June 23, 2020 • 27 mins
Stories from history are not kind to Queen Ranavalona of the Kingdom of Imerina. They call her bloodthirsty, mad, a "female Caligula." People were killed under her rule—lots of them, and cruelly. But "madness" doesn't tell the whole story. Ranavalona was a canny political leader, protecting her kingdom from the insurrection of imperialism for her entire 33-year reign... at any cost.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Erinminkie. Listener discretion is advised.
In eighteen thirty seven, just a few months before Queen
Victoria would become the monarch of an empire at age eighteen,
a group of six ambassadors arrived to England from the
(00:23):
island of Madagascar. The six ambassadors had made the perilous
journey from the eastern coast of Africa to London on
behalf of their queen, the Queen of Imerna, Queen Ranavalanu.
Emerna or the Merna Kingdom, was the largest and most
powerful kingdom on the Madagascar island. It was dense with
(00:46):
natural resources and had achieved military supremacy and near full
island dominance during the reign of Rotima, who allied with
the British Empire, but that allegiance ended the moment Ratama
died and his wife Ranavala became Queen. Ranava tore up
(01:06):
all the arrangements with European powers, ejected their ambassadors, and
declared that the Marna Kingdom would exist under a policy
of complete isolation, with an emphasis on returning back to
native traditions and cultures. There would be no more Christian
missionaries in in Marna. The mRNA people who had already
(01:28):
converted would be accepted for the time being, but by
the end of her reign they would suffer bloody persecution.
Queen Ranavolina had one priority to return Amerna to the
way it had been before European settlers, and she would
kill as many people as necessary in order to achieve
(01:48):
her vision. I suppose that single mindedness does reveal a
second priority, preserve her own power, protect the crown at
any cost. The six ambassadors who came to meet with
the British King William the Fourth were given a lovely
diplomatic tour of England. They went to the mint, the dockyard,
(02:10):
the Tower of London, the zoological gardens. But however pleasant
their stay, the ambassadors refused to budge from their message.
The queen had sent them with two letters. She dictated
in polite but unambiguous language, the law of her country
would not be dictated by Europeans. Christianity would not be tolerated.
(02:34):
Europeans were forbidden from living in Madagascar, with the exception
of those soldiers taken as prisoners. Of war to England
about to welcome their own queen to the throne. Runovalinot
was an object of fascination. Depictions of her in Victorian
sources ranged from bewilderment to outright racism. In contrast to
(02:57):
tiny Queen Victoria, standing only five tall, a paradigm of
domesticity and Christian femininity, Queen Navolina was terrifying, a bloodthirsty
despot who would slaughter her own people, are enslave them,
who refused trade alliances with Europe, and who obey traditional
(03:17):
rituals that the nineteenth century Europeans seemed strange and superstitious.
The problem wasn't that she was a woman, no, of
course not. Their next monarch was about to be a woman.
But Victoria was going to be the right kind of woman,
a civilized, domesticated woman. Run of Alina, they wrote, was
(03:39):
what would happen if a woman allowed her bassist, most
heathenistic impulses to run unchecked. It's no wonder, then, that
the few depictions we have of Queen Ronavolina in the
English language are sparse and heavily woven with racism. She
tops lists of the most bloodthirsty queen in history, often
(04:01):
casually referenced as Queen Ronovolna the Bloody or Queen Ronovolna
the cruel. Recently, there's been a small school of thought
that attempted to recast her as a feminist hero, someone
who fought off the imperialist forces in order to protect
her kingdom. But that doesn't really fit her either. She's
(04:23):
both and she's neither. Ronavolina was cruel, her reign was bloody.
She was a selfish and paranoid ruler, but she was
also politically adept and militaristically minded. She continued the expansion
of the Marina Kingdom that her husband began to this day.
(04:43):
The few preserved relics of traditional Malagas culture that we
do have are mostly thanks to her. So I begin
this podcast with the disclaimer that there are very few
reliable English language sources that present a clear picture of
Ronovolna's reign. Many of the writings come from the Christian
missionaries that she expelled, who would have purposefully exaggerated their
(05:06):
stories of her cruelty. All we can do is attempt
to tease out what we do know from the sources
we do have. The story beneath is of a distant
and challenging woman who defied European supremacy, a woman who
would rather kill than compromise. I'm danishchwartz and this is
(05:30):
noble blood. There are few details about Queen Roanevolina's early life,
but most historical accounts put her birth in seventeen eighty eight.
Sometime during her childhood, her father saved the life of
(05:50):
the mRNA king from an assassination attempt. In thanks, the
king betrothed his son Radama to Ranevolina and promise that
she would be his senior wife and that their children
would be prioritized in the line of succession. The two
were married and an eighteen time, Radama's father died and
(06:12):
Radama became king of Inmerna. Radama was seventeen and Ronevolana
was twenty two. As a leader, Rodama the first focused
on expansion. His priority was building up the Marina Kingdom
to one day control the entire island of Madagascar. To
(06:32):
that end, he made a deal with Great Britain. They
would provide him with weapons and Western style training for
his army, and in return, Radama would eliminate slavery, which
had been the cornerstone of most of the economies of
the kingdoms on Madagascar. The deal with the British, which
had been meant to secure the future of the Marina economy,
(06:54):
would in fact do the opposite. Eliminating the slave trade
had been a strategic move on the part of the British,
not one of benevolence. They undercut the economy of the kingdom,
and before it could be rebuilt, they arrived in order
to trade under incredibly lucrative and one sided turns. If
Madagascar could be made into a colony, all the better
(07:16):
to keep it from the French first, but more importantly,
it was a strategic stronghold, a resource rich island in
the Indian Ocean. Under Rodama, the first nobles began to
adopt a new Latin alphabet of the Malagas language. A
brief side note, the native language on Madagascar is spelled
(07:40):
Malagasy phonetically, but pronounced to the best of my ability
and understanding, Malagas. The Malagas written language had previously been
closer to Arabic, and along with westernized militarization and language,
Radama also welcomed Christianity missionaries throw I had done the island,
(08:01):
setting up schools and converting mostly lower class Malagas people.
The queen watched all of this but said nothing. Her
husband's eagerness was understandable. They both wanted their kingdom to
be strong. They both wanted to control the resources of Madagascar,
but he didn't seem to understand the threat of Christianity.
(08:23):
Christianity meant worshiping a new God, for going the spiritual
traditions of the Malagas people, the traditions that had given
the monarchy it's very power. The king was only the
king because the blood of holy ancestors flowed through his veins.
Ruhama died at age thirty five, though the exact nature
(08:45):
of his death isn't known. He was a heavy drinker,
prone to fits of rage and violence when he was drunk.
It was a combination of poor health, erratic behavior, and alcohol.
His wife had given him no children, and so before
his death, he decreed that the next in line for
the throne would be his nephew. But Ronavolino was prepared.
(09:10):
The night her husband lay dying, she gathered a small
group of noblemen and military guardsmen and took the throne
for herself, declaring herself Queen, the nephew, and the rest
of her husband's family were brought to the palace. Any
one of them could have a claim to the throne,
(09:31):
could declare that she was illegitimate and raise an army
to oppose her, and so Ranevolina ordered that every single
one of them be killed. Because there was a superstition
that forbade spilling of royal blood, Ranavola had every death
done by strangulation. Hers would be a bloodless coup. Technically,
(10:01):
according to the writings of a missionary who was expelled
by Ranevolna a few years later into her reign, during
her coronation ceremony, the new queen was anointed with the
blood of a freshly killed bull. That little anecdote an
attempt to paint her as primitive and barbaric, is almost
certainly not true. There are no other sources corroborating that.
(10:25):
What we do know about her coronation on May twenty seventh,
eighteen twenty nine, is that she wore a dress in
the French style, constructed from embroidered red velvet and silk,
embroidered with her initials and rice stocks, a symbol of
the indigenous plant life on the island. Her dress had
(10:46):
a row of gold buttons. Ranevolina had specific tastes in
her clothing, high quality European fabrics and silhouettes with specifically
Malaga's details. Clothing wasn't the only thing that the new
queen had strong opinions on. As soon as her coup
(11:06):
was complete, she dissolved the treaty her husband had made
with the British. Both in terms of national and personal policy,
Ronovolna was intensely private. Unlike members of the court, she
refused to be photographed. She almost never spoke in public,
perhaps insecure about her lack of complete literacy in the
(11:28):
new written Malagas alphabet, which would have made her unable
to read long speeches, and so her few appearances in
public were spectacles of red silk and imposing crowns. Her
power was protected through fear and rumor, and she kept
a close circle of nobles and officials, with whom she
(11:50):
consulted on matters of the state. Though Ronavolino never remarried,
she did take a number of love hers after her
husband's death, whom she would then make prime minister. But
even they weren't immune from her wrath. Far from it.
One of those lovers turned Prime minister, a man named
(12:14):
Andreami Haja, was chastised for his pro European ideology, and
so he was sentenced to undergo one of the ultimate
horrors of ronav Alamo's court, the Tanginna ordeal. The idea
of trial by ordeal was nothing new on Madagascar, nor
was it something new in Europe, especially not during the
(12:36):
witch trials, but Ranavalina gloried in it. During the Tangina Ordeal,
a suspect would be given a poison tanginent nut. He
or she would then be forced to eat three pieces
of chicken skin. If the poison forced them to vomit
up all three pieces of chicken skin, they were innocent.
(12:57):
If they failed to vomit up all three pieces, or
the poison just killed them out right, that meant they
were guilty and deserved to die. And the queen's lover
refused to undergo the ordeal, and so he was killed
on the spot. About one in three people who underwent
the Tangina ordeal survived. Nobles and slaves alike were sentenced
(13:20):
to the ordeal. When Ronovolina's niece died of whooping cough,
all of the slaves that had served her were accused
of witchcraft and sorcery and forced to undergo the ordeal.
There were other malogust traditions that Ronovolina were vitalized. Her
spirituality revolved around the sun or golden idols that were
(13:41):
heavily guarded, and she made policies based on a process
called sick kid, which you threw dried beans on a
board and used mathematical formulations to come to a decision.
But Ronovolina was also one who recognized the utility of
Western technology, especially when it came to technology that would
help keep her island entirely self sufficient, and a gift
(14:05):
came to Madagascar in the form of a French adventurer
by the name of Jean la Board. In eighteen thirty one,
Jean la Board was sailing off the coast of Madagascar
attempting to rescue treasure from other ships that had sunk
in the Indian Ocean. Surprise, surprise, La Board himself was shipwrecked,
and thanks to a royal decree, everything and everyone that
(14:29):
washed up on shore became property of the Marina government.
La Board was summoned to Ranavalina's court. La Board wasn't
just an adventurer. He was also a brilliant engineer, and
he and Ronavolina immediately struck up a mutually lucrative partnership.
He would be given all of the land and resources
(14:50):
he needed in order to manufacture military equipment for Marina,
so that Ranavolina would have no more need for trading
at all. La Board set to work. The man began
with an arms and munitions factory, but soon he had
created an entire city of production, complete vertical integration. He
(15:15):
had blast furnaces to produced cast iron, pudding mills for
wrought iron, a steel plant, cement plant, a textile mill.
He produced not only cannons and swords, but bricks, tiles, pottery, glass, porcelain, silk, soap,
and candles. The city he built, according to a Malagas novelist,
(15:35):
had risen from the ground by the will of a
single individual and the industry of a multitude. After all,
la Board didn't work alone. He had the assistance of
as many slaves as he needed, thanks to the system
in place in which the poor could pay their taxes
not with money but through forced labor. Some claim, with
(15:58):
no evidence, that la Board and Queen Navlna became lovers.
It maybe a nice story, but there's no way to
know one way or the other. She did have a
son born before Laborde arrived, by one of her early
prime ministers, but she tactfully pretended that the father was
her deceased husband, the king, even though mathematically that was impossible.
(16:20):
But labor became a circuit father to her son through
mentoring him and teaching him. He would give him tours
of his factories, teach him the science behind the technology.
The two confided in each other became each other's closest confidants.
As rone Volna's reign began to become deadlier, and it
(16:42):
was about to become far deadlier. In thirty five, rone
Volna became sick with a mysterious illness. She lay in
bed for days, a fever, wedding her brow with sweat
and stored in her vision. No one was allowed in
(17:03):
or out of the palace, but words still traveled fast.
The queen was going to die, but then a miracle
one morning, when the sun shone through the windows of
the new palace that Laboord had helped construct for her,
Ronavolino had returned to health. It was a miracle she knew,
(17:23):
sent to her by the gods of her ancestors, and
it was a sign that Christian missionaries needed to leave
the island. She had tolerated Christianity for a while, tolerated
it among the lower class of Malagas people, but Christianity
had started to infiltrate the nobility, and Ronevalina knew that
(17:45):
if it continued to spread, it would erode every cultural
tradition that her kingdom maintained. Christianity would become a parasite,
sucking at Mariner culture, blotting it out like ink on
a page. Christianity was an invading force, and so Rona
Volna became a queen at war. After her recovery, Ranavalina
(18:10):
outlawed the baptizing of Malagas subjects, and she banished all
of the non native missionaries. The next year, she would
begin executing not just the European Christians, but her own
converted subjects. Christians who refused to renounce their new religion
were subject to enslavement at best, or trial by ordeal
(18:32):
and execution at worst. Missionaries were turned home to Europe
salivating at the mouth with stories of Rona Volna's brutality
and the martyrs of their sacrificed Christian brothers and sisters.
There was a thirty seven year old woman, they said,
named ross Lama, who was speared to death and hurled
over a cliff. Other Christian converts were burned at the stake,
(18:56):
or boiled alive or brutally dismembered the There are estimates
that by eighteen forty one, five of the native population
of Imrina had been killed through the Tanginna ordeal. There
are some estimates that any given servant who had worked
under Runevalina for twenty years would have survived seven ordeals,
(19:19):
seven times, taking the poison vomiting up all three chicken
skins to prove their innocence. European powers would see Ranavalina's
ruthlessness in person one more time before her reign was over.
In eighteen forty the Queen declared that all European trade
would be cut off entirely. The British and French stirred uncomfortably.
(19:45):
Madagascar was a prime and important location. Those resources were
incredibly valuable, and it would make an incredibly lucrative colony,
and so in a rare moment, of cooperation from historic enemies,
the British and French joined forces to jointly attack the
(20:06):
coast of Madagascar. Renevlina annihilated the advance almost immediately. The
British and French were fooled by primitive, cheap facade on
the island coast behind it was the real fortress. The
European vessels were forced to flee, and the soldiers that
(20:28):
had attacked on the shore were quickly dispatched with Navalina
had their skulls, the skulls of twenty European casualties affixed
to pikes and placed on the shore to ward off
any future attacks. There were no polite diplomatic apologies. I
find it very odd Renevalina said that the British and
(20:50):
French would interfere in my affairs. How would Queen Victoria
and Louis Filippe take it if I were to meddle
with their countries. I have as much right to nail
my enemy's head at the end of a pole as
Queen Victoria has to send her prisoners into exile. The
humiliating defeat for the European powers was better retold than
(21:13):
as a story of Ranevolna's evil and brutality her quote
unparalleled reign of terror and fear. Ranavolina's final challenge would
come another decade later, when she put down a coup
from a wealthy French European slave trader who had managed
to entice to his side the two men Ranevolna held
(21:35):
closest to her her son and la Board. The French
slave trader, a man named Limbert, wrote a charter giving
himself the right to exploit all of the minerals and
forests of Madagascar, with a provision to give ten percent
to the monarchy. He went around to the courts of
Europe attempting to gather support and raise an army. It
(21:58):
would be a lucrative proper position if they succeeded and
overthrew Ronavolina. They were sure that they could convince her
son to sign the agreement, but the sting of past
defeat put off England and France from another attempt to
challenge Ronavolina, and so without a European army, Lambert came
(22:19):
directly to Madagascar himself and managed to win the support
of the Crown Prince and the engineer Lombard. They had
seen the queen's ruthlessness firsthand and her viciousness, and Marina
was isolated and traditional, yes, but at what cost? Maybe
the future was European, and so the prince agreed to
(22:41):
join in on the rebellion. It failed almost instantly. For
all of the depictions of Ronavolina as a hedonistic madwoman,
she was an efficient and effective leader with a network
of spy and the loyalty of her military. After the
(23:03):
small coup was dispatched of her son was forgiven. He
was just a young man led astray. But after that
she banished all Europeans from Imerna, including La Board. He
had been a close friend and confidante for over twenty
five years, but he had betrayed her. He left Madagascar
(23:26):
on her orders and returned to France for a queen
they said was insane and bloodthirsty. It struck me as
odd that he would be allowed just to leave and
return home. After all, that's a strategic decision to protect
her kingdom from French retaliation. To me, sending Lombard home
(23:48):
reads as a woman who was less emotional in her violence,
less well insane than the writings of angry Europeans and
vengeful missionaries would have led you to believe. There are
only a few Malagas women who wrote account of Ranovolina,
but one is a woman named ran I Raka, who
wrote in a letter after Ranavalina's death, the late Queen
(24:11):
is not so cruel as she's been represented. Many of
her subjects have really been killed by her orders, but
it was not wanton cruelty. It was through the laws
of her late predecessors. You have seen her. She is intelligent.
It's estimated that during Ranovolina's reign as many as fifty
(24:32):
percent of the Marina population was killed, and thanks to
both her torture and executions, but also from the famine
caused by the scorched earth policies her armies took when
it came to enemy kingdoms. From Ranovolna's perspective, violence wasn't capriciousness.
She was a woman who believed fiercely in the religious
(24:55):
right of the Tanginna ordeal, which allowed the gods to
decide who lived and who didn't. She was steadfast in that,
not making decisions based on anger or emotions. If people
needed to die, so be it, but the Marina people
as a whole wouldn't die. That was the important thing
preserving the kingdom itself. That's the story of the quote
(25:24):
bloody Queen Renovalina, But stick around after a brief sponsor
break to hear about her death and what happened next.
After the Queen's death, her son and then her son's
wife took over the throne and in Marina almost immediately
(25:46):
reverted back to European influence. The francohovah Wars, which began
in three led to the end of the Marina Kingdom
and the creation of the French Protectorate, which then became
the Colony of Matta Gascar. French claims to the property
that Laboard had left in Madagascar gifts from the queen
(26:07):
became the pretext for their armed invasion. There's one detail
about Queen Roneval in his funeral that seems worth mentioning.
The queen died in her sleep at age three after
a thirty three year long reign, but during the funeral
and arrant, spark flashed and caused a nearby barrel of
(26:28):
gunpowder to explode. Several bystanders were killed. Even in death,
Ronavolana maintained her reputation. Noble Blood is a production of
I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.
The show was written and hosted by Danis Schwartz and
(26:50):
produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young.
Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
and you can learn more about the show over at
Noble blood tails dot com. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M hmm.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Erinminkie. Listener discretion is advised.
In eighteen thirty seven, just a few months before Queen
Victoria would become the monarch of an empire at age eighteen,
a group of six ambassadors arrived to England from the
(00:23):
island of Madagascar. The six ambassadors had made the perilous
journey from the eastern coast of Africa to London on
behalf of their queen, the Queen of Imerna, Queen Ranavalanu.
Emerna or the Merna Kingdom, was the largest and most
powerful kingdom on the Madagascar island. It was dense with
(00:46):
natural resources and had achieved military supremacy and near full
island dominance during the reign of Rotima, who allied with
the British Empire, but that allegiance ended the moment Ratama
died and his wife Ranavala became Queen. Ranava tore up
(01:06):
all the arrangements with European powers, ejected their ambassadors, and
declared that the Marna Kingdom would exist under a policy
of complete isolation, with an emphasis on returning back to
native traditions and cultures. There would be no more Christian
missionaries in in Marna. The mRNA people who had already
(01:28):
converted would be accepted for the time being, but by
the end of her reign they would suffer bloody persecution.
Queen Ranavolina had one priority to return Amerna to the
way it had been before European settlers, and she would
kill as many people as necessary in order to achieve
(01:48):
her vision. I suppose that single mindedness does reveal a
second priority, preserve her own power, protect the crown at
any cost. The six ambassadors who came to meet with
the British King William the Fourth were given a lovely
diplomatic tour of England. They went to the mint, the dockyard,
(02:10):
the Tower of London, the zoological gardens. But however pleasant
their stay, the ambassadors refused to budge from their message.
The queen had sent them with two letters. She dictated
in polite but unambiguous language, the law of her country
would not be dictated by Europeans. Christianity would not be tolerated.
(02:34):
Europeans were forbidden from living in Madagascar, with the exception
of those soldiers taken as prisoners. Of war to England
about to welcome their own queen to the throne. Runovalinot
was an object of fascination. Depictions of her in Victorian
sources ranged from bewilderment to outright racism. In contrast to
(02:57):
tiny Queen Victoria, standing only five tall, a paradigm of
domesticity and Christian femininity, Queen Navolina was terrifying, a bloodthirsty
despot who would slaughter her own people, are enslave them,
who refused trade alliances with Europe, and who obey traditional
(03:17):
rituals that the nineteenth century Europeans seemed strange and superstitious.
The problem wasn't that she was a woman, no, of
course not. Their next monarch was about to be a woman.
But Victoria was going to be the right kind of woman,
a civilized, domesticated woman. Run of Alina, they wrote, was
(03:39):
what would happen if a woman allowed her bassist, most
heathenistic impulses to run unchecked. It's no wonder, then, that
the few depictions we have of Queen Ronavolina in the
English language are sparse and heavily woven with racism. She
tops lists of the most bloodthirsty queen in history, often
(04:01):
casually referenced as Queen Ronovolna the Bloody or Queen Ronovolna
the cruel. Recently, there's been a small school of thought
that attempted to recast her as a feminist hero, someone
who fought off the imperialist forces in order to protect
her kingdom. But that doesn't really fit her either. She's
(04:23):
both and she's neither. Ronavolina was cruel, her reign was bloody.
She was a selfish and paranoid ruler, but she was
also politically adept and militaristically minded. She continued the expansion
of the Marina Kingdom that her husband began to this day.
(04:43):
The few preserved relics of traditional Malagas culture that we
do have are mostly thanks to her. So I begin
this podcast with the disclaimer that there are very few
reliable English language sources that present a clear picture of
Ronovolna's reign. Many of the writings come from the Christian
missionaries that she expelled, who would have purposefully exaggerated their
(05:06):
stories of her cruelty. All we can do is attempt
to tease out what we do know from the sources
we do have. The story beneath is of a distant
and challenging woman who defied European supremacy, a woman who
would rather kill than compromise. I'm danishchwartz and this is
(05:30):
noble blood. There are few details about Queen Roanevolina's early life,
but most historical accounts put her birth in seventeen eighty eight.
Sometime during her childhood, her father saved the life of
(05:50):
the mRNA king from an assassination attempt. In thanks, the
king betrothed his son Radama to Ranevolina and promise that
she would be his senior wife and that their children
would be prioritized in the line of succession. The two
were married and an eighteen time, Radama's father died and
(06:12):
Radama became king of Inmerna. Radama was seventeen and Ronevolana
was twenty two. As a leader, Rodama the first focused
on expansion. His priority was building up the Marina Kingdom
to one day control the entire island of Madagascar. To
(06:32):
that end, he made a deal with Great Britain. They
would provide him with weapons and Western style training for
his army, and in return, Radama would eliminate slavery, which
had been the cornerstone of most of the economies of
the kingdoms on Madagascar. The deal with the British, which
had been meant to secure the future of the Marina economy,
(06:54):
would in fact do the opposite. Eliminating the slave trade
had been a strategic move on the part of the British,
not one of benevolence. They undercut the economy of the kingdom,
and before it could be rebuilt, they arrived in order
to trade under incredibly lucrative and one sided turns. If
Madagascar could be made into a colony, all the better
(07:16):
to keep it from the French first, but more importantly,
it was a strategic stronghold, a resource rich island in
the Indian Ocean. Under Rodama, the first nobles began to
adopt a new Latin alphabet of the Malagas language. A
brief side note, the native language on Madagascar is spelled
(07:40):
Malagasy phonetically, but pronounced to the best of my ability
and understanding, Malagas. The Malagas written language had previously been
closer to Arabic, and along with westernized militarization and language,
Radama also welcomed Christianity missionaries throw I had done the island,
(08:01):
setting up schools and converting mostly lower class Malagas people.
The queen watched all of this but said nothing. Her
husband's eagerness was understandable. They both wanted their kingdom to
be strong. They both wanted to control the resources of Madagascar,
but he didn't seem to understand the threat of Christianity.
(08:23):
Christianity meant worshiping a new God, for going the spiritual
traditions of the Malagas people, the traditions that had given
the monarchy it's very power. The king was only the
king because the blood of holy ancestors flowed through his veins.
Ruhama died at age thirty five, though the exact nature
(08:45):
of his death isn't known. He was a heavy drinker,
prone to fits of rage and violence when he was drunk.
It was a combination of poor health, erratic behavior, and alcohol.
His wife had given him no children, and so before
his death, he decreed that the next in line for
the throne would be his nephew. But Ronavolino was prepared.
(09:10):
The night her husband lay dying, she gathered a small
group of noblemen and military guardsmen and took the throne
for herself, declaring herself Queen, the nephew, and the rest
of her husband's family were brought to the palace. Any
one of them could have a claim to the throne,
(09:31):
could declare that she was illegitimate and raise an army
to oppose her, and so Ranevolina ordered that every single
one of them be killed. Because there was a superstition
that forbade spilling of royal blood, Ranavola had every death
done by strangulation. Hers would be a bloodless coup. Technically,
(10:01):
according to the writings of a missionary who was expelled
by Ranevolna a few years later into her reign, during
her coronation ceremony, the new queen was anointed with the
blood of a freshly killed bull. That little anecdote an
attempt to paint her as primitive and barbaric, is almost
certainly not true. There are no other sources corroborating that.
(10:25):
What we do know about her coronation on May twenty seventh,
eighteen twenty nine, is that she wore a dress in
the French style, constructed from embroidered red velvet and silk,
embroidered with her initials and rice stocks, a symbol of
the indigenous plant life on the island. Her dress had
(10:46):
a row of gold buttons. Ranevolina had specific tastes in
her clothing, high quality European fabrics and silhouettes with specifically
Malaga's details. Clothing wasn't the only thing that the new
queen had strong opinions on. As soon as her coup
(11:06):
was complete, she dissolved the treaty her husband had made
with the British. Both in terms of national and personal policy,
Ronovolna was intensely private. Unlike members of the court, she
refused to be photographed. She almost never spoke in public,
perhaps insecure about her lack of complete literacy in the
(11:28):
new written Malagas alphabet, which would have made her unable
to read long speeches, and so her few appearances in
public were spectacles of red silk and imposing crowns. Her
power was protected through fear and rumor, and she kept
a close circle of nobles and officials, with whom she
(11:50):
consulted on matters of the state. Though Ronavolino never remarried,
she did take a number of love hers after her
husband's death, whom she would then make prime minister. But
even they weren't immune from her wrath. Far from it.
One of those lovers turned Prime minister, a man named
(12:14):
Andreami Haja, was chastised for his pro European ideology, and
so he was sentenced to undergo one of the ultimate
horrors of ronav Alamo's court, the Tanginna ordeal. The idea
of trial by ordeal was nothing new on Madagascar, nor
was it something new in Europe, especially not during the
(12:36):
witch trials, but Ranavalina gloried in it. During the Tangina Ordeal,
a suspect would be given a poison tanginent nut. He
or she would then be forced to eat three pieces
of chicken skin. If the poison forced them to vomit
up all three pieces of chicken skin, they were innocent.
(12:57):
If they failed to vomit up all three pieces, or
the poison just killed them out right, that meant they
were guilty and deserved to die. And the queen's lover
refused to undergo the ordeal, and so he was killed
on the spot. About one in three people who underwent
the Tangina ordeal survived. Nobles and slaves alike were sentenced
(13:20):
to the ordeal. When Ronovolina's niece died of whooping cough,
all of the slaves that had served her were accused
of witchcraft and sorcery and forced to undergo the ordeal.
There were other malogust traditions that Ronovolina were vitalized. Her
spirituality revolved around the sun or golden idols that were
(13:41):
heavily guarded, and she made policies based on a process
called sick kid, which you threw dried beans on a
board and used mathematical formulations to come to a decision.
But Ronovolina was also one who recognized the utility of
Western technology, especially when it came to technology that would
help keep her island entirely self sufficient, and a gift
(14:05):
came to Madagascar in the form of a French adventurer
by the name of Jean la Board. In eighteen thirty one,
Jean la Board was sailing off the coast of Madagascar
attempting to rescue treasure from other ships that had sunk
in the Indian Ocean. Surprise, surprise, La Board himself was shipwrecked,
and thanks to a royal decree, everything and everyone that
(14:29):
washed up on shore became property of the Marina government.
La Board was summoned to Ranavalina's court. La Board wasn't
just an adventurer. He was also a brilliant engineer, and
he and Ronavolina immediately struck up a mutually lucrative partnership.
He would be given all of the land and resources
(14:50):
he needed in order to manufacture military equipment for Marina,
so that Ranavolina would have no more need for trading
at all. La Board set to work. The man began
with an arms and munitions factory, but soon he had
created an entire city of production, complete vertical integration. He
(15:15):
had blast furnaces to produced cast iron, pudding mills for
wrought iron, a steel plant, cement plant, a textile mill.
He produced not only cannons and swords, but bricks, tiles, pottery, glass, porcelain, silk, soap,
and candles. The city he built, according to a Malagas novelist,
(15:35):
had risen from the ground by the will of a
single individual and the industry of a multitude. After all,
la Board didn't work alone. He had the assistance of
as many slaves as he needed, thanks to the system
in place in which the poor could pay their taxes
not with money but through forced labor. Some claim, with
(15:58):
no evidence, that la Board and Queen Navlna became lovers.
It maybe a nice story, but there's no way to
know one way or the other. She did have a
son born before Laborde arrived, by one of her early
prime ministers, but she tactfully pretended that the father was
her deceased husband, the king, even though mathematically that was impossible.
(16:20):
But labor became a circuit father to her son through
mentoring him and teaching him. He would give him tours
of his factories, teach him the science behind the technology.
The two confided in each other became each other's closest confidants.
As rone Volna's reign began to become deadlier, and it
(16:42):
was about to become far deadlier. In thirty five, rone
Volna became sick with a mysterious illness. She lay in
bed for days, a fever, wedding her brow with sweat
and stored in her vision. No one was allowed in
(17:03):
or out of the palace, but words still traveled fast.
The queen was going to die, but then a miracle
one morning, when the sun shone through the windows of
the new palace that Laboord had helped construct for her,
Ronavolino had returned to health. It was a miracle she knew,
(17:23):
sent to her by the gods of her ancestors, and
it was a sign that Christian missionaries needed to leave
the island. She had tolerated Christianity for a while, tolerated
it among the lower class of Malagas people, but Christianity
had started to infiltrate the nobility, and Ronevalina knew that
(17:45):
if it continued to spread, it would erode every cultural
tradition that her kingdom maintained. Christianity would become a parasite,
sucking at Mariner culture, blotting it out like ink on
a page. Christianity was an invading force, and so Rona
Volna became a queen at war. After her recovery, Ranavalina
(18:10):
outlawed the baptizing of Malagas subjects, and she banished all
of the non native missionaries. The next year, she would
begin executing not just the European Christians, but her own
converted subjects. Christians who refused to renounce their new religion
were subject to enslavement at best, or trial by ordeal
(18:32):
and execution at worst. Missionaries were turned home to Europe
salivating at the mouth with stories of Rona Volna's brutality
and the martyrs of their sacrificed Christian brothers and sisters.
There was a thirty seven year old woman, they said,
named ross Lama, who was speared to death and hurled
over a cliff. Other Christian converts were burned at the stake,
(18:56):
or boiled alive or brutally dismembered the There are estimates
that by eighteen forty one, five of the native population
of Imrina had been killed through the Tanginna ordeal. There
are some estimates that any given servant who had worked
under Runevalina for twenty years would have survived seven ordeals,
(19:19):
seven times, taking the poison vomiting up all three chicken
skins to prove their innocence. European powers would see Ranavalina's
ruthlessness in person one more time before her reign was over.
In eighteen forty the Queen declared that all European trade
would be cut off entirely. The British and French stirred uncomfortably.
(19:45):
Madagascar was a prime and important location. Those resources were
incredibly valuable, and it would make an incredibly lucrative colony,
and so in a rare moment, of cooperation from historic enemies,
the British and French joined forces to jointly attack the
(20:06):
coast of Madagascar. Renevlina annihilated the advance almost immediately. The
British and French were fooled by primitive, cheap facade on
the island coast behind it was the real fortress. The
European vessels were forced to flee, and the soldiers that
(20:28):
had attacked on the shore were quickly dispatched with Navalina
had their skulls, the skulls of twenty European casualties affixed
to pikes and placed on the shore to ward off
any future attacks. There were no polite diplomatic apologies. I
find it very odd Renevalina said that the British and
(20:50):
French would interfere in my affairs. How would Queen Victoria
and Louis Filippe take it if I were to meddle
with their countries. I have as much right to nail
my enemy's head at the end of a pole as
Queen Victoria has to send her prisoners into exile. The
humiliating defeat for the European powers was better retold than
(21:13):
as a story of Ranevolna's evil and brutality her quote
unparalleled reign of terror and fear. Ranavolina's final challenge would
come another decade later, when she put down a coup
from a wealthy French European slave trader who had managed
to entice to his side the two men Ranevolna held
(21:35):
closest to her her son and la Board. The French
slave trader, a man named Limbert, wrote a charter giving
himself the right to exploit all of the minerals and
forests of Madagascar, with a provision to give ten percent
to the monarchy. He went around to the courts of
Europe attempting to gather support and raise an army. It
(21:58):
would be a lucrative proper position if they succeeded and
overthrew Ronavolina. They were sure that they could convince her
son to sign the agreement, but the sting of past
defeat put off England and France from another attempt to
challenge Ronavolina, and so without a European army, Lambert came
(22:19):
directly to Madagascar himself and managed to win the support
of the Crown Prince and the engineer Lombard. They had
seen the queen's ruthlessness firsthand and her viciousness, and Marina
was isolated and traditional, yes, but at what cost? Maybe
the future was European, and so the prince agreed to
(22:41):
join in on the rebellion. It failed almost instantly. For
all of the depictions of Ronavolina as a hedonistic madwoman,
she was an efficient and effective leader with a network
of spy and the loyalty of her military. After the
(23:03):
small coup was dispatched of her son was forgiven. He
was just a young man led astray. But after that
she banished all Europeans from Imerna, including La Board. He
had been a close friend and confidante for over twenty
five years, but he had betrayed her. He left Madagascar
(23:26):
on her orders and returned to France for a queen
they said was insane and bloodthirsty. It struck me as
odd that he would be allowed just to leave and
return home. After all, that's a strategic decision to protect
her kingdom from French retaliation. To me, sending Lombard home
(23:48):
reads as a woman who was less emotional in her violence,
less well insane than the writings of angry Europeans and
vengeful missionaries would have led you to believe. There are
only a few Malagas women who wrote account of Ranovolina,
but one is a woman named ran I Raka, who
wrote in a letter after Ranavalina's death, the late Queen
(24:11):
is not so cruel as she's been represented. Many of
her subjects have really been killed by her orders, but
it was not wanton cruelty. It was through the laws
of her late predecessors. You have seen her. She is intelligent.
It's estimated that during Ranovolina's reign as many as fifty
(24:32):
percent of the Marina population was killed, and thanks to
both her torture and executions, but also from the famine
caused by the scorched earth policies her armies took when
it came to enemy kingdoms. From Ranovolna's perspective, violence wasn't capriciousness.
She was a woman who believed fiercely in the religious
(24:55):
right of the Tanginna ordeal, which allowed the gods to
decide who lived and who didn't. She was steadfast in that,
not making decisions based on anger or emotions. If people
needed to die, so be it, but the Marina people
as a whole wouldn't die. That was the important thing
preserving the kingdom itself. That's the story of the quote
(25:24):
bloody Queen Renovalina, But stick around after a brief sponsor
break to hear about her death and what happened next.
After the Queen's death, her son and then her son's
wife took over the throne and in Marina almost immediately
(25:46):
reverted back to European influence. The francohovah Wars, which began
in three led to the end of the Marina Kingdom
and the creation of the French Protectorate, which then became
the Colony of Matta Gascar. French claims to the property
that Laboard had left in Madagascar gifts from the queen
(26:07):
became the pretext for their armed invasion. There's one detail
about Queen Roneval in his funeral that seems worth mentioning.
The queen died in her sleep at age three after
a thirty three year long reign, but during the funeral
and arrant, spark flashed and caused a nearby barrel of
(26:28):
gunpowder to explode. Several bystanders were killed. Even in death,
Ronavolana maintained her reputation. Noble Blood is a production of
I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.
The show was written and hosted by Danis Schwartz and
(26:50):
produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young.
Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
and you can learn more about the show over at
Noble blood tails dot com. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M hmm.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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