ritual scarification that she had been subjected to… Scarification which, Mr. Myers tells us in the book under review, guaranteed that her life would be spared upon her being kidnapped by the Dahomeyans and that she would eventually live to meet Victoria in England.
The Egbados, or – as they are known today – the Yewas, were an offshoot of the Oyo branch of the Yorubas that both benefited from the collapse of Oyo’s empire and suffered due to it. The end of the empire meant that Sarah’s relatives were now independent where previously they had been vassals of the Oyos, and yet that event caused them to be sitting ducks in a frontier region between Oyo’s core territory and that of the subjects of the Kingdom of Dahomey, who had hitherto also been vassals to Oyo and who loathed all of the Yoruba peoples intensely as a result.
Due to this, almost annual raids were conducted by the Dahomeyans in Yorubaland; both male and female warriors from that country entered our territory periodically and fought brutal wars against not just the Egbados, but against a number of other Yoruba clans as well (including my own Egbas of Abeokuta). For their trouble, in addition to leaving a trail of death and destruction whose victims included Sarah’s biological parents, the Dahomeyans acquired slaves that they could sell to slave traders on the coast for profit. Sarah herself would probably have been one such unfortunate person – and therefore would have lived a very different life – if it hadn’t been for the aforementioned scars on her face.
After Commander Frederick E. Forbes of the HMS Bonetta, a British military officer and diplomat, talked King Ghezo of Dahomey into not killing Sarah in ritual sacrifice, she was given to him as a gift from Ghezo to Queen Victoria as a means of mollifying the by then indignant Commander Forbes, who had made a big show of his disapproval of ritual murder. Accepting her on the understanding that to refuse would be to sign her death warrant, the commander set sail with her aboard his ship. After renaming her, he took her back to Nigeria for a bit, then set out for London.
By the point that the Bonetta arrived in Britain, the Yoruba princess that bore its name had learned to converse in English quite well. This was the beginning of what would go on to serve as one of the most unusual Black British lives of the British imperial period; Sarah met Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, as well as their numerous children, was placed with the Forbes family as their custodial charge thereafter, then departed from England to be educated at what was known at the time as the Female Institution in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a missionary school that was intended to educate the liberated female slaves that the British had resettled in the colony – liberated slaves like Sarah herself, women that would go on to be the founding matriarchs of Sierra Leone’s elite Creole community.
When Sarah returned to England as a young woman a number of years later, she was arguably something of a celebrity… Her godmother the Queen made certain that she wanted for nothing, and through her subsequent dwelling with the family of the Reverend Frederick Schoen (which she came to regard as her adoptive clan), she was given the love that she required to flourish in her new home. Attending royal functions such as weddings and funerals, Miss Forbes Bonetta socialized at the highest levels of her new society.
The next major event to occur in her life was her marriage. Once she was of marriageable age, the book tells us that an offer of marriage was received from the wealthy Saro businessman J.P.L. Davies. Although she initially had no intention of marrying Mr. Davies, and told him so, news of his suit soon got back to Queen Victoria. In order to convince her young charge that the marriage was her only option, Sarah was separated from her erstwhile guardians and placed with a family that she didn’t like in Brighton.
Although we can dismiss her characterization of their home as a ‘pigsty’ as probable hyperbole on the part of a woman whose letters often sounded like something out of Jane Austen, it was clear what the intention behind this chain of events was; the Queen may have been fond of her, but she wasn’t prepared to let her marry for something as unpredictable as love. No, women of rank had arranged marriages… Sarah had attracted the attention of a wealthy, powerful Saro man… She was a woman of rank – the most eligible Black woman in the empire – and she would have to submit to him therefore, as Victoria’s own daughters both had done and would do again with men that their mother approved of.
Although Miss Forbes Bonetta eventually begrudgingly capitulated, the book tells us towards its end that following her marriage to him, the newly re-christened Mrs. Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies had grown quite fond of J.P.L. Davies. After having three children by him (including a daughter, Victoria, who was also the godchild of Queen Victoria), Sarah began to work in Lagos, Nigeria, as a teacher. She died of tuberculosis in 1880.
Sally
Ultimately, At Her Majesty’s Request is a fascinating book that is full of contradictions. Something of a popular history, it explained the major events in Miss Forbes Bonetta’s life in a readable, easily digestible manner. As I said earlier, I finished reading it in a day. While this might be desirable when dealing with most readers – and is, in truth, my preferred method of writing about historical figures – the form of popular history does have its drawbacks. One most crushing is a major flaw of the book, I feel.
The matter is this… Although I felt that the piece was meticulously researched, a glaring deficiency can be found in how it treats African customs. The only thing that I know about the Dahomeyans as a result of it is that theirs was a ruthless, bloodthirsty culture. That may well have been true, but surely more of a sense of them could have been given in telling this story? If we had been dealing with any other culture that had great stains on its legacy by contemporary standards – such as the antebellum United States where many Dahomeyan slaves ended up, for example, or the plantations of the British West Indies, where Britain itself had been a great slaving power just a few short decades prior to Sarah’s abduction – we would have been given more in terms of shades and nuances. Why would the Dahomeyans be characterized as paragons of evil when the West itself wasn’t innocent in terms of savagery towards Black slaves?
Beyond just that case, there was also the Sierra Leonean Creoles. Their position as a mixed ethnic group that was composed of people with ancestry in tribes from all over West Africa wasn’t explored. As a result, Sarah’s position as a Yoruba that later became a Saro – the Nigerian sub-group of the Sierra Leonean Creoles – was ill-defined. We were never given a sense of these people’s remarkable rise as the new bourgeoisie of the entire West African sub-region. This was a missed opportunity.
The worst in terms of this, though, was what was done with the Yoruba themselves. Little in the way of background information was given on my tribe, and this was such a major flaw that it had an effect on the narrative itself. In the epilogue, we are told by Mr. Myers that he was never able to ascertain what Sarah’s birth name had been. This is strange, because I know of one birth name that was right there in the text.
If he had had an expert on Yoruba customs as an advisor while preparing the manuscript, such a person might have pointed out to him that the name “Ina” – or, as we Yoruba spell it, Aina – is a praise name in our naming tradition that describes the unique circumstances of a particular birth. Due to the fact that she bore it, we can say with some certainty that her birth was complicated as a result of the umbilical cord being wrapped around her neck as she came out of her mother. I found it rather telling that upon her marriage, she re-adopted this name in her letters… Almost as if she was asserting her Yoruba-ness once she was living in Yorubaland again. The fact that he missed it is indicative of what I consider to be a major flaw.
It wasn’t all bad, though. Despite these demerits, the book succeeds at fleshing out Miss Forbes Bonetta’s life nonetheless. The inclusion of fragments of other texts – everything from books to letters – that were written by the major figures in the drama gave the book an immediacy and authenticity that you would have to strive to beat. Sarah comes through in her letters most especially, giving her agency in a way that I found to be heartwarming in light of how deeply lacking in agency her life had been in other respects.
Another strength was the fact that Mr. Myers seemed to have used a multidisciplinary approach when collating his material. Although there really weren’t that many cited sources in terms of the continent of Miss Forbes Bonetta’s birth, photographs and letters from his personal collection – both in her hand and in those of others, a number of references to Commander Forbes’ book on Dahomey, and even letters and photographs from the Royal Collection that were granted to him by the order of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, were among those things that were included. This therefore covers not only history, but also sociology, anthropology, politics, even economics (we get a table outlining Sarah’s expenses while at school at one point).
A third merit that the book has is the fact that it exists to begin with, serving as it does as a corrective to the ridiculous assertion that is peddled in some quarters that Britain’s Black history only began with the arrival of the Windrush immigrants from the West Indies in the aftermath of World War II. At Her Majesty’s Request proves that there had been Black British people of worth and substance for at least a century prior to this (and indeed for much longer than that).
In the end, although I would’ve wanted to learn more about her descendants (who, I might say here, include the Nigerian medical professional and national heroine Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh and the Ghanaian-Nigerian academic and educational administrator Prof. Babatunde Kweku Adadevoh), the book is a fitting tribute to the memory of one of Africa’s most illustrious daughters. I heartily recommend it.
Etta
Now, to bring it all home and explore how it connects to the position of the African woman in today’s world. Throughout recorded history, women from here have had to navigate a veritable minefield in terms of living public lives. This has usually manifested in two major ways.
From Nefertiti of Egypt to Winnie Mandela of South Africa, the consorts to men that have led our peoples have often found that they must be seen to be without blemish if they are to wield their privilege effectively. Although we can say with some justification that this is not unique to them (the saying “Caesar’s wife must be beyond reproach” didn’t originate on the continent, after all), the case of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan cited earlier proves that talk of it now being a level playing field in terms of the expectations that are placed on our women by the African people remains nothing more than a pipe dream at best – or a bold faced lie at worst.
In addition to this, the fact that there is a problem to begin with in terms of female representation in the public sphere in Africa often serves to indirectly reinforce it; affirmative action that is utilized to correct the imbalance might well lead to resentment on the part of some men, who will then question a female beneficiary’s qualifications or ability following her rise to power. The irony, however, is that nobody ever assails the worthiness of the men that have run this continent into the ground since Independence in the 1950s and ’60s in this way. All of Africa’s most brutal dictators have been male, yet we are only too happy to elect or appoint more of them to positions of power today.
What At Her Majesty’s Request does quite well is show how a woman from here has to deal with countervailing elements such as a comparative lack of independent authority and an expectation of typically ‘feminine’ docility while also being expected to be a paragon of perfection in the way mentioned above. Sarah Forbes Bonetta was famous in Africa and in Britain; she received an income from Queen Victoria, making her a figure of privilege, and later married a man of wealth and standing. Be this as it may, the matter of her marriage – and her lack of agency in terms of her consenting to or refusing to have it happen – show that power and influence can often be an albatross around an African woman’s neck in a way that they aren’t for her male counterpart. Sometimes, this can amount to what essentially constitutes a gilded cage.
Agency is key to understanding what is meant here… Where powerful men have the luxury of a patriarchal superstructure that cleans up after them and makes certain that they seldom fall due to their shortcomings, women in similar circumstances struggle against both public perceptions – which demand either perfection or the appearance of it (Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan has since been provisionally recalled by her constituency) – and the fact that they usually have to operate in a network of cultural pitfalls even when they have power (President Nandi-Ndaitwah may be head of state, but she is still a woman in a country where most of her colleagues would hold archaic views about her capabilities due to both tribal custom and political precedent).
These are old problems, and it will take vibrant efforts to remedy them. Although progress has been made since Miss Forbes Bonetta’s day, more remains to be done. Both men and women, here and elsewhere, will have to make committed attempts to change how they regard African women whenever they operate in the public sector. What is more, programs like affirmative action should not be viewed as being indicative of a lack of worth on the part of their beneficiaries; although a level playing field is desirable, we do not live in a perfect world, and drastic measures such as them must therefore be supported by all those of goodwill.
If Africa’s women are to have a future that is worthy of them, then they must be given seats at the table; Old prejudices must give way to new ways of thinking, the differences in how they and African men are treated must be brought to a bare minimum, and institutional safeguards such as constitutional gender-neutrality must be strengthened. Only then will the status quo be altered effectively.
Conclusion
Sarah Forbes Bonetta lived in a world that was very different from our own. The West and Africa were treated differently, Christianity and Islam were as well, and so were the White person and the Black person. The world has changed more in the past 200 years than it did in the preceding 800, and we are all the better for it.
Still, for all of this, reading her biography showed me that the more things have changed in some respects, the more they have stayed the same in others. I am grateful for her life, for its example, and I am grateful for the book that showed it to me so capably. Beyond this, I am also grateful for the Nandi-Ndaitwahs of today – her contemporary heiresses – who continue to deal with all that she had to with a grace and aplomb that has to be seen to be believed. Due to them, to paraphrase what I said online in honour of International Women’s Day on the 8th of March this year, it is indeed not yet Uhuru… But I have faith that it will be someday.
Princess Alice watched the sunset silently. She then turned to Sarah Forbes Bonetta.
“Do you know what you’re going to do, Sally?” She asked.
“What else is there to do? I’m a woman in a world that was made for men, and so I must do what I am told… Vicky did, didn’t she? Your sister married a man your mother chose.”
“She seems quite happy with him now, though,” Alice retorted.
“Maybe that will someday be said of me,” Sarah said wistfully. After a brief silence, Alice spoke again.
“All will be right in the end, Sally… You’ll see,” she declared. After another moment of silence, Sarah broke into a wide grin.
“Liar,” she said.
——-
Main image: ChatGPT remixed