by Faun Rice
residents, while simultaneously withdrawing state authority (up to and includ-
ing police) from most of the countryside. What’s important in Ranavalona’s case,
however, is the ideological formula through which such arrangements came to
be justified. Because, say what you wil about the queen herself, the formula
clearly worked. Her government was stable, successful, and long-lasting, and, in
marked contrast to earlier reigns, it saw very little in the way of popular unrest.
Now, certainly there have been other times and places where rule by arbi-
trary, spectacular, but occasional violence is considered preferable to more ap-
parently gentle, systematic, but intrusive, forms of governance. My essay about
the Shilluk (chapter 2 in this volume) addresses precisely this kind of situation.
So Ranavalona’s case is hardly unique. In kingdoms that take this path, royal
power is often seen as analogous to powers of nature; the sovereign becomes a
kind of divine force standing outside the moral order. There is some evidence
something like that was happening here, too. Ranavalona, like other Merina
kings, was often greeted on her public appearances by songs comparing her
to God, or to the sun. Still, there is no reason to assume such effusions had
much more significance than they might have in, say, the court of Louis XIV.
No one appears to have evoked them when speaking of the queen’s actual con-
duct.70 The arbitrary willfulness of the sovereign was instead directly identi-
fied with her childishness. As observed above, she was regularly referred to as
Rabodon’Andrianampoinimerina, “King Andrianampoinimerina’s little girl,” or
just Rabodo, “the little girl”; her advisors were her “nursemaids,” the people her
“playthings” to do with as she pleased. Unlike the solar metaphors, these weren’t
mere rhetorical effusions. These terms cropped up regularly when people dis-
cussed the regular conduct of political affairs.
70. The one song referring to Ranavalona as “God seen by the eye” and comparing her
to the sun is, however, widely cited in foreign sources at the time (e.g., Sibree 1889:
176; 1896: 214; Renel 1920: 71–72), presumably since it conforms so well with the
current stereotype of Oriental despotism. As a result of this and one or two other
references (most in folklore), the idea that Merina sovereigns were “visible gods” has
been take up almost universally in contemporary scholarship (probably via Raison-
Jourde 1991: 78, though strongly echoed in Ottino 1986, 1993). But the sentiment
is almost entirely absent from nineteenth-century Malagasy-language sources.
THE PEOPLE AS NURSEMAIDS OF THE KING
319
* * *
We are fortunate enough to have a long and very detailed history of the reign
of Ranavalona I, written by her personal secretary, Raombana, in English so
that no one else at court could read it. Raombana, who had studied in London,
considered the queen’s regime to be an utter catastrophe. His narrative reads
like something halfway between Tacitus’ Annals (with its prolonged accounts of
prominent aristocrats being unjustly put to death) and Procopius’ Secret history
(with its shocking revelations of madness and debauchery at court). But it also
makes clear that, despite many historians’ claims to the contrary, Ranavalona
was in no sense a mere figurehead. If anyone was in a position to know who was
actually in charge at court, surely it was Raombana; and in his version of events,
Ranavalona makes all important decisions, from the general direction of policy
(should Radama’s imperial ventures be maintained?) to the exact wording of
diplomatic correspondence or military communiqués. Yet for all this, she’s con-
stantly treated like a self-indulgent child by everyone around her.
Raombana himself attributes much of the organization of Ranavalona’s
court to her previous sexual frustration. The queen had been named Radama’s
senior wife largely because Andrianampoinimerina had wanted to pay off a po-
litical debt to her father; being ten years older than her husband and “not at all
pretty,” Raombana explains, she was almost completely neglected by the prince;
though at the same time, she was avoided by other men who feared the king’s
wrath should they take up with her themselves. As a result, when she came to
power, her first priority was to acquire a coterie of lovers:
Such being the propensity of the Queen, and not having for years been embraced
by a man, no sooner therefore was she seated on his throne and before Radama
was even buried when she formed the project of getting several paramours.
Before Radama was consigned to his grave, she took to her bed Andri-
amihaja, Rainiharo, Rainimaharo, Rainijohary; and subsequently Rainiseheno etc.
etc., and by these paramours she got to be with child about five months after the
death of the King, a thing which neither she nor anybody else in Madagascar ever
expected for she as I have already stated was about fifty-five [sic]71 years of age . . . .
During the first months of her pregnancy she was very ill and often had
falling fits, and it was thought that she would not survive long. Whenever she
71. In fact she was fifty-one.
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recovered from these fits, she drank enormous quantities of rum and arrack; and
lay with her paramours even in the day times and thus satisfied her lusts in an
extraordinary manner. (Raombana n.d.: 76.1308–10)
Obviously, Raombana is taking a somewhat jaundiced view of things. For
Malagasy royal women, establishing one’s sexual freedom was clearly a key part
of the establishment of one’s political autonomy. We have seen the same thing
in the case of Hastie’s “prophetess”: formally married to powerful political fig-
ures, but reserving the right to choose other lovers freely among their subjects
too.72 Ranavalona’s situation was actually slightly different from theirs since her
“paramours” were all, in fact, generals and men of state: Andriamihaja com-
manded the army; Rainiharo was prime minister; Rainijohary, as guardian of
the sampy Kelimalaza, effectively became the kingdom’s high priest. Raombana
observes that these men very quickly combined to convince the queen that ex-
panding her circle of lovers beyond palace officials would open her up to mortal
dangers of witchcraft; they took particular care to keep her away from any men
who were not, like them, of commoner descent.
So Ranavalona’s taking on multiple lovers was in no way scandalous in itself;
this was exactly how a woman in her circumstances was expected to behave.
To convey a sense of scandal, then, Raombana has to emphasize the extreme
nature of the queen’s behavior, and the degree to which it interfered with affairs
of government—not to mention, endangered her own health and safety, which
was the ostensible raison d’être for the entire apparatus of state. Ranavalona, by
his account, would veer from indulgence to illness, needing to be literally nursed
back to health; terrified of witchcraft, she continually forced those surrounding
her to undergo the tangena ordeal, falling into panic and depression when she
> feared her lovers might perish as a result, often rising from her sickbed to dance
with joy on learning they’d survived. The queen is represented in his account as
imperious, gullible, vindictive, quick to shame but equally quick to anger—that
is, as very much the spoiled child.
72. The same applies to Matavy, the famous wife of the founder of the Betsimisaraka
confederation, Ratsimilaho. She was daughter of a Sakalava king to whom
Ratsimilaho wished to ally, but, apparently, on realizing his whole kingdom was
something of a fraud cooked up in alliance with European pirates, she immediately
began to flagrantly take multiple lovers from among his subjects. He seems to have
felt incapable of raising any objections to her behavior and was forced to raise what
everyone assumed to be another man’s child as his son and heir..
THE PEOPLE AS NURSEMAIDS OF THE KING
321
Raombana, of course, is giving the view from inside the palace; he was also
writing in English, presumably, for an imagined future audience abroad. The
Tantara allows us to have some sense of how such matters were represented
outside the walls of the rova, or royal enclosure. The chapter on Ranavalona’s
government is entitled “Lehilahy mpitaiza ny andriana,” or, “Men who were
nursemaids of the queen” (Callet 1908: 1146), and in the official historical re-
cord, all the queen’s lovers are officially referred to as her “nursemaids,” or men
“taken by the queen to nurture her” ( nalain’ny andriana hitaiza azy).
Here’s, for instance, how Raombana begins his account of the downfall of
Andriamihaja, the general who was primarily responsible for placing Ranava-
lona on the throne, and who was widely assumed to be the real father of her in-
fant son. According to European sources, the general represented a progressive
faction, friendly to Christians, keen on pursuing Radama’s modernizing project,
and opposed to Rainiharo and Rainimaharo’s traditionalists. Raombana first
notes his role in bring the queen to power:
She was therefore fond of him, and trusted to him almost the whole manage-
ment of the state affairs, so that in fact, he acted as the first judge or minister, as
chief secretary of Her Majesty, and as commander-in-chief of the army, which
business he managed in the most admirable manner. As a paramour however,
Her Majesty loved Rainiharo and his brother Rainimaharo more than him, es-
pecially Rainiharo who was the best looking man in Madagascar, and of the
finest shape . . . .
Andriamihaja was not a very good looking man, but he had more tal-
ent than his opponent, so that literally speaking Rainiharo ruled the will of the
Queen while in bed with her; and Andriamihaja, while he was out of bed and
ruled almost as a sovereign when out of the palace: for he had the sole manage-
ment of the different affairs of the kingdom, the continual sickness of Her Maj-
esty, and she being continually in bed with her paramours both night and day,
made her trust to Andriamihaja the affairs of her kingdom as already stated. So
that a few months before his death, he was very seldom admitted into the palace
on account of his business, besides so enamored was Her Majesty with Rainiharo
and her other paramours that she did not much want his presence in the palace,
as his presence there awes them, and keeps them from mirth, and while he is
admitted into the palace, he always lays at night with Her Majesty for she was
also afraid of him and dare not lay with the other paramours while he is in the
palace. Therefore in order that she may be more in the company of Rainiharo,
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ON KINGS
etc., she said to Andriamihaja that the sikidy or divination does not allow him to
remain in the palace for some time; and that he is to remain outside of the palace
and manage all the business there. (Raombana n.d.: 12.448–53)
Andriamihaja, he goes on to explain, was an intimidating presence who had
the presumption of occasionally rebuking the queen for dallying with other
men. He felt he should really be her only lover. Early in Ranavalona’s reign,
the queen’s solution had been to send him off on frequent military expeditions.
(In fact Raombana implies that many of the wars that plagued Madagascar in
those years were occasioned primarily by her desire to get him out of town.) But
finally, her lovers made common cause to remove him. They charged him with
possession of ody mahery, evil charms, claiming these were the real cause of the
queen’s frequent illnesses, and, furthermore, that he had contrived to falsify the
results of the poison ordeal. In addition, several testified that the general had
come to refer to himself, among his friends, as “Bonaparte”—a very disturbing
choice of nickname, they emphasized, considering that Napoleon Bonaparte
was a commoner who had placed himself on the French throne after an uprising
that led to the previous monarch’s public execution. The queen was still hesitant,
so in the end, Raombana says, her lovers were obliged to send an assassin to An-
driamihaja’s home to murder him with a butcher’s knife, and then retroactively
claim he had failed the tangena ordeal.
Such, anyway, was Raombana’s palace-gossip version. The version preserved
in the Tantara (Callet 1908: 1147–50) is entirely different. The author begins
by observing that “under Rabodo, the chief men were her nursemaids, and An-
driamihaja, from Namehana, was chief among them.”73 Knowing he had the
absolute support of the queen, the author says, caused the general to engage in
much high-handed behavior, and matters eventually came to a head when he
decided to round up a number of slaves belonging to free subjects and put them
to work manufacturing shoes and cartridge boxes for the army. This was con-
sidered a violation of the principle that only free subjects perform fanompoana
for the queen, and therefore an outrageous precedent that threatened the very
foundations of the social order. Important court figures, including Ranavalona’s
other mpitaiza and the twelve chief royal women, who were the still-surviving
widows of Andrianampoinimerina, began to meet in secret to decide how to
73. “Ary taminy Rabodo ny lehibe nitaiza azy tao, Andriamihaja, avy amy ny Namehana,
izy no lehibe.”
THE PEOPLE AS NURSEMAIDS OF THE KING
323
respond. Local leaders were consulted. Finally, a decision was made to send a
delegation to the queen.
Yet when this delegation approached Ranavalona, they chose not to frame
the issue in terms of the employment of personal slaves for state purposes; rath-
er, they insisted, the general was violating the principle of fanompoana by his
demand for exclusive sexual access to the queen:
We don’t know what Andriamihaja is thinking, but no one has ever treated a
monarch in the way he’s treated you. No matter whom the queen may love, there’s
never been anything like this. Look! What he’s done to you is not like service
( fanompoana), living with you and nurturing you ( itaizany anao); he is treating
you like he would a wife in his own home, like a person of the same status. So we
can
’t accept that, even if that is what you want. There’s no lack of people for you
to love in this land, for you are a queen for whom nothing is forbidden. Whoever
you desire, take him! So here are our thoughts, your fathers and your mothers:
pretend to be sick, and we will request the poison ordeal. (Callet 1908: 1148)74
Presumably this was so as to arrange matters in such a way that Andriamihaja
should be determined to be responsible.
The author goes on to explain that the queen first balked at the prospect
of exposing her immediate circle to the tangena, but finally the intervention of
some of the old surviving wives of King Andrianampoinimerina was decisive,
and she agreed. In other words, in this version, the entire story about the queen’s
illness was actually a ruse, and what Raombana represents as a purely bedroom
affair was the result of extensive political consultation and debate among differ-
ent powerful interests in the kingdom, with royal women playing the ultimately
decisive role.
The above passage is revealing, however, because it lays bare the ideological
foundations of Ranavalona’s reign. The entire apparatus of government—up to
74. “Tsy fantatray ny hevitr’ Andriamihaja, fa tsy mbola nisy nanao ny manjaka toy izao
nataony aminao izao; na iza tian’ andriana na iza tian’ andriana, tsy mbola nisy toy
izao. Ka he! ity ataony anao tsy ohatry ny fanompoana ny itoerany sy ny itaizany anao
atoana, ataony anao ohatry ny fitondrany vady ao an·trano, ohatry ny olona mitovy
hiany. Ka tsy mety izahay, na dia tianao aza izy. Fa tsy lany olona hotiana amin’ ity
tany ity hianao, ka mpanjaka tsy manam-pady hianao amin’ ity tany ity hianao; izay
tianao alaina, alao. Ary dia izao no hevitray ray aman-dreninao . . . modia marary
hianao, izahay hangataka finomana.”
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ON KINGS
and including the military—was indeed seen as ultimately just a means of pro-
viding for the queen’s personal needs, whims, and indulgences. It was still all a
vast system of nurturance. Yet as such it is necessarily a collective affair, involv-
ing every subject in the kingdom; the only thing the queen could not do, then,
was to violate the latter principle, by allowing any one of her mpitaiza to stake