A Lover AND a Fighter: Nzinga the Double Queen of Ndongo & Matamba

two podcasts. Oh my god. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday gift. No serious, honestly, what a present it really was. It was just it was just such a good day. It just felt so good all days seeing all those getting all these kind messages, all of the best right. Yeah, what a beautiful collection of listeners we have. I know y'all are even better than than our friends. Some of you are our friends, and you're you're the best of both categories, the m v P

s and friends. Uh, but yeah, it was a great day. We got some fun do ye um. Danny got me a beautiful set of knives because I like to cook and I like a good knife when I had got you our current knives for Christmas one year, many years ago, but they are not good. Well that was a who was a poorer time. They were a step up from our previous knives, and these knives are gonna step up from those. So it's just nice to see our lives improving as represented by our kitchen knives. Yeah, we're moving

up the staircase of life. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to get into this story today. We're going somewhere we haven't been in a while, that's true. Yeah, we're going to Africa, baby, Yes, because we're going to talk about Njinga of Dongo and Matomba, who was a badass queen. She ruled for nearly four decades in the sixteen hundreds. Very long time, um and

like many rulers, she has a really complicated legacy. But unlike many rulers, we don't hear much about her political prowess, her military genius, how she affected her country's history, mostly because racism, right, But we should have heard about this because Jinga really was a certified badass. She's a that bitch. She managed to fight off Portuguese colonization using a combination of diplomacy, military tactics, and strategic marriages until they were

forced to negotiate with her as an equal. And her legend has since grown to include a lot of wild stories that are probably not true, but what has been verified is very exciting on its own. So let's hear about Jinga of Jungle and Matomba and how she made Portugal bow to the Double Queen. Yeah, let's go pay their French colu. Well, Elia and Diana got stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a lover. It might be any type of person at all,

and abstract cons at a concrete wall. But if there's a story, were the Second Glance ridiculous? A production of I Heart Radio? All right, before we kick it off, I want to let you know most of pretty much everyone's information about Jinga comes from Lynda Haywood's biography Jinga of Angola Um. So we'll note when we find quotes or info from elsewhere, but otherwise just know that is what to read if you want to get the clearest picture of her life. Okay, thank you, Linda Haywood. I know.

Thank you Linda Haywood doing the work, doing the thing. Jingo was born around fifty three. She was the daughter of the King of Indongo, or as they call it, the Angol. That's what they call the king. His name was Colombo, and her mom was his favorite slave wife and concubine, Kingela. It was a very hard birth because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, so she was given the name Jinga, which means to twist or turn. Well, well, well that's speaking of my birthday. Maybe I should have

been named Jinga. Umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck. I was kidding. I was born at home and probably pretty dead when I was born. The story I believe, as my mom told me, is that her midwife meg Um you remember in the cartoon hundred one Dalmatians with Lucky Yes, and she had They had to put him in a towel and like rub them until he woke up. It was the most stressful minute. And imagine that was your son, because that's pretty much what they had to

do to me. Apparently, yeah, they put you in an oven or something. No, I think it's literally just in a blanket and just like it's just rub them back and forth until he wakes up and it worked. It's your birthday and your death day, same day. Yeah, yeah, I already get that part over with, so I'll live forever. The key to immortality. That's fun. I was born. I was extremely easy birth. Apparently, I just slid right on out, split right out with a with a clipboard getting ready.

You were already halfway through a project. I was like, I have many notes about how things are set up around here. Let me tell you. And they were like, oh, is it a boy or a girl. Oh no, it's a producer, it's a manager. Get out, throw her out the window. You probably will like this part because people who survived difficult birds were thought to have special powers. Yeah, I would say known to have special powers. Okay, we've

proven it, so yeah. They expected some great things from Jinga early on, just by virtue of how she was born. But one of the reasons that she actually got to do anything cool might be because she was born a woman. Surprisingly because since she wasn't a boy, she wasn't seeing his competition for her father's air, which was her brother Bondi. So Kilombo was able to lavish on Zinga all the love and attention that he wanted without offending anyone. Pretty

nice set up. So she was like his favorite kid and right away a total badass. She I'm picturing here, was like an infant, just like what everyone was like, Holy shit. And she trained as a warrior. She had particular skill with the battle act, just cool Rosa Diaz. Frequently she would beat the hell out of her brother or anyone else who cared to step to her on the sparring field. And her father also included her in

other areas of governance. He included her in important councils and rituals, and she was taught to read and write in Portuguese by visiting missionaries. Sounds like a lot of responsibility for a toddler. I know, right, she's like, but whatever, she's ready. Yeah, she's like, I didn't cut that umbilical cord for nothing. And yes, the Portuguese taught her to read and write, because the Portuguese were already in this

region in fift seventy five. If they showed up and they allied with Dongo's northern rivals, the Congo, to bring Christianity to darkest Africa, and of course establish a slave trading post in Landa. You know they shoved up. Oh yes, so we're here to bring a Christianity to my Portuguese is gonna be Italian just see, you know, just go ahead and lay that out now from Chef Boyardi. So we bring your Christianity and the frame of air no

whatever Portuguese accent, they say, we're here. We brought the Church, we brought God, and we're gonna take some of your back slaves too. But the real thing we're here for this God. Definitely the gods number one. So there were several years of peace between them and the Portuguese, but then the Portuguese started trying to monopolize the slave trade. They burned down whole villages and took hostages, some estimating that they captured and enslaved fifty thousand people. Isn't that

just the way somebody comes in. You've got all these mom and pop trade shops set up, and the big guys come in and they just monopolized the whole thing, the walmart of the slave not fair for independent business owners. This is crazy though, to think about, um, how much within these African cultures the slave trade was part of their economy too at this point, right extremely important. I know I haven't done a lot of studying about the

African slave trade, like within the country. UM. I know that slavery was very different than the slave the chattel type slavery that we had in America. So there is some, I guess, major differences. I'm not sure. It still seems like they weren't treated very well and you still are like not a free person. It's not like it's not like, oh good slavery, like that's all right. I believe that the biggest, like defining feature of chattel slavery was that

your kids were also slaves. I think that that's not how it worked in Africa. Interesting now, by the time Jingha's father ascended to the throne in Fife, large swaths of Indango were already under Portuguese control. Many of the Sobas, who were basically like the aristocrats of Indango, many of them felt like they saw which way the wind was blowing, so they went ahead and allied with Portugal, and they paid tributes to them rather than their own king, which

of course further impoverished the kingdom. No matter what Angolo Colombo tried, their king, and this ranged from diplomacy and negotiations all the way to open warfare. He just could not defeat the Portuguese. And things only got worse when a tribal band called the in Bengala invaded in Dongo and allied with the Portuguese. So Colombo had to completely give up trying to get back any of his old lands.

And he probably walked out of the room and then turned back and said, and just one more thing for all you Colombo fans, I'm glad you got that. I don't know you'd pick. I'm not not I've never seen it, but I do know that about about Colombo that he would he'd be like, all right, I guess it's all wrapped up, and he'd be like, actually, just Encyclopedia Brown, where he would ask the one question the whole case. In sixteen seventeen, Kilombo died and Zinga's brother and Bundy,

ascended to the throne. Now, his first order of business was to eliminate the competition. We've seen this many times in a royal family. So he quickly murdered his older half brother and his older half brother's entire family, as well as many other rival claimants to the throne. Now, Jinga was thirty five by this point, so she was spared.

But Mundy did kill her infant son, and then he had Jinga and her two sisters, Fungi and Kambu forcibly sterilized by pouring a boiling mixture of herbs and oil on their bellies, so that, according to History of Royal Women dot com quote from the shock, fear and pain, they should forever be unable to give birth. I mean,

that's pretty park horrifying to think about. Really shows your confidence in your own rulership when you have to go out and murder anyone might one day possibly oppose you and force people to not even be able to have a child that might might one day. Right, also ironically creates some of your worst enemies. Right, So Jena ran off to the neighboring kingdom of Matamba, probably in fear for her life, or just as likely super Piste off like I didn't hanging out with you anymore. Meanwhile, Bondi's

second order of business was to route the Portuguese. He's like, I'm gonna do what my dad couldn't beat these Portuguese guys out of here. So he's throwing himself into that. He's starting fights this way and that. But he had no military prowess, and just like his father Kilombo, he did not have the warriors or the arms that he needed to really be a match for the Portuguese armies.

Didn't like learn anything from his dad. Now, he was able to create a tentative alliance with the in Bongala, which was helpful, but otherwise he made very little headway. Oh that was the tribe that just came in and invaded them. Okay, so he managed to kind of be like, hey, these guys suck, you know that, Like let's you know. So they were kind of like they're probably like separate ends of the room, look at like eighth graders at a dance, Like I'm not going over here first. So anyway,

he's he's not getting anywhere, sort of a stalemate. So in six one and Bondi reached out to Jenga, his sister. She's still chilling in Matamba, and you know, he's like, hey, gurl, is your bro bro? Remember me, I'm the guy that sterilized you and killed your kid. Anyway, I hope this email finds you will listen. You're a royal lineage, and you speak Portuguese, will you become my chief negotiator? And used go to the governor of Portugal tell him to

get off our backs already. Jinga is kind of surprisingly, it's like, oh, yeah, no problem, that's all water under the bridge, so let me go handle that for you and get my ass on over to the Portuguese governor. If you know family, it's we put these things behind us, right right, sure, or she's probably more than likely it's like, well, the kingdom is more important than my personal feeling. Maybe

she did hate those Portuguese she did hate. Now, usually African rulers would wear European fashions when they met the governor, sort of as a way to let them know that, you know, oh we're equals. Were not from some savage dribe in an underdeveloped region. I could put on a suit, you know. But Shinga thought that that was basically a tacit agreement, that their culture was inferior to European culture. So when she showed up to negotiate, she was wearing

Dongan regalia, just dripping with jewels. She had feathers in her hair, she was draped in all these expensive fabrics of fabulous colors, and she was rolling deep with a big retinue. This caused a real stir and just as a perk required the Portuguese to pay her entire party's expenses while they were in town. I picture her, you know what I'm saying, Like on her she's packing up her ship to go to Luans see the governor, and they're like, oh, can I come? She's like, yeah, sure,

anyone else want to go? Anybody all right, because they're gonna pay all the time we're there. You want to go, yeah, table for fifty please, thank you? And we're all we all need separate rooms. My squad and I need separate rooms. But in the negotiating room, the Portuguese had put out a bunch of velvet chairs for themselves and only a straw mat on the floor for Jinga to sit in. This was a common tactic to try and show how

inferior they felt African rulers were. Well. Singa took one look at that little straw metal the floor and she's like, I don't play like that, couldn't be me. So she whistled called over one of her servants, who walked up and got down on their hands and knees on the floor, and Jinga sat on that servant's back, and she conducted her negotiations sitting face to face with the Portuguese boom. You didn't think about that, did you. I brought my

own chair chair. His name is Frederick. Now. This legend was later embellished, and it said that once the meeting was over, Jinga got up from her little servant chair and she split the servant's throat right there, telling the Portuguese quote, I never sit in the same seat twice, and after that they always had a chair for her.

It's probably like, it's probably not true. We do kind of like the idea of some poor Portuguese servant going up to their ruler and being like, um, yeah, I know you got this little power play you're trying to work out. But I'm the guy who cleans the rugs and last time there was so much blood, So could we just get this woman a chair please. Xinga's diplomatic mission was to negotiate for peace, right, so she talked terms with the Portuguese governor. She said, you know, our

offer is Dongo would seeze hostilities. She apparently choked up in Bandy's warmongering, as quote the mistakes of a young king, which must have felt pretty good to kind of slight him. She was representing him. The thing is, he's an idiot, so don't worry about anything he does. I'm going to take care of that. Why are boys always so messy?

She said also that they would allow Portuguese slave traders within their borders, and they also had some escaped slaves of the Portuguese king fighting in Bandi's army, and she said, hey, you know, if you sign this treaty will return them to you. You can have them back. But in exchange, the Portuguese had to agree to tear down the forts that they had built on in Dungan territory. And also she said, my main thing is we're not going to pay a single tribute to the Portuguese king. She said,

only conquered people pay tributes. We're not conquered. We're here negotiating, so we're not going to do any of that. But also it would be super cool if we could have like a military alliance. Y'all could back us up when the in Bengala or anyone else decides to attack us, will do the same for you. I'm scratched my back, scratch your back. And at first the Governor's like, all this sounds good or whatever, but how do we know that we can trust you that you're in earnest And

so Jinga played her ace. She offered to be baptized as a Christian. I mean, after all, that's the whole reason they're they're right. So they went ahead and baptized her right there in Luanda. She took the name Donna Anna Disoza to honor her new godparents, Anna da Silva, the governor's wife, and the governor himself, Dual Carrera Dissa, and the peace treaty was accepted. Jingo slash. Anna Desoza went home to Dongo's capital, Kabasa, triumphant with her big

ass retinue. But things started to go wrong immediately because her brother Bondis alliance with the Imbongala tribe fell apart and the Bondi got his ass beat. The Imbongala actually took over the Indongo capital Kabasa, and they exiled in

Bondi and created their own kingdom of Kasanji. The Portuguese looked down all this strife going on between them was like, Hey, this seems like it's between the two y'all, So why don't you just call us when you've retaken your capital and we'll get going on the peace treaty once you have your ship together a little bit more. Also, Bondi, uh,

you need to get baptized now too. Oh well, Bondi did manage to reclaim his capital in sixte but Jingo went to him and was like, hey, I don't think you should get baptized, because that would make all the traditionalists in your court think you're so kind of puppet. So Bondi refused the baptism, and the Portuguese are basically like, well, then you can take this little treaty and shove it.

They refused to leave their forts as they had promised, and they conducted raids for loot and slaves all over the kingdom. Now in Bondy was losing support fast. Jinga had taken over most of his duties and he was losing popularity. So maybe it's not surprising that only a year later Bondi was dead. Some people say it was from suicide. He just felt like he'd done too bad of a job. He couldn't fix it. Some people say he was poisoned. So did Jinga kill him to get

her revenge years after he murdered her son. Possible? Possible, But also Bondi was very unpopular, He was very ineffective. Lots of people wanted him dead, So lots of options to choose from. If you're looking for someone maybe in his court that thought they'd be better off if he was out of the picture, right, tough to figure out. Too many murders. Everyone in this country has a motive. So let's just say we're all cool with it. Let's just say killed himself. I mean he kind of did.

He made a lot of it, in my opinion, responsible for his own demise at least. So yeah, Jinga's revenge took a harsher eye for and eye kind of approach because now that Bandy was gone, Jinga wanted to be Angola. She wanted to be the queen and m Bondi had made it clear that he wanted Jinga to succeed him as well. He had called everybody you know, because that's why she had all his duties and everything. He's like, that's my girl. But of course there are a few

problems with this. First of all, Bondi had a son, Jinga's seven year old nephew, who at the time was living with the i bongal In war chief Casa Um when they had made that tentative alliance and Bondi had sent his son, probably is like a collateral. Yeah, we've read about this in our Poconta's episode I believe, where it's like, all right, well, since we're allies now, I'm going to send one of my children to live with you, and that sort of secures are yeah, basically have a

hostage kind of but they're not treated like seasoners. But they're still like someone you care about, you won't just sunk around with ye. So the kid is still there with the in Bengala. Well, Jinga knows exactly how to deal with a succession problem like this, so she seduced this younger war chief Kasa and convinced him that she had fallen head over heels for him. And it wasn't long before she proposed that they get married. She's like,

I mean, I'm over here, Dongo. You've got in Bengala together, We're unstoppable, right. So Casa and Jinga got married a beautiful ceremony, but it was barely over before she ordered her nephew seized and killed right on the spot. What kind of a crazy party. I've never been to a wedding like that, and I don't want to go, damn. So she straight up was like, Oh, I want to get my nephew back, so I'll go and marry the guy who's his captor. He marries her. Oh my god,

you love me so much. Thank you for marrying me. She's like, yeah, yeah, I just wanted to get my nephew back so I could jill him cold. So like to Jinga, she felt like, I'm getting revenge on BONDI, you know, for years later for her own murdered son. Right, But no word on how Casa felt about the whole thing. I picture him at like at a window in the rain, like a palm is on it, and he's thinking, was any of it ever real? I feel so used. I feel so used, well at the possible expense of cost

is broken heart. Jinga had eliminated her main rival for the throne, but her opponents had other complaints about her. Now, this was a matrilineal culture that meant that they traced bloodlines through the mother and not the father, they would have seen no problem at all with ray nearest situation and House of the Dragon. They would have been like,

that's your kids. Great. So some of the Andongins were like, listen, actually, neither in Bondi or in Jenga are fit to rule because they're not from the first wife there from slave wives, so they kind of don't count. But Jinga felt kind of comfortable with this claim because she's like, yeah, that's true and all, but at least my dad was the Angola. Who were you, you know, like, you don't have no king in your ancestry, so I'm closer than any of y'all.

But then others were like, you're a woman, so it doesn't matter who your parents are, you're not eligible to be in charge. A very very tedious, boring tailor as old as time kind of argument. And then some thought that her willingness to negotiate with the Portuguese was a sign of weakness, so they were like, we don't want to weak queen up in here in the middle of

this crisis. So Jenga had a bit of a succession crisis on her hands, and this was one that the Portuguese would do their best to exploit and we'll find out how. Right after this welcome back to the show, the Portuguese governor and Jinga both wanted to honor the peace treaty that they'd signed a few years before and get the slave trade running stably again. But the governor de Soza got a little cocky and he told Jinga that she would have to pay tribute as a vassal

of Portugal. It was like her number one thing she didn't want to do. He also, very shady style, made all the Sobas, those aristocrats pay Portugal tributes instead of paying those tributes to Jinga, and this further undermined her. But Jinga, like you said, was like no, I told you before, We are not conquered people. So she refused to pay these tributes. And more than that, she sent messengers to all the Portuguese plantations and told the workers there that they escaped and came to in Dongo to

join her, they would be considered free. Now the Portuguese started to lose so much manpower as all these slaves and workers just slipping through the cracks to run back to Windongo, that they complained about Jinga and said she wasn't holding up her end of the peace treaty and returning their escaped slaves, as she had promised to do. But Jinga looked around and said, oh, you want me to send back the escaped slaves. Of course I will,

I said I would. But she looked around and said, but my kingdom doesn't have any Well you're talking about all these folks back here. Well, they can't be slaves, they're free. Woops, Sorry, I got nothing to send you too bad, so sad. Now, obviously this made Jinga look like a total boss. So many of those sobas, the aristocrats who had been lured the Portugal side, they came right back to her. She was gaining strength by the day.

That made Portugal or Real nervous. So they decided to do what any powerful country does in the face of a nation that doesn't want to do as it's toll prop up a public government that will give him whatever they want. So the Portuguese army dispatched some soldiers to protect one of these sobas. His name was harri Akilwanji, and they put him forward as a replacement king for Jinga. A Kilowanji was one of these guys who was all

worked up about Jinga being a woman. You know, he's running around like guys, I just don't understand how a lady can rule. I mean, her tits will get in the way something. But he was a real threat because he actually was descended from the royal line somewhere in his ancestry. So he was kind of a good choice that the Portuguese had landed on. He could get a lot of support. Jinga sent some soldiers to crush this little rebellion, but it didn't work, and that made some

of these wishy washy sobas change their minds again. And that weekend Jinga's claim, I'm picturing that scene in Hook when Rufio draws the line in the sand and he's like, who's with me? And who's with this fake pan? And they keep running back and forth. I'm back and forth. That's the sobas, remember detailed moments from Hook, Right, whatever listened, somebody was nodding through that what he was nodding. So Jinga tried negotiating with Portugal while she's secretly gathering her

forces together. But the Portuguese kind of saw through that. They said, Satan's done waiting, and they declared Kilauangi the rightful King of Dongo and then declared outright war on Jinga. Now things looked pretty desperate for in Jinga. She and her followers had to flee the capital to some islands on the Kwanza River. Battles raged, but she was outnumbered by the Portuguese and she suffered a lot of defeats. Things started to look up when Harry kilauanj died of smallpox.

So the Portuguese needed a new king and they backed anothern Donga noble named nag Lahari, and he wasn't a very popular choice, but he still had the support of the Portuguese and the more powerful and Donga noble. Jinga tried negotiating again. She offered them four hundred slaves as a gift, and she said she'd even start paying those tributes to Portugal that she hated so much, as long as they declared her the rightful queen. You know she's at the end of her row. But they said, no,

too late. You are going to have to not only pay those tributes, but you're going to have to submit to our chosen king, nag Lahari. You lick my boots, kissed the ring, so on and so on. Shinga. Obviously, she would rather die in battle than do any of that ship, so she just kept on fighting. But her forces were depleted. Some accounts say she had less than two hundred soldiers. Even worse, both of her sisters, Fungi and Kumbo were captured and imprisoned in Luanda, and this

devastated her. But then an interesting message arrived for her. It was from the powerful in bangal And warlord named Kassanji. Remember these are the guys who initially invaded back when her brother was king. He kind of had a loose agreement with them, but it always fell apart. These are the tough guys next door. This guy had been an enemy of Dongo for years. He was actually the one who routed in Bandi from Kasaba and established his own kingdom. Yeah,

the kingdom of Kasanji. Well, he still had his own kingdom along the Kwanza River and he was sick to death of the Portuguese. So he went to Jinga and set have an alliance. You got my warriors and you're smarts. We can really get rid of these Portuguese and that asshole that took over the crown from you. But she would have to marry him and conform to his way of life and leave behind any symbols of her own power.

That's right, I guess it was like this large bell that was symbolically carried by the leader of Dongo went to battle, and he was like, you gotta leave that type of song um and sably. Kind of surprisingly, Jinga accepted this proposal. She married Kasanji, and she was inducted into Imbongala society because it basically like a Sparta type situation. They're like highly militarized society, very much into getting as tough as possible. Wheaties really eat your wheaties society. My

nation is more of a fruit loops nation nation. We're about having a good time a lot of variety here. I like that. I wouldn't be in the fruit loops nation. What's up, Fruities, Thanks for tuning into fruit loops Nation. I was trying to decide if I would prefer to be called a fruity or a loopy. Oh yeah, well that's the that's the in fighting. The people of the fruit loops Nation eventually split into fruities and loopy's. You'd

think it'd be more chill over it gets very ugly. Dang. Yeah, one of the most one of the most catastrophic wars in history was between the Fruities and the Loopies. Yeah, resuilted in a high fruit toast corncyrup personing. So yeah, they were more of a meritocracy. Like if you were like a high level person and in Mongaland's society and you had a kid, your kid had to join the war camp as an equal with everybody else in the war camp. They had to prove themselves just like anybody else,

didn't matter who their daddy was or whatever. So they you know, she liked that because she had been told all this time, you're a woman, you can't be doing all this cool ship, and she's like, but I am

doing it, so it shouldn't account for something. Now, this is another part of Jinga's story that's been somewhat obscured by like a rumor and hearsay throughout the years, because her legend includes little tidbits like how she would eat the hearts of her enemies, or how she would decapitate slaves before battle and drink their blood, like real crazy stuff like that, and more than likely, like a lot of these more lurid rumors is just the Western historical

record trying to make her look bad, and we've also seen that many, many times in many stories. However, there is a grain of truth in these ones because there were customary in Bengal and rituals that she did more than likely participate in, including a blood oath ceremony where she had to drink human blood or the muggy as Samba initiation that includes the use of an oil made

from a slain infant. History of Royal Women says that the ritual required you to kill your own child and make an oil to anoint yourself, but since Zena had no children, she had to take the child off of one of her concubines and kill that one instead. Yeah, that's gross, don't love it. Um. But I also was like, it's so funny when you hear the words drink human blood, because you always imagine like a crazy, like big coconut full of it or something, and it's like a huge amount.

It might have just be a little, just a little couple drops on your tongue. It might not have been a lot, you know. It's just one of those things. I feel like we exaggerate the volume of blood that's required. Didn't we just watch something where they were like, oh, we make a we're blood brothers. Now are going to be bound in blood. And one guy like pricks his finger and the other one like they split your whole hand open, like I can't stop bleeding. And they had

a spraying everywhere. One of my favorite things to happen on stage, spraying blood. Classic. One time we did a show where they had to vomit, I think, and y'all had rigged up a fire extinguisher, so it was this insanely powerful streaming out of this person. It was so gross, the whole thing where there's a tube coming out their sleeve and it runs down their costume and out their leg and off stage somewhere, and every time you hold your hand up to your mouth, just somebody backstage pulls

the trigger. And it was like, yeah, very intense, violent show, so funny now by all accounts, Jenga did incredibly well with the I Bengala uh because she's a badass already, so they respected that and she even became a warlord in her own right. Then she invaded the Kingdom of Matamba, where she had spent a few years, and she conquered them. Oh thanks for your hospitality. I'm back. I loved it

here so much, and I decided to take over. But instead of executing the queen of Matamba, which was an Imbongalan tradition they always executed their conquered rulers, Jinga showed mercy and she just branded her as a common slave instead. So kind. But now Jinga had a stable power base, so she turned her attention to expanding the slave trade within her own borders. This served a double purpose. Firstly, by selling slaves, she raised the money to buy arms

and ammunition, very important. Secondly, by controlling the slave trade, she denied the Portuguese their source of income. Plus, people started calling her the double Queen, which is just cool. That's just a cool thing to happen. I know we were going to get a double queen, but it just won't fit in our room. Oh you. She also started dressing in masculine clothes and insisting that people call her king instead of queen. She even took a male wife.

So this has to do with a wider and very interesting conversation about societal expectations of roles like wife and husband and king and queen and in many parts of Africa, women were female husbands or female kings because that conferred different distinctions and responsibilities. So it wasn't about what's between your legs, but rather about what role you were taking on in society, right. It was especially if you were a childless woman, you would become a female husband and

you would have a wife. And there was a one woman who did this whose brother was like her surrogate, so she had children with her female wife, but her brother is the one who impregnated her. However, as the female husband, she was responsible for the kids and and all that stuff. Very very interesting, right, and so not that uncommon for Jinga to be doing this. There's a book called Boy Wives and Female Husbands, Studies in African Homosexualities by Murray and Roscoe that goes into more detail

about that for anybody who might be interested. Really fascinating of right. I love it too, because it's so interesting to think about. When you say husband, it's just got a different right you You're expecting a different thing from that person than you're expecting from a wife. So the

gender of the people doesn't matter. It's like what I'm expecting out of you or the king or queen thing as well, So it's like it's more it's really just interesting with our whole conversation about gender expression right now and like what how you present and all that sort of thing. I just found it really fascinating. I think of you as kind of the male no, the female husband around here, my female husband. You a male wife or I feel like a husband? Oh no, no, no,

I'm a male wife. Yeah. I mean I cook clean, trying to make everything ready for you when you get home, so you don't yell at me. I earned a lot of money around here. We are in the same money now, So for once, I'm finally coming into my own power, my own autonomy. Here. You're welcome that I let you be that independent than you. Maybe a little more uncommon for Jingo was how she maintained a sixty man strong harem throughout her lifetime, and she made some or all

of them dress in women's clothing. Meanwhile, her army was full of women warriors, and her personal bodyguard were only women. Another story says that she would make members of her harem fight to the death for the right to sleep with her each night, only to be killed off the next morning. So you're really, it's just like you two are gonna die, one of you gets laid first. Here's

some knives go now. This particular element is frequently dismissed as hearsay, and considering that Amina of Nigeria was also said to do the same thing we talked about her in another episode, it does kind of seem unlikely because, again, a lot of the Western record can't really be trusted.

Because the Portuguese were just tripping all over themselves to tell people back home about this woman who was so oversexed and island and savage and all the people's of darkest Africa needed to be drawn into the light of the Lord or whatever it was. They made up a lot of stories like this exactly. Yeah, it served a purpose to make her look crazy like that, So it's likely not true. But she did have sixty men standing around that she will be probably absolutely did pick from

each night and say you look good today. I guess I better reward you. I'll belie your birthday comethday. So Jane is doing her utmost to control the slave trade and rambo her army up, but she's also still sending peace proposals to the Portuguese, asking for the release of her sisters who were still being held captive in Luanda, and suggesting a military alliance. But my conditions are you have to let me back to Indongo as the rightful queen, and again i am not paying a cent of tribute

as a vassal to Portugal. And also I'm not going to convert back to Christianity. That was just for fun, but Portugal still did not want to dance to her tune, especially if she wasn't going to be the right religion. So she's like, all right, she just shrug her shoulders and continue to conquer the ship out of everything. She eventually took over control of all the key slaves supplying areas,

which I'm not entirely sure what that means. I'm assuming it's a poor region where you can just grab people up. She even created an alliance with her people's traditional rival to the north, the Kingdom of Congo. But she really wanted her sisters back. They're still captured, You're still in there. She's like, I really want them back. They're kind of the only people she felt she could fully trust in

her life. An opportunity struck when the Dutch arrived, because they already didn't like Spain and Portugal from way back. So she's like, great, some white people who also don't like the same white people that I don't. Let's get together. So she offered an alliance, and she opened up the slave trade to the Dutch and they agreed to back her up with the Portuguese. She was also able to get messages to and from her sister Fungi, who started

spying on her Portuguese captors for Jinga. In sixteen forty one, the Dutch and the Congo together defeated the Portuguese and drove them out of Lawanda. Triumphant, Jinga immediately consolidated the slave trade under her own rule, and it wasn't long before she had a formidably sized army, a lot of wealth lining her pockets, and of course her famous reputation as a total badass. With all that, she was able to regain most of her lost Dongan territory and her

sister Kumba. By sixteen forty four, she got one of her sisters out of there, the other one spying for her do an awesome job, and she's got a bunch of this land back that her dad had been trying to get so this has been decades in the making. But our girl also got bit by the expansionist bug. Kind of a bad idea. She started conquering land in Congo that had never been part of her territory and that really piste off the King of Congo, Garcia the Second.

And this was nerve racking because they had a very tentative alliance between the Congo and the Dutch and the Dongan's, and the Dutch had to come in and be like, listen, guys, y'all are our only friends around here, please don't fight all Jinga's many w's had the and Donga nobility declaring their everlasting loyalty. We'll stay along that last, which meant Jinga got tributes for slaves from them, which she turned

around and sold to the Dutch for firearms. And by sixty eight, everyone including the Portuguese, knew that Jinga was the big bad. She was the final boss in the region. No one above her, we all below her. But she couldn't stay on top forever. And we'll hear more right after this welcome back. So jingas on top. She's crushing it. But a lot of things went wrong at the same time,

she lost two big battles, but the Portuguese. In one, her sister Kumba was recaptured, and unfortunately, this revealed the fact that their sister Fungi was spying for Jenga and that she had revealed important Portuguese battle plans. They retaliated by drowning Fungi in the river Kuanza. Jinga was devastated, but before she could even recover from that, another crushing

blow quickly followed. The Dutch, whose presence was already being weakened the area due to political infighting, found themselves defending Luanda from a new Portuguese expedition, and they were losing badly. Unbeknownst Djinga, the Dutch sued for peace and they agreed to evacuate Luanda. So when Jenga and her army showed up to back them up in battle, they're like, we're here, everybody, let's fight. They're like, oh, so sorry, we already signed

a peace treaty. They were like already sailing away like a way eaving to her from her. But she's like, what you didn't get my voicemail. That's so crazy to show up to back them up. And they're freaking gone. So Jingo was forced to retreat back to Matomba. But even so, she had regained and held on to her Dongan lands. And since she had concentrated so much the slave trade in Matomba, she had increased its economic importance in the area too. Both of her kingdoms were doing

pretty well, pretty impressive. Some people can't keep one kingdom together, let alone too. All she had to do was sell a bunch of peoples. So a lot of this was, you know, making her pretty popular amongst her people. But she also caused some controversy because she started adopting a lot of Christian tradition. I remember she had converted for

political reasons. In the past few years, she had refused to return to Christianity also for political reasons, and now she's in her mid sixties and she decided to convert

back to Christianity again for political reasons. In an article titled Queens of Infamy, Zinga and Terryalt writes that after a battle with Congo, Jenga's forces captured several people, including two Spanish Capuchin monks, and Jena granted freedom to these missionaries within her camp because unlike all the other missionaries she had met, these guys, weren't you know, telling her like, well, just let Portugal do whatever they want, that you know,

you need to be with God and so on. They really kind of had a less sympathy for her position. They were like, yeah, you lived here first, and it's kind of weird that we're coming in. One of these monks even became her lifelong personal secretary, so they had a really good relationship with her, and Terry Alt writes quote, thanks to the arrival of the Capuchins, she conceived of a bold new plan to develop her relationship with Rome and convince the Pope to recognize her as a bona

fide Christian ruler. After all, if she had the support of the almighty Vatican, surely the Portugue could no longer challenge her right to the throne, and so began Jinga's strategic reconversion to Christianity in order to beat the colonizing Catholics at their own game. That meant that she increasingly relied on Christian converts in her court and among her advisers. But it also meant that if you did not convert, or you kind of if you were complained about the

direction that the country was going. She bit back um She empowered Christian priests to burn temples and shrines of her opposers. She even captured traditional in Bunden and i bongal In priests and sold them as slaves, personally requesting that they be shipped overseas, and then used the money from their sale to build a Catholic church, which just feels like insult to injury. Yeah, I don't like that. Yeah. Finally, in sixty one, peace talks resumed between Jinga and the Portuguese.

They have been at war for about twenty five years now, and both sides we're just tired of it and it's like, this is boring thing, counts please, Plus, the Portuguese had been fighting a whole other war with Spain for ten years at this point, and they really needed to concentrate

on that. So Portugal seated some land to in Jinga and she seated some land to them, and they agreed to back each other up if anybody's enemies ever came through, and Jinga had to make sure that all the babies born in her kingdom were baptized, while the Portuguese agreed to concentrate the slave trade within her borders. Stuff like that,

scratching each other's backs here exactly as usual. The Portuguese included a little note that said that Matomba had to pay tribute as a vassal of Portugal, and as usual, Jinga ignored that little part and it was never ratified. After four years of negotiations, the peace treaty was finally signed. Jinga's sister Komba, who was now named Barbara because she had also inverted to Christianity, was released and she reunited with Jinga again. Now that it was peacetime, a lot change.

Jena ended all of the wartime traditions, which included stuff like forbidding anyone within her war camp to have children, for example. Um but it also ended some of the more democratic and merit tocratic practices that she had liked so much as an exiled woman trying to reclaim her throne. Now that she had her throne, she saw all that stuff as a threat to the monarchy. Power corrupts, Ain't that the way it always is? Just like, hey, we

need to make it easier to change our government. I'm going to get in charge to make it easier and then you get in charge and you're like, okay, now we'd better make it harder to change the government because I like being here. This is pretty comfortable. No, no, but it's me now, you see that's different. I'm a I'm a good one of the good ones. Jena also stopped wearing men's clothes. She became more feminine in her old age, so maybe the masculine clothes were just a

way to be like, don't discount me. She reformed her legal code because she's still trying to be recognized as the rightful ruler in the wider Christian Western world. Big triumph when she received a letter from Pope Alexander being like, oh man, you were doing so great at christianizing your nation, wishing you all the best. So on. It's like a letter from the corporate office being like this Taco bell

is doing exceptionally well. Amazing job. Employed a month. But she basically was able to hold it up, being like, see told y'all internationally recognized political player in the house, you know, So that was really you know, kind of backed up her claim. But since hers was now a Christian nation, she also had to abolish the tradition of concubine ege and we know she loves that because she has sixty of them herself. And the peasants would not do it unless the nobles did it, and the nobles

wouldn't do it unless Jinga did it. According to the History of Royal Women dot Com. They complained that Jinga quote kept more husbands and more lovers than we have wives, and they were like, I only have twenty ladies. You know, it's sixty dudes, so probably giving a long suffering sigh, like the sacrifices I make for my country. And at the tender age of seventy four, Jinga chose her favorite concubine, a beautiful decades younger man named Sebastiao, and married him

in a Christian ceremony in February of sixteen fifty seven. Well, beautiful, you know, love finds itself in many different forms, So true everyone, how did you get together? So how did you two met? Well, funny story. I had a harem of sixty men. Country insisted I get rid of them. Pretty cool for Sebastia to be chosen like those, So

maybe there's some real love here. Speculation station there was named some real love here because she's married a couple of times just for gain, and now she picked her favorite. So maybe she really had some tender feelings for this guy. That's a sweet way to think of it. I'm gonna my stop in speculation station is that it was more like a bachelorrette kind of thing, and they all had to compete with each other. They each had to go on one date, and she was like, I will choose

the best. They they're all ship talking each other, trying to dig up each other's dark past. Now I would watch this like a historic, historical fiction bachelor show with Jinga and her sixty man. Honestly, I would watch that. Let's get on it so if anyone's listening, we'll make it one of our nineties shows. In our deal that we have with HBO, we are pitching like crazy. So

Jinga had achieved everything she'd ever wanted. She was the rightful, internationally recognized queen of not only her hereditary homeland of Dongo, but also Matomba. Her nation was prosperous, independent and stable, and now all that was left was to figure out who would come next. The older she got, the more worried about this she was. She was afraid that somebody would come in and upset her very carefully built Christianity apple carts to get the Portuguese all worked up and

just you know, throw it all into the wind. So she named her sister Coomba now Barbara, as her heir. In October of sixteen sixty three, Jinger got sick with a throat in fiction. By December, it had spread to her lungs. She died in her sleep on December seventeenth of sixteen sixty three and was laid to rest with great ceremony. Antario says that Jinga made clear that she wanted a Christian burial. She writes quote After she died, Jinga's body was carefully washed by her attendants, who anointed

it with herbs, perfume, and powders. Her hair was styled with corals, pearls, and feathers, and her crown was placed on her head. Her limbs were loaded down with jewelry and arrangements of elephant hair, a symbol of royalty. Her body was wrapped in two richly wrought brocade cloths, and velvet slippers were placed on her feet. Then, mindful of her instructions, her attendants replaced all this with a habit, a crucifix and a rosary, though they left her hair

and crown as they were. This ceremonial dressing and redressing represented a middle ground between the two traditions. Jinga had spent decades navigating. I kind of love that that they kind of did both would give you both. It's pretty cool. We're gonna do one, undo it and then to the other. The poor funeral guys were like, oh god, I gotta do this twice. You know, only get paid for one job here. I get paid by the body, not by the clothes. That's the queen, alright, the double queen should

get married, Go get the crucifix. Now. Now, you know, as we've told her story, you can see her legacy is very confident. Yet, I mean, she's super badass and cool and there's a lot to like about her. A lot of slave stuff that's a little bit more like it's like slein infants, some blood drinking and stuff is

sort of like hey, yeah, yeah, well again. A lot of the over sex, blood drinking rumors that abound about her today came from one Portuguese guy who wrote a biography about about her in like the seventeen hundreds after she was dead. It became a sensation in the West, but it had very little basis in fact, and a lot of basists in disliking an African queen who refused

to be conquered. Now for Angola, which by the way, this area in Dongo and Matamba is now what is called Angola, because was the name for king or ruler, right, that's right, And the Portuguese misunderstood that when they heard it, they thought it was the name of the country, so they were like, anglad to everybody. And but it's called that now translation error. So for Angola. Jenga is still remembered as a great ruler, a brilliant military strategist, and

a certified badass. She's often called the mother of the nation. And after all the hullabaloo that Dongo had put her through about having a woman in charge, everything changed after Jinga and the one hundred and four years after her death, women ruled for eighty of them, so she kind of like just blew all that problem out of the water. They were like, I mean, what do you know, We've got a great example of a great queen, So I guess it's fine. Within those hundred and four years, twenty

four of them were men. If they were like, oh no, here comes a guy again. We all know men can't rule here. They're too emotional. I mean, and Bundy did. He's out here just flailing around. In nineteen five and Gola shook off the Portuguese once and for all and gained their independence, and they used Jinga as a symbol for their nation's independence. And that's when scholars got interested in Jinga's story and they finally started fact checking all

this stuff that was written about. There is a street named for her in Luanda. And in two thousand two, Angola put up a statue of Jinga, and women like to get married next to it, or at least have like newly wet photos taken next to it, like you would with your mom and dad. They would have it taken with Jinga, maybe as a subtle message to the fellas, like you might be my husband, but I inevitable look at that, and I don't know. I'll say that. Anne

Terry Old said that the slave trade stuff. Apparently if you look at historical records, she claims that the numbers of slaves leaving Jinga's kingdom eventually dropped to zero, so that maybe she, you know, was willing to use the slave trade until she didn't need it as much anymore. However, I could not find anything to back that up, and it was seems odd to me that she would make a monopoly in her kingdom and then there was no

slave slave trade there at all. I don't know that I see that, So if any if anyone knows what that is, I would love to hear more about that, because I found it really interesting. It is interesting, and it's just one of those things where it's like, maybe she had to use the slave trade to get rid of the you know, to to gain power to ultimately get rid of the Portuguese, and it was like, you know, a good end game for her to do terrible things.

I think when you do that, you also accept that people are going to have an opinion of you based on those terrible things that you did. It's not always just like, you know, ends justifying the means. It's also like, yeah, but you still did those things and it's not cool, um, but that's you know, that's that's reality, right, That's the real history of especially war and conquest all these things, is that like it's the good people do bad things and bad people do good things, and it's very murky

and muddled. Yeah, And I know Anne Harry Old had also said, like, you know that she up in a place where it's incredibly common, she had slaves of her own, you know, so and so forth. You know, I I have said before, I hate that, like woe is different in her time or their time or whatever. But it's

not untrue. And the main thing is, it's just interesting that we're so willing to muck around in the complicated legacies of a lot of Western kings and queens, but we don't care to learn about the African kings and queens who did very similar good and bad things and you know, kind of see see what their deal was, you know what I mean. Instead, we're like we're just talking about them drinking blood and stuff and yeah, yeah,

treating them more harshly then Thomas Jefferson, you know, like exactly. Yeah, I'll say too that I had a little bit I was felt a little bit like uh, ambivalent or whatever about the Christianity conversion because to me, I know that the Portuguese did not actually conquer Dongo and Matamba because they had to negotiate with her as an equal. She

got to maintain her authority and all that. But they also kind of got what they wanted because she converted her whole country and that's sort of what they were going for. So it feels like they got she. They kind of did get colonaiesed in a different way. And of course it's her prerogative to have whatever religion she wants and everything, you know. I was just like, I don't know, it kind of feels a little whatever. They

didn't conquer her militarily, but in the marketplace of ideas whatever. Yeah, and the country did not democratically switched to Christianity. It was not like something we all agreed on. It was okay, from now when all our babies are getting baptized. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. So I was kind of like,

see saw and about that one. I do want to make sure that we zero in a little bit on I think the ridiculous romance that sort of spiraled out into this story for us a couple of places, both when she married, um obvious, when she married the Bengala Costa Cosa just for that little that little trick, and she just bailed on him after that. Yeah, I think so pretty much. Hopefully he found love. We're up there for years. Kasa was like, I'm swearing off love. It

will never happen for me again. Where's Kassa's Hallmark movie? You know, he's like the scorned lover and he's like, I'm done with love, you know what I mean. And then he goes home and he meets like a beautiful um, you know, copywriter for a magazine or something, and Cake Baker and it's the same universe because he's like, oh, and my ex, the one who jilted me, she's on it's the spinoff show where she's doing a dating show.

She's doing Bachelorette. Okay, we just need a whole history historical fiction channel where we get to just make up makeup shows like this. Sometimes I think if we're living in a simulation, that's all it is. There's just so many stories somebody came up with that they're just like they're just all happening all over the globe at once, and that's what we're living in. Yeah, so what I need is earth wide simulation. It's got to have like between six and eight billion people. Um, all these stories

are happening simultaneously. It's the only way to fill them all in. So that's my plan. WO call me hbo. Let's get started on this. Let's get started on the worldwide simulation. Well, if you're excited to live in Eli simulation, or if you have any other comments about this episode, because it is, I mean, this is a really fascinating one. It was, it was it was really easy to look like her a lot, and then there was a hard other times when I was like, yeah, you know, she's

not a cut and dried type of historical figure. But reach out to us, you know, we love hearing from you. Our email is ridic Romance at gmail dot com. That's right. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli. I'm at Dynamite Boom and the show is at ridic Romance, right, And if you want to give Eli related first thank gifts, go on to Apple Podcasts and give us a review and a rating it right, we'd love it. Helps they're goodcovering the show.

I know, right, if it's bad, to keep it to yourself, but if it's good, please do share. It helps people discover the show, and we would love to have more beautiful listeners like you. Thanks so much, I'll will catch you the next episode. Love you so long. Friends, It's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friend's name's Uncle sandece to listen to a show ridiculous roll dance