Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Hey, how you doing nice? We was get
Speaker 1: a nice little song from you on that out there
Speaker 1: in the word so nice to have you back. And
Speaker 1: I just gotta say, I want to say thank you
Speaker 1: so much to everybody who reached out on my birthday yesterday.
Speaker 1: Uh it was so nice. It was really nice. I
Speaker 1: mean just seeing all these messages. Not only that, but
Speaker 1: my birthday happened to land on the day that Spotify
Speaker 1: wrapped came out for everyone, So to see all y'all
Speaker 1: sharing that we were often your number one or number
Speaker 1: two podcasts. Oh my god. I couldn't have asked for
Speaker 1: a better birthday gift. No serious, honestly, what a present
Speaker 1: it really was. It was just it was just such
Speaker 1: a good day. It just felt so good all days
Speaker 1: seeing all those getting all these kind messages, all of
Speaker 1: the best right. Yeah, what a beautiful collection of listeners
Speaker 1: we have. I know y'all are even better than than
Speaker 1: our friends. Some of you are our friends, and you're
Speaker 1: you're the best of both categories, the m v P
Speaker 1: s and friends. Uh, but yeah, it was a great day.
Speaker 1: We got some fun do ye um. Danny got me
Speaker 1: a beautiful set of knives because I like to cook
Speaker 1: and I like a good knife when I had got
Speaker 1: you our current knives for Christmas one year, many years ago,
Speaker 1: but they are not good. Well that was a who
Speaker 1: was a poorer time. They were a step up from
Speaker 1: our previous knives, and these knives are gonna step up
Speaker 1: from those. So it's just nice to see our lives
Speaker 1: improving as represented by our kitchen knives. Yeah, we're moving
Speaker 1: up the staircase of life. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: get into this story today. We're going somewhere we haven't
Speaker 1: been in a while, that's true. Yeah, we're going to Africa, baby, Yes,
Speaker 1: because we're going to talk about Njinga of Dongo and Matomba,
Speaker 1: who was a badass queen. She ruled for nearly four
Speaker 1: decades in the sixteen hundreds. Very long time, um and
Speaker 1: like many rulers, she has a really complicated legacy. But
Speaker 1: unlike many rulers, we don't hear much about her political prowess,
Speaker 1: her military genius, how she affected her country's history, mostly
Speaker 1: because racism, right, But we should have heard about this
Speaker 1: because Jinga really was a certified badass. She's a that bitch.
Speaker 1: She managed to fight off Portuguese colonization using a combination
Speaker 1: of diplomacy, military tactics, and strategic marriages until they were
Speaker 1: forced to negotiate with her as an equal. And her
Speaker 1: legend has since grown to include a lot of wild
Speaker 1: stories that are probably not true, but what has been
Speaker 1: verified is very exciting on its own. So let's hear
Speaker 1: about Jinga of Jungle and Matomba and how she made
Speaker 1: Portugal bow to the Double Queen. Yeah, let's go pay
Speaker 1: their French colu. Well, Elia and Diana got stories to tell.
Speaker 1: There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships,
Speaker 1: a lover. It might be any type of person at all,
Speaker 1: and abstract cons at a concrete wall. But if there's
Speaker 1: a story, were the Second Glance ridiculous? A production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio? All right, before we kick it off,
Speaker 1: I want to let you know most of pretty much
Speaker 1: everyone's information about Jinga comes from Lynda Haywood's biography Jinga
Speaker 1: of Angola Um. So we'll note when we find quotes
Speaker 1: or info from elsewhere, but otherwise just know that is
Speaker 1: what to read if you want to get the clearest
Speaker 1: picture of her life. Okay, thank you, Linda Haywood. I know.
Speaker 1: Thank you Linda Haywood doing the work, doing the thing.
Speaker 1: Jingo was born around fifty three. She was the daughter
Speaker 1: of the King of Indongo, or as they call it,
Speaker 1: the Angol. That's what they call the king. His name
Speaker 1: was Colombo, and her mom was his favorite slave wife
Speaker 1: and concubine, Kingela. It was a very hard birth because
Speaker 1: the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, so she
Speaker 1: was given the name Jinga, which means to twist or turn. Well, well,
Speaker 1: well that's speaking of my birthday. Maybe I should have
Speaker 1: been named Jinga. Umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck.
Speaker 1: I was kidding. I was born at home and probably
Speaker 1: pretty dead when I was born. The story I believe,
Speaker 1: as my mom told me, is that her midwife meg
Speaker 1: Um you remember in the cartoon hundred one Dalmatians with
Speaker 1: Lucky Yes, and she had They had to put him
Speaker 1: in a towel and like rub them until he woke up.
Speaker 1: It was the most stressful minute. And imagine that was
Speaker 1: your son, because that's pretty much what they had to
Speaker 1: do to me. Apparently, yeah, they put you in an
Speaker 1: oven or something. No, I think it's literally just in
Speaker 1: a blanket and just like it's just rub them back
Speaker 1: and forth until he wakes up and it worked. It's
Speaker 1: your birthday and your death day, same day. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I already get that part over with, so I'll live forever.
Speaker 1: The key to immortality. That's fun. I was born. I
Speaker 1: was extremely easy birth. Apparently, I just slid right on out,
Speaker 1: split right out with a with a clipboard getting ready.
Speaker 1: You were already halfway through a project. I was like,
Speaker 1: I have many notes about how things are set up
Speaker 1: around here. Let me tell you. And they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: is it a boy or a girl. Oh no, it's
Speaker 1: a producer, it's a manager. Get out, throw her out
Speaker 1: the window. You probably will like this part because people
Speaker 1: who survived difficult birds were thought to have special powers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say known to have special powers. Okay, we've
Speaker 1: proven it, so yeah. They expected some great things from
Speaker 1: Jinga early on, just by virtue of how she was born.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons that she actually got to
Speaker 1: do anything cool might be because she was born a woman.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly because since she wasn't a boy, she wasn't seeing
Speaker 1: his competition for her father's air, which was her brother Bondi.
Speaker 1: So Kilombo was able to lavish on Zinga all the
Speaker 1: love and attention that he wanted without offending anyone. Pretty
Speaker 1: nice set up. So she was like his favorite kid
Speaker 1: and right away a total badass. She I'm picturing here,
Speaker 1: was like an infant, just like what everyone was like,
Speaker 1: Holy shit. And she trained as a warrior. She had
Speaker 1: particular skill with the battle act, just cool Rosa Diaz.
Speaker 1: Frequently she would beat the hell out of her brother
Speaker 1: or anyone else who cared to step to her on
Speaker 1: the sparring field. And her father also included her in
Speaker 1: other areas of governance. He included her in important councils
Speaker 1: and rituals, and she was taught to read and write
Speaker 1: in Portuguese by visiting missionaries. Sounds like a lot of
Speaker 1: responsibility for a toddler. I know, right, she's like, but whatever,
Speaker 1: she's ready. Yeah, she's like, I didn't cut that umbilical
Speaker 1: cord for nothing. And yes, the Portuguese taught her to
Speaker 1: read and write, because the Portuguese were already in this
Speaker 1: region in fift seventy five. If they showed up and
Speaker 1: they allied with Dongo's northern rivals, the Congo, to bring
Speaker 1: Christianity to darkest Africa, and of course establish a slave
Speaker 1: trading post in Landa. You know they shoved up. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: so we're here to bring a Christianity to my Portuguese
Speaker 1: is gonna be Italian just see, you know, just go
Speaker 1: ahead and lay that out now from Chef Boyardi. So
Speaker 1: we bring your Christianity and the frame of air no
Speaker 1: whatever Portuguese accent, they say, we're here. We brought the Church,
Speaker 1: we brought God, and we're gonna take some of your
Speaker 1: back slaves too. But the real thing we're here for
Speaker 1: this God. Definitely the gods number one. So there were
Speaker 1: several years of peace between them and the Portuguese, but
Speaker 1: then the Portuguese started trying to monopolize the slave trade.
Speaker 1: They burned down whole villages and took hostages, some estimating
Speaker 1: that they captured and enslaved fifty thousand people. Isn't that
Speaker 1: just the way somebody comes in. You've got all these
Speaker 1: mom and pop trade shops set up, and the big
Speaker 1: guys come in and they just monopolized the whole thing,
Speaker 1: the walmart of the slave not fair for independent business owners.
Speaker 1: This is crazy though, to think about, um, how much
Speaker 1: within these African cultures the slave trade was part of
Speaker 1: their economy too at this point, right extremely important. I
Speaker 1: know I haven't done a lot of studying about the
Speaker 1: African slave trade, like within the country. UM. I know
Speaker 1: that slavery was very different than the slave the chattel
Speaker 1: type slavery that we had in America. So there is some,
Speaker 1: I guess, major differences. I'm not sure. It still seems
Speaker 1: like they weren't treated very well and you still are
Speaker 1: like not a free person. It's not like it's not like,
Speaker 1: oh good slavery, like that's all right. I believe that
Speaker 1: the biggest, like defining feature of chattel slavery was that
Speaker 1: your kids were also slaves. I think that that's not
Speaker 1: how it worked in Africa. Interesting now, by the time
Speaker 1: Jingha's father ascended to the throne in Fife, large swaths
Speaker 1: of Indango were already under Portuguese control. Many of the Sobas,
Speaker 1: who were basically like the aristocrats of Indango, many of
Speaker 1: them felt like they saw which way the wind was blowing,
Speaker 1: so they went ahead and allied with Portugal, and they
Speaker 1: paid tributes to them rather than their own king, which
Speaker 1: of course further impoverished the kingdom. No matter what Angolo
Speaker 1: Colombo tried, their king, and this ranged from diplomacy and
Speaker 1: negotiations all the way to open warfare. He just could
Speaker 1: not defeat the Portuguese. And things only got worse when
Speaker 1: a tribal band called the in Bengala invaded in Dongo
Speaker 1: and allied with the Portuguese. So Colombo had to completely
Speaker 1: give up trying to get back any of his old lands.
Speaker 1: And he probably walked out of the room and then
Speaker 1: turned back and said, and just one more thing for
Speaker 1: all you Colombo fans, I'm glad you got that. I
Speaker 1: don't know you'd pick. I'm not not I've never seen it,
Speaker 1: but I do know that about about Colombo that he
Speaker 1: would he'd be like, all right, I guess it's all
Speaker 1: wrapped up, and he'd be like, actually, just Encyclopedia Brown,
Speaker 1: where he would ask the one question the whole case.
Speaker 1: In sixteen seventeen, Kilombo died and Zinga's brother and Bundy,
Speaker 1: ascended to the throne. Now, his first order of business
Speaker 1: was to eliminate the competition. We've seen this many times
Speaker 1: in a royal family. So he quickly murdered his older
Speaker 1: half brother and his older half brother's entire family, as
Speaker 1: well as many other rival claimants to the throne. Now,
Speaker 1: Jinga was thirty five by this point, so she was spared.
Speaker 1: But Mundy did kill her infant son, and then he
Speaker 1: had Jinga and her two sisters, Fungi and Kambu forcibly
Speaker 1: sterilized by pouring a boiling mixture of herbs and oil
Speaker 1: on their bellies, so that, according to History of Royal
Speaker 1: Women dot com quote from the shock, fear and pain,
Speaker 1: they should forever be unable to give birth. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's pretty park horrifying to think about. Really shows your
Speaker 1: confidence in your own rulership when you have to go
Speaker 1: out and murder anyone might one day possibly oppose you
Speaker 1: and force people to not even be able to have
Speaker 1: a child that might might one day. Right, also ironically
Speaker 1: creates some of your worst enemies. Right, So Jena ran
Speaker 1: off to the neighboring kingdom of Matamba, probably in fear
Speaker 1: for her life, or just as likely super Piste off
Speaker 1: like I didn't hanging out with you anymore. Meanwhile, Bondi's
Speaker 1: second order of business was to route the Portuguese. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do what my dad couldn't beat these Portuguese
Speaker 1: guys out of here. So he's throwing himself into that.
Speaker 1: He's starting fights this way and that. But he had
Speaker 1: no military prowess, and just like his father Kilombo, he
Speaker 1: did not have the warriors or the arms that he
Speaker 1: needed to really be a match for the Portuguese armies.
Speaker 1: Didn't like learn anything from his dad. Now, he was
Speaker 1: able to create a tentative alliance with the in Bongala,
Speaker 1: which was helpful, but otherwise he made very little headway.
Speaker 1: Oh that was the tribe that just came in and
Speaker 1: invaded them. Okay, so he managed to kind of be like, hey,
Speaker 1: these guys suck, you know that, Like let's you know.
Speaker 1: So they were kind of like they're probably like separate
Speaker 1: ends of the room, look at like eighth graders at
Speaker 1: a dance, Like I'm not going over here first. So anyway,
Speaker 1: he's he's not getting anywhere, sort of a stalemate. So
Speaker 1: in six one and Bondi reached out to Jenga, his sister.
Speaker 1: She's still chilling in Matamba, and you know, he's like, hey, gurl,
Speaker 1: is your bro bro? Remember me, I'm the guy that
Speaker 1: sterilized you and killed your kid. Anyway, I hope this
Speaker 1: email finds you will listen. You're a royal lineage, and
Speaker 1: you speak Portuguese, will you become my chief negotiator? And
Speaker 1: used go to the governor of Portugal tell him to
Speaker 1: get off our backs already. Jinga is kind of surprisingly,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, yeah, no problem, that's all water under
Speaker 1: the bridge, so let me go handle that for you
Speaker 1: and get my ass on over to the Portuguese governor.
Speaker 1: If you know family, it's we put these things behind us,
Speaker 1: right right, sure, or she's probably more than likely it's like, well,
Speaker 1: the kingdom is more important than my personal feeling. Maybe
Speaker 1: she did hate those Portuguese she did hate. Now, usually
Speaker 1: African rulers would wear European fashions when they met the governor,
Speaker 1: sort of as a way to let them know that,
Speaker 1: you know, oh we're equals. Were not from some savage
Speaker 1: dribe in an underdeveloped region. I could put on a suit,
Speaker 1: you know. But Shinga thought that that was basically a
Speaker 1: tacit agreement, that their culture was inferior to European culture.
Speaker 1: So when she showed up to negotiate, she was wearing
Speaker 1: Dongan regalia, just dripping with jewels. She had feathers in
Speaker 1: her hair, she was draped in all these expensive fabrics
Speaker 1: of fabulous colors, and she was rolling deep with a
Speaker 1: big retinue. This caused a real stir and just as
Speaker 1: a perk required the Portuguese to pay her entire party's
Speaker 1: expenses while they were in town. I picture her, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like on her she's packing up
Speaker 1: her ship to go to Luans see the governor, and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, can I come? She's like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: anyone else want to go? Anybody all right, because they're
Speaker 1: gonna pay all the time we're there. You want to go, yeah,
Speaker 1: table for fifty please, thank you? And we're all we
Speaker 1: all need separate rooms. My squad and I need separate rooms.
Speaker 1: But in the negotiating room, the Portuguese had put out
Speaker 1: a bunch of velvet chairs for themselves and only a
Speaker 1: straw mat on the floor for Jinga to sit in.
Speaker 1: This was a common tactic to try and show how
Speaker 1: inferior they felt African rulers were. Well. Singa took one
Speaker 1: look at that little straw metal the floor and she's like,
Speaker 1: I don't play like that, couldn't be me. So she
Speaker 1: whistled called over one of her servants, who walked up
Speaker 1: and got down on their hands and knees on the floor,
Speaker 1: and Jinga sat on that servant's back, and she conducted
Speaker 1: her negotiations sitting face to face with the Portuguese boom.
Speaker 1: You didn't think about that, did you. I brought my
Speaker 1: own chair chair. His name is Frederick. Now. This legend
Speaker 1: was later embellished, and it said that once the meeting
Speaker 1: was over, Jinga got up from her little servant chair
Speaker 1: and she split the servant's throat right there, telling the
Speaker 1: Portuguese quote, I never sit in the same seat twice,
Speaker 1: and after that they always had a chair for her.
Speaker 1: It's probably like, it's probably not true. We do kind
Speaker 1: of like the idea of some poor Portuguese servant going
Speaker 1: up to their ruler and being like, um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know you got this little power play you're trying to
Speaker 1: work out. But I'm the guy who cleans the rugs
Speaker 1: and last time there was so much blood, So could
Speaker 1: we just get this woman a chair please. Xinga's diplomatic
Speaker 1: mission was to negotiate for peace, right, so she talked
Speaker 1: terms with the Portuguese governor. She said, you know, our
Speaker 1: offer is Dongo would seeze hostilities. She apparently choked up
Speaker 1: in Bandy's warmongering, as quote the mistakes of a young king,
Speaker 1: which must have felt pretty good to kind of slight him.
Speaker 1: She was representing him. The thing is, he's an idiot,
Speaker 1: so don't worry about anything he does. I'm going to
Speaker 1: take care of that. Why are boys always so messy?
Speaker 1: She said also that they would allow Portuguese slave traders
Speaker 1: within their borders, and they also had some escaped slaves
Speaker 1: of the Portuguese king fighting in Bandi's army, and she said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, if you sign this treaty will return them
Speaker 1: to you. You can have them back. But in exchange,
Speaker 1: the Portuguese had to agree to tear down the forts
Speaker 1: that they had built on in Dungan territory. And also
Speaker 1: she said, my main thing is we're not going to
Speaker 1: pay a single tribute to the Portuguese king. She said,
Speaker 1: only conquered people pay tributes. We're not conquered. We're here negotiating,
Speaker 1: so we're not going to do any of that. But
Speaker 1: also it would be super cool if we could have
Speaker 1: like a military alliance. Y'all could back us up when
Speaker 1: the in Bengala or anyone else decides to attack us,
Speaker 1: will do the same for you. I'm scratched my back,
Speaker 1: scratch your back. And at first the Governor's like, all
Speaker 1: this sounds good or whatever, but how do we know
Speaker 1: that we can trust you that you're in earnest And
Speaker 1: so Jinga played her ace. She offered to be baptized
Speaker 1: as a Christian. I mean, after all, that's the whole
Speaker 1: reason they're they're right. So they went ahead and baptized
Speaker 1: her right there in Luanda. She took the name Donna
Speaker 1: Anna Disoza to honor her new godparents, Anna da Silva,
Speaker 1: the governor's wife, and the governor himself, Dual Carrera Dissa,
Speaker 1: and the peace treaty was accepted. Jingo slash. Anna Desoza
Speaker 1: went home to Dongo's capital, Kabasa, triumphant with her big
Speaker 1: ass retinue. But things started to go wrong immediately because
Speaker 1: her brother Bondis alliance with the Imbongala tribe fell apart
Speaker 1: and the Bondi got his ass beat. The Imbongala actually
Speaker 1: took over the Indongo capital Kabasa, and they exiled in
Speaker 1: Bondi and created their own kingdom of Kasanji. The Portuguese
Speaker 1: looked down all this strife going on between them was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this seems like it's between the two y'all, So why
Speaker 1: don't you just call us when you've retaken your capital
Speaker 1: and we'll get going on the peace treaty once you
Speaker 1: have your ship together a little bit more. Also, Bondi, uh,
Speaker 1: you need to get baptized now too. Oh well, Bondi
Speaker 1: did manage to reclaim his capital in sixte but Jingo
Speaker 1: went to him and was like, hey, I don't think
Speaker 1: you should get baptized, because that would make all the
Speaker 1: traditionalists in your court think you're so kind of puppet.
Speaker 1: So Bondi refused the baptism, and the Portuguese are basically like, well,
Speaker 1: then you can take this little treaty and shove it.
Speaker 1: They refused to leave their forts as they had promised,
Speaker 1: and they conducted raids for loot and slaves all over
Speaker 1: the kingdom. Now in Bondy was losing support fast. Jinga
Speaker 1: had taken over most of his duties and he was
Speaker 1: losing popularity. So maybe it's not surprising that only a
Speaker 1: year later Bondi was dead. Some people say it was
Speaker 1: from suicide. He just felt like he'd done too bad
Speaker 1: of a job. He couldn't fix it. Some people say
Speaker 1: he was poisoned. So did Jinga kill him to get
Speaker 1: her revenge years after he murdered her son. Possible? Possible,
Speaker 1: But also Bondi was very unpopular, He was very ineffective.
Speaker 1: Lots of people wanted him dead, So lots of options
Speaker 1: to choose from. If you're looking for someone maybe in
Speaker 1: his court that thought they'd be better off if he
Speaker 1: was out of the picture, right, tough to figure out.
Speaker 1: Too many murders. Everyone in this country has a motive.
Speaker 1: So let's just say we're all cool with it. Let's
Speaker 1: just say killed himself. I mean he kind of did.
Speaker 1: He made a lot of it, in my opinion, responsible
Speaker 1: for his own demise at least. So yeah, Jinga's revenge
Speaker 1: took a harsher eye for and eye kind of approach
Speaker 1: because now that Bandy was gone, Jinga wanted to be Angola.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be the queen and m Bondi had
Speaker 1: made it clear that he wanted Jinga to succeed him
Speaker 1: as well. He had called everybody you know, because that's
Speaker 1: why she had all his duties and everything. He's like,
Speaker 1: that's my girl. But of course there are a few
Speaker 1: problems with this. First of all, Bondi had a son,
Speaker 1: Jinga's seven year old nephew, who at the time was
Speaker 1: living with the i bongal In war chief Casa Um
Speaker 1: when they had made that tentative alliance and Bondi had
Speaker 1: sent his son, probably is like a collateral. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: read about this in our Poconta's episode I believe, where
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, well, since we're allies now, I'm
Speaker 1: going to send one of my children to live with you,
Speaker 1: and that sort of secures are yeah, basically have a
Speaker 1: hostage kind of but they're not treated like seasoners. But
Speaker 1: they're still like someone you care about, you won't just
Speaker 1: sunk around with ye. So the kid is still there
Speaker 1: with the in Bengala. Well, Jinga knows exactly how to
Speaker 1: deal with a succession problem like this, so she seduced
Speaker 1: this younger war chief Kasa and convinced him that she
Speaker 1: had fallen head over heels for him. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: long before she proposed that they get married. She's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm over here, Dongo. You've got in Bengala together,
Speaker 1: We're unstoppable, right. So Casa and Jinga got married a
Speaker 1: beautiful ceremony, but it was barely over before she ordered
Speaker 1: her nephew seized and killed right on the spot. What
Speaker 1: kind of a crazy party. I've never been to a
Speaker 1: wedding like that, and I don't want to go, damn.
Speaker 1: So she straight up was like, Oh, I want to
Speaker 1: get my nephew back, so I'll go and marry the
Speaker 1: guy who's his captor. He marries her. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: you love me so much. Thank you for marrying me.
Speaker 1: She's like, yeah, yeah, I just wanted to get my
Speaker 1: nephew back so I could jill him cold. So like
Speaker 1: to Jinga, she felt like, I'm getting revenge on BONDI,
Speaker 1: you know, for years later for her own murdered son. Right,
Speaker 1: But no word on how Casa felt about the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I picture him at like at a window in the rain,
Speaker 1: like a palm is on it, and he's thinking, was
Speaker 1: any of it ever real? I feel so used. I
Speaker 1: feel so used, well at the possible expense of cost
Speaker 1: is broken heart. Jinga had eliminated her main rival for
Speaker 1: the throne, but her opponents had other complaints about her. Now,
Speaker 1: this was a matrilineal culture that meant that they traced
Speaker 1: bloodlines through the mother and not the father, they would
Speaker 1: have seen no problem at all with ray nearest situation
Speaker 1: and House of the Dragon. They would have been like,
Speaker 1: that's your kids. Great. So some of the Andongins were like, listen, actually,
Speaker 1: neither in Bondi or in Jenga are fit to rule
Speaker 1: because they're not from the first wife there from slave wives,
Speaker 1: so they kind of don't count. But Jinga felt kind
Speaker 1: of comfortable with this claim because she's like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: true and all, but at least my dad was the Angola.
Speaker 1: Who were you, you know, like, you don't have no
Speaker 1: king in your ancestry, so I'm closer than any of y'all.
Speaker 1: But then others were like, you're a woman, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter who your parents are, you're not eligible to
Speaker 1: be in charge. A very very tedious, boring tailor as
Speaker 1: old as time kind of argument. And then some thought
Speaker 1: that her willingness to negotiate with the Portuguese was a
Speaker 1: sign of weakness, so they were like, we don't want
Speaker 1: to weak queen up in here in the middle of
Speaker 1: this crisis. So Jenga had a bit of a succession
Speaker 1: crisis on her hands, and this was one that the
Speaker 1: Portuguese would do their best to exploit and we'll find
Speaker 1: out how. Right after this welcome back to the show,
Speaker 1: the Portuguese governor and Jinga both wanted to honor the
Speaker 1: peace treaty that they'd signed a few years before and
Speaker 1: get the slave trade running stably again. But the governor
Speaker 1: de Soza got a little cocky and he told Jinga
Speaker 1: that she would have to pay tribute as a vassal
Speaker 1: of Portugal. It was like her number one thing she
Speaker 1: didn't want to do. He also, very shady style, made
Speaker 1: all the Sobas, those aristocrats pay Portugal tributes instead of
Speaker 1: paying those tributes to Jinga, and this further undermined her.
Speaker 1: But Jinga, like you said, was like no, I told
Speaker 1: you before, We are not conquered people. So she refused
Speaker 1: to pay these tributes. And more than that, she sent
Speaker 1: messengers to all the Portuguese plantations and told the workers
Speaker 1: there that they escaped and came to in Dongo to
Speaker 1: join her, they would be considered free. Now the Portuguese
Speaker 1: started to lose so much manpower as all these slaves
Speaker 1: and workers just slipping through the cracks to run back
Speaker 1: to Windongo, that they complained about Jinga and said she
Speaker 1: wasn't holding up her end of the peace treaty and
Speaker 1: returning their escaped slaves, as she had promised to do.
Speaker 1: But Jinga looked around and said, oh, you want me
Speaker 1: to send back the escaped slaves. Of course I will,
Speaker 1: I said I would. But she looked around and said,
Speaker 1: but my kingdom doesn't have any Well you're talking about
Speaker 1: all these folks back here. Well, they can't be slaves,
Speaker 1: they're free. Woops, Sorry, I got nothing to send you
Speaker 1: too bad, so sad. Now, obviously this made Jinga look
Speaker 1: like a total boss. So many of those sobas, the
Speaker 1: aristocrats who had been lured the Portugal side, they came
Speaker 1: right back to her. She was gaining strength by the day.
Speaker 1: That made Portugal or Real nervous. So they decided to
Speaker 1: do what any powerful country does in the face of
Speaker 1: a nation that doesn't want to do as it's toll
Speaker 1: prop up a public government that will give him whatever
Speaker 1: they want. So the Portuguese army dispatched some soldiers to
Speaker 1: protect one of these sobas. His name was harri Akilwanji,
Speaker 1: and they put him forward as a replacement king for Jinga.
Speaker 1: A Kilowanji was one of these guys who was all
Speaker 1: worked up about Jinga being a woman. You know, he's
Speaker 1: running around like guys, I just don't understand how a
Speaker 1: lady can rule. I mean, her tits will get in
Speaker 1: the way something. But he was a real threat because
Speaker 1: he actually was descended from the royal line somewhere in
Speaker 1: his ancestry. So he was kind of a good choice
Speaker 1: that the Portuguese had landed on. He could get a
Speaker 1: lot of support. Jinga sent some soldiers to crush this
Speaker 1: little rebellion, but it didn't work, and that made some
Speaker 1: of these wishy washy sobas change their minds again. And
Speaker 1: that weekend Jinga's claim, I'm picturing that scene in Hook
Speaker 1: when Rufio draws the line in the sand and he's like,
Speaker 1: who's with me? And who's with this fake pan? And
Speaker 1: they keep running back and forth. I'm back and forth.
Speaker 1: That's the sobas, remember detailed moments from Hook, Right, whatever listened,
Speaker 1: somebody was nodding through that what he was nodding. So
Speaker 1: Jinga tried negotiating with Portugal while she's secretly gathering her
Speaker 1: forces together. But the Portuguese kind of saw through that.
Speaker 1: They said, Satan's done waiting, and they declared Kilauangi the
Speaker 1: rightful King of Dongo and then declared outright war on Jinga.
Speaker 1: Now things looked pretty desperate for in Jinga. She and
Speaker 1: her followers had to flee the capital to some islands
Speaker 1: on the Kwanza River. Battles raged, but she was outnumbered
Speaker 1: by the Portuguese and she suffered a lot of defeats.
Speaker 1: Things started to look up when Harry kilauanj died of smallpox.
Speaker 1: So the Portuguese needed a new king and they backed
Speaker 1: anothern Donga noble named nag Lahari, and he wasn't a
Speaker 1: very popular choice, but he still had the support of
Speaker 1: the Portuguese and the more powerful and Donga noble. Jinga
Speaker 1: tried negotiating again. She offered them four hundred slaves as
Speaker 1: a gift, and she said she'd even start paying those
Speaker 1: tributes to Portugal that she hated so much, as long
Speaker 1: as they declared her the rightful queen. You know she's
Speaker 1: at the end of her row. But they said, no,
Speaker 1: too late. You are going to have to not only
Speaker 1: pay those tributes, but you're going to have to submit
Speaker 1: to our chosen king, nag Lahari. You lick my boots,
Speaker 1: kissed the ring, so on and so on. Shinga. Obviously,
Speaker 1: she would rather die in battle than do any of
Speaker 1: that ship, so she just kept on fighting. But her
Speaker 1: forces were depleted. Some accounts say she had less than
Speaker 1: two hundred soldiers. Even worse, both of her sisters, Fungi
Speaker 1: and Kumbo were captured and imprisoned in Luanda, and this
Speaker 1: devastated her. But then an interesting message arrived for her.
Speaker 1: It was from the powerful in bangal And warlord named Kassanji.
Speaker 1: Remember these are the guys who initially invaded back when
Speaker 1: her brother was king. He kind of had a loose
Speaker 1: agreement with them, but it always fell apart. These are
Speaker 1: the tough guys next door. This guy had been an
Speaker 1: enemy of Dongo for years. He was actually the one
Speaker 1: who routed in Bandi from Kasaba and established his own kingdom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the kingdom of Kasanji. Well, he still had his own
Speaker 1: kingdom along the Kwanza River and he was sick to
Speaker 1: death of the Portuguese. So he went to Jinga and
Speaker 1: set have an alliance. You got my warriors and you're smarts.
Speaker 1: We can really get rid of these Portuguese and that
Speaker 1: asshole that took over the crown from you. But she
Speaker 1: would have to marry him and conform to his way
Speaker 1: of life and leave behind any symbols of her own power.
Speaker 1: That's right, I guess it was like this large bell
Speaker 1: that was symbolically carried by the leader of Dongo went
Speaker 1: to battle, and he was like, you gotta leave that
Speaker 1: type of song um and sably. Kind of surprisingly, Jinga
Speaker 1: accepted this proposal. She married Kasanji, and she was inducted
Speaker 1: into Imbongala society because it basically like a Sparta type situation.
Speaker 1: They're like highly militarized society, very much into getting as
Speaker 1: tough as possible. Wheaties really eat your wheaties society. My
Speaker 1: nation is more of a fruit loops nation nation. We're
Speaker 1: about having a good time a lot of variety here.
Speaker 1: I like that. I wouldn't be in the fruit loops nation.
Speaker 1: What's up, Fruities, Thanks for tuning into fruit loops Nation.
Speaker 1: I was trying to decide if I would prefer to
Speaker 1: be called a fruity or a loopy. Oh yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's the that's the in fighting. The people of the
Speaker 1: fruit loops Nation eventually split into fruities and loopy's. You'd
Speaker 1: think it'd be more chill over it gets very ugly. Dang. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the most one of the most catastrophic wars
Speaker 1: in history was between the Fruities and the Loopies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: resuilted in a high fruit toast corncyrup personing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they were more of a meritocracy. Like if you were
Speaker 1: like a high level person and in Mongaland's society and
Speaker 1: you had a kid, your kid had to join the
Speaker 1: war camp as an equal with everybody else in the
Speaker 1: war camp. They had to prove themselves just like anybody else,
Speaker 1: didn't matter who their daddy was or whatever. So they
Speaker 1: you know, she liked that because she had been told
Speaker 1: all this time, you're a woman, you can't be doing
Speaker 1: all this cool ship, and she's like, but I am
Speaker 1: doing it, so it shouldn't account for something. Now, this
Speaker 1: is another part of Jinga's story that's been somewhat obscured
Speaker 1: by like a rumor and hearsay throughout the years, because
Speaker 1: her legend includes little tidbits like how she would eat
Speaker 1: the hearts of her enemies, or how she would decapitate
Speaker 1: slaves before battle and drink their blood, like real crazy
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and more than likely, like a lot
Speaker 1: of these more lurid rumors is just the Western historical
Speaker 1: record trying to make her look bad, and we've also
Speaker 1: seen that many, many times in many stories. However, there
Speaker 1: is a grain of truth in these ones because there
Speaker 1: were customary in Bengal and rituals that she did more
Speaker 1: than likely participate in, including a blood oath ceremony where
Speaker 1: she had to drink human blood or the muggy as
Speaker 1: Samba initiation that includes the use of an oil made
Speaker 1: from a slain infant. History of Royal Women says that
Speaker 1: the ritual required you to kill your own child and
Speaker 1: make an oil to anoint yourself, but since Zena had
Speaker 1: no children, she had to take the child off of
Speaker 1: one of her concubines and kill that one instead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gross, don't love it. Um. But I also was like,
Speaker 1: it's so funny when you hear the words drink human blood,
Speaker 1: because you always imagine like a crazy, like big coconut
Speaker 1: full of it or something, and it's like a huge amount.
Speaker 1: It might have just be a little, just a little
Speaker 1: couple drops on your tongue. It might not have been
Speaker 1: a lot, you know. It's just one of those things.
Speaker 1: I feel like we exaggerate the volume of blood that's required.
Speaker 1: Didn't we just watch something where they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we make a we're blood brothers. Now are going to
Speaker 1: be bound in blood. And one guy like pricks his
Speaker 1: finger and the other one like they split your whole
Speaker 1: hand open, like I can't stop bleeding. And they had
Speaker 1: a spraying everywhere. One of my favorite things to happen
Speaker 1: on stage, spraying blood. Classic. One time we did a
Speaker 1: show where they had to vomit, I think, and y'all
Speaker 1: had rigged up a fire extinguisher, so it was this
Speaker 1: insanely powerful streaming out of this person. It was so gross,
Speaker 1: the whole thing where there's a tube coming out their
Speaker 1: sleeve and it runs down their costume and out their
Speaker 1: leg and off stage somewhere, and every time you hold
Speaker 1: your hand up to your mouth, just somebody backstage pulls
Speaker 1: the trigger. And it was like, yeah, very intense, violent show,
Speaker 1: so funny now by all accounts, Jenga did incredibly well
Speaker 1: with the I Bengala uh because she's a badass already,
Speaker 1: so they respected that and she even became a warlord
Speaker 1: in her own right. Then she invaded the Kingdom of Matamba,
Speaker 1: where she had spent a few years, and she conquered them.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks for your hospitality. I'm back. I loved it
Speaker 1: here so much, and I decided to take over. But
Speaker 1: instead of executing the queen of Matamba, which was an
Speaker 1: Imbongalan tradition they always executed their conquered rulers, Jinga showed
Speaker 1: mercy and she just branded her as a common slave instead.
Speaker 1: So kind. But now Jinga had a stable power base,
Speaker 1: so she turned her attention to expanding the slave trade
Speaker 1: within her own borders. This served a double purpose. Firstly,
Speaker 1: by selling slaves, she raised the money to buy arms
Speaker 1: and ammunition, very important. Secondly, by controlling the slave trade,
Speaker 1: she denied the Portuguese their source of income. Plus, people
Speaker 1: started calling her the double Queen, which is just cool.
Speaker 1: That's just a cool thing to happen. I know we
Speaker 1: were going to get a double queen, but it just
Speaker 1: won't fit in our room. Oh you. She also started
Speaker 1: dressing in masculine clothes and insisting that people call her
Speaker 1: king instead of queen. She even took a male wife.
Speaker 1: So this has to do with a wider and very
Speaker 1: interesting conversation about societal expectations of roles like wife and
Speaker 1: husband and king and queen and in many parts of Africa,
Speaker 1: women were female husbands or female kings because that conferred
Speaker 1: different distinctions and responsibilities. So it wasn't about what's between
Speaker 1: your legs, but rather about what role you were taking
Speaker 1: on in society, right. It was especially if you were
Speaker 1: a childless woman, you would become a female husband and
Speaker 1: you would have a wife. And there was a one
Speaker 1: woman who did this whose brother was like her surrogate,
Speaker 1: so she had children with her female wife, but her
Speaker 1: brother is the one who impregnated her. However, as the
Speaker 1: female husband, she was responsible for the kids and and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Very very interesting, right, and so not
Speaker 1: that uncommon for Jinga to be doing this. There's a
Speaker 1: book called Boy Wives and Female Husbands, Studies in African
Speaker 1: Homosexualities by Murray and Roscoe that goes into more detail
Speaker 1: about that for anybody who might be interested. Really fascinating
Speaker 1: of right. I love it too, because it's so interesting
Speaker 1: to think about. When you say husband, it's just got
Speaker 1: a different right you You're expecting a different thing from
Speaker 1: that person than you're expecting from a wife. So the
Speaker 1: gender of the people doesn't matter. It's like what I'm
Speaker 1: expecting out of you or the king or queen thing
Speaker 1: as well, So it's like it's more it's really just
Speaker 1: interesting with our whole conversation about gender expression right now
Speaker 1: and like what how you present and all that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I just found it really fascinating. I think
Speaker 1: of you as kind of the male no, the female
Speaker 1: husband around here, my female husband. You a male wife
Speaker 1: or I feel like a husband? Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm a male wife. Yeah. I mean I cook clean,
Speaker 1: trying to make everything ready for you when you get home,
Speaker 1: so you don't yell at me. I earned a lot
Speaker 1: of money around here. We are in the same money now,
Speaker 1: So for once, I'm finally coming into my own power,
Speaker 1: my own autonomy. Here. You're welcome that I let you
Speaker 1: be that independent than you. Maybe a little more uncommon
Speaker 1: for Jingo was how she maintained a sixty man strong
Speaker 1: harem throughout her lifetime, and she made some or all
Speaker 1: of them dress in women's clothing. Meanwhile, her army was
Speaker 1: full of women warriors, and her personal bodyguard were only women.
Speaker 1: Another story says that she would make members of her
Speaker 1: harem fight to the death for the right to sleep
Speaker 1: with her each night, only to be killed off the
Speaker 1: next morning. So you're really, it's just like you two
Speaker 1: are gonna die, one of you gets laid first. Here's
Speaker 1: some knives go now. This particular element is frequently dismissed
Speaker 1: as hearsay, and considering that Amina of Nigeria was also
Speaker 1: said to do the same thing we talked about her
Speaker 1: in another episode, it does kind of seem unlikely because, again,
Speaker 1: a lot of the Western record can't really be trusted.
Speaker 1: Because the Portuguese were just tripping all over themselves to
Speaker 1: tell people back home about this woman who was so
Speaker 1: oversexed and island and savage and all the people's of
Speaker 1: darkest Africa needed to be drawn into the light of
Speaker 1: the Lord or whatever it was. They made up a
Speaker 1: lot of stories like this exactly. Yeah, it served a
Speaker 1: purpose to make her look crazy like that, So it's
Speaker 1: likely not true. But she did have sixty men standing
Speaker 1: around that she will be probably absolutely did pick from
Speaker 1: each night and say you look good today. I guess
Speaker 1: I better reward you. I'll belie your birthday comethday. So
Speaker 1: Jane is doing her utmost to control the slave trade
Speaker 1: and rambo her army up, but she's also still sending
Speaker 1: peace proposals to the Portuguese, asking for the release of
Speaker 1: her sisters who were still being held captive in Luanda,
Speaker 1: and suggesting a military alliance. But my conditions are you
Speaker 1: have to let me back to Indongo as the rightful queen,
Speaker 1: and again i am not paying a cent of tribute
Speaker 1: as a vassal to Portugal. And also I'm not going
Speaker 1: to convert back to Christianity. That was just for fun,
Speaker 1: but Portugal still did not want to dance to her tune,
Speaker 1: especially if she wasn't going to be the right religion.
Speaker 1: So she's like, all right, she just shrug her shoulders
Speaker 1: and continue to conquer the ship out of everything. She
Speaker 1: eventually took over control of all the key slaves supplying areas,
Speaker 1: which I'm not entirely sure what that means. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: it's a poor region where you can just grab people up.
Speaker 1: She even created an alliance with her people's traditional rival
Speaker 1: to the north, the Kingdom of Congo. But she really
Speaker 1: wanted her sisters back. They're still captured, You're still in there.
Speaker 1: She's like, I really want them back. They're kind of
Speaker 1: the only people she felt she could fully trust in
Speaker 1: her life. An opportunity struck when the Dutch arrived, because
Speaker 1: they already didn't like Spain and Portugal from way back.
Speaker 1: So she's like, great, some white people who also don't
Speaker 1: like the same white people that I don't. Let's get together.
Speaker 1: So she offered an alliance, and she opened up the
Speaker 1: slave trade to the Dutch and they agreed to back
Speaker 1: her up with the Portuguese. She was also able to
Speaker 1: get messages to and from her sister Fungi, who started
Speaker 1: spying on her Portuguese captors for Jinga. In sixteen forty one,
Speaker 1: the Dutch and the Congo together defeated the Portuguese and
Speaker 1: drove them out of Lawanda. Triumphant, Jinga immediately consolidated the
Speaker 1: slave trade under her own rule, and it wasn't long
Speaker 1: before she had a formidably sized army, a lot of
Speaker 1: wealth lining her pockets, and of course her famous reputation
Speaker 1: as a total badass. With all that, she was able
Speaker 1: to regain most of her lost Dongan territory and her
Speaker 1: sister Kumba. By sixteen forty four, she got one of
Speaker 1: her sisters out of there, the other one spying for
Speaker 1: her do an awesome job, and she's got a bunch
Speaker 1: of this land back that her dad had been trying
Speaker 1: to get so this has been decades in the making.
Speaker 1: But our girl also got bit by the expansionist bug.
Speaker 1: Kind of a bad idea. She started conquering land in
Speaker 1: Congo that had never been part of her territory and
Speaker 1: that really piste off the King of Congo, Garcia the Second.
Speaker 1: And this was nerve racking because they had a very
Speaker 1: tentative alliance between the Congo and the Dutch and the Dongan's,
Speaker 1: and the Dutch had to come in and be like, listen, guys,
Speaker 1: y'all are our only friends around here, please don't fight
Speaker 1: all Jinga's many w's had the and Donga nobility declaring
Speaker 1: their everlasting loyalty. We'll stay along that last, which meant
Speaker 1: Jinga got tributes for slaves from them, which she turned
Speaker 1: around and sold to the Dutch for firearms. And by
Speaker 1: sixty eight, everyone including the Portuguese, knew that Jinga was
Speaker 1: the big bad. She was the final boss in the region.
Speaker 1: No one above her, we all below her. But she
Speaker 1: couldn't stay on top forever. And we'll hear more right
Speaker 1: after this welcome back. So jingas on top. She's crushing it.
Speaker 1: But a lot of things went wrong at the same time,
Speaker 1: she lost two big battles, but the Portuguese. In one,
Speaker 1: her sister Kumba was recaptured, and unfortunately, this revealed the
Speaker 1: fact that their sister Fungi was spying for Jenga and
Speaker 1: that she had revealed important Portuguese battle plans. They retaliated
Speaker 1: by drowning Fungi in the river Kuanza. Jinga was devastated,
Speaker 1: but before she could even recover from that, another crushing
Speaker 1: blow quickly followed. The Dutch, whose presence was already being
Speaker 1: weakened the area due to political infighting, found themselves defending
Speaker 1: Luanda from a new Portuguese expedition, and they were losing badly.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst Djinga, the Dutch sued for peace and they agreed
Speaker 1: to evacuate Luanda. So when Jenga and her army showed
Speaker 1: up to back them up in battle, they're like, we're here, everybody,
Speaker 1: let's fight. They're like, oh, so sorry, we already signed
Speaker 1: a peace treaty. They were like already sailing away like
Speaker 1: a way eaving to her from her. But she's like,
Speaker 1: what you didn't get my voicemail. That's so crazy to
Speaker 1: show up to back them up. And they're freaking gone.
Speaker 1: So Jingo was forced to retreat back to Matomba. But
Speaker 1: even so, she had regained and held on to her
Speaker 1: Dongan lands. And since she had concentrated so much the
Speaker 1: slave trade in Matomba, she had increased its economic importance
Speaker 1: in the area too. Both of her kingdoms were doing
Speaker 1: pretty well, pretty impressive. Some people can't keep one kingdom together,
Speaker 1: let alone too. All she had to do was sell
Speaker 1: a bunch of peoples. So a lot of this was,
Speaker 1: you know, making her pretty popular amongst her people. But
Speaker 1: she also caused some controversy because she started adopting a
Speaker 1: lot of Christian tradition. I remember she had converted for
Speaker 1: political reasons. In the past few years, she had refused
Speaker 1: to return to Christianity also for political reasons, and now
Speaker 1: she's in her mid sixties and she decided to convert
Speaker 1: back to Christianity again for political reasons. In an article
Speaker 1: titled Queens of Infamy, Zinga and Terryalt writes that after
Speaker 1: a battle with Congo, Jenga's forces captured several people, including
Speaker 1: two Spanish Capuchin monks, and Jena granted freedom to these
Speaker 1: missionaries within her camp because unlike all the other missionaries
Speaker 1: she had met, these guys, weren't you know, telling her like, well,
Speaker 1: just let Portugal do whatever they want, that you know,
Speaker 1: you need to be with God and so on. They
Speaker 1: really kind of had a less sympathy for her position.
Speaker 1: They were like, yeah, you lived here first, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of weird that we're coming in. One of these
Speaker 1: monks even became her lifelong personal secretary, so they had
Speaker 1: a really good relationship with her, and Terry Alt writes quote,
Speaker 1: thanks to the arrival of the Capuchins, she conceived of
Speaker 1: a bold new plan to develop her relationship with Rome
Speaker 1: and convince the Pope to recognize her as a bona
Speaker 1: fide Christian ruler. After all, if she had the support
Speaker 1: of the almighty Vatican, surely the Portugue could no longer
Speaker 1: challenge her right to the throne, and so began Jinga's
Speaker 1: strategic reconversion to Christianity in order to beat the colonizing
Speaker 1: Catholics at their own game. That meant that she increasingly
Speaker 1: relied on Christian converts in her court and among her advisers.
Speaker 1: But it also meant that if you did not convert,
Speaker 1: or you kind of if you were complained about the
Speaker 1: direction that the country was going. She bit back um
Speaker 1: She empowered Christian priests to burn temples and shrines of
Speaker 1: her opposers. She even captured traditional in Bunden and i
Speaker 1: bongal In priests and sold them as slaves, personally requesting
Speaker 1: that they be shipped overseas, and then used the money
Speaker 1: from their sale to build a Catholic church, which just
Speaker 1: feels like insult to injury. Yeah, I don't like that. Yeah. Finally,
Speaker 1: in sixty one, peace talks resumed between Jinga and the Portuguese.
Speaker 1: They have been at war for about twenty five years now,
Speaker 1: and both sides we're just tired of it and it's like,
Speaker 1: this is boring thing, counts please, Plus, the Portuguese had
Speaker 1: been fighting a whole other war with Spain for ten
Speaker 1: years at this point, and they really needed to concentrate
Speaker 1: on that. So Portugal seated some land to in Jinga
Speaker 1: and she seated some land to them, and they agreed
Speaker 1: to back each other up if anybody's enemies ever came through,
Speaker 1: and Jinga had to make sure that all the babies
Speaker 1: born in her kingdom were baptized, while the Portuguese agreed
Speaker 1: to concentrate the slave trade within her borders. Stuff like that,
Speaker 1: scratching each other's backs here exactly as usual. The Portuguese
Speaker 1: included a little note that said that Matomba had to
Speaker 1: pay tribute as a vassal of Portugal, and as usual,
Speaker 1: Jinga ignored that little part and it was never ratified.
Speaker 1: After four years of negotiations, the peace treaty was finally signed.
Speaker 1: Jinga's sister Komba, who was now named Barbara because she
Speaker 1: had also inverted to Christianity, was released and she reunited
Speaker 1: with Jinga again. Now that it was peacetime, a lot change.
Speaker 1: Jena ended all of the wartime traditions, which included stuff
Speaker 1: like forbidding anyone within her war camp to have children,
Speaker 1: for example. Um but it also ended some of the
Speaker 1: more democratic and merit tocratic practices that she had liked
Speaker 1: so much as an exiled woman trying to reclaim her throne.
Speaker 1: Now that she had her throne, she saw all that
Speaker 1: stuff as a threat to the monarchy. Power corrupts, Ain't
Speaker 1: that the way it always is? Just like, hey, we
Speaker 1: need to make it easier to change our government. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get in charge to make it easier and
Speaker 1: then you get in charge and you're like, okay, now
Speaker 1: we'd better make it harder to change the government because
Speaker 1: I like being here. This is pretty comfortable. No, no,
Speaker 1: but it's me now, you see that's different. I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm a good one of the good ones. Jena also
Speaker 1: stopped wearing men's clothes. She became more feminine in her
Speaker 1: old age, so maybe the masculine clothes were just a
Speaker 1: way to be like, don't discount me. She reformed her
Speaker 1: legal code because she's still trying to be recognized as
Speaker 1: the rightful ruler in the wider Christian Western world. Big
Speaker 1: triumph when she received a letter from Pope Alexander being like,
Speaker 1: oh man, you were doing so great at christianizing your nation,
Speaker 1: wishing you all the best. So on. It's like a
Speaker 1: letter from the corporate office being like this Taco bell
Speaker 1: is doing exceptionally well. Amazing job. Employed a month. But
Speaker 1: she basically was able to hold it up, being like,
Speaker 1: see told y'all internationally recognized political player in the house,
Speaker 1: you know, So that was really you know, kind of
Speaker 1: backed up her claim. But since hers was now a
Speaker 1: Christian nation, she also had to abolish the tradition of
Speaker 1: concubine ege and we know she loves that because she
Speaker 1: has sixty of them herself. And the peasants would not
Speaker 1: do it unless the nobles did it, and the nobles
Speaker 1: wouldn't do it unless Jinga did it. According to the
Speaker 1: History of Royal Women dot Com. They complained that Jinga
Speaker 1: quote kept more husbands and more lovers than we have wives,
Speaker 1: and they were like, I only have twenty ladies. You know,
Speaker 1: it's sixty dudes, so probably giving a long suffering sigh,
Speaker 1: like the sacrifices I make for my country. And at
Speaker 1: the tender age of seventy four, Jinga chose her favorite concubine,
Speaker 1: a beautiful decades younger man named Sebastiao, and married him
Speaker 1: in a Christian ceremony in February of sixteen fifty seven. Well, beautiful,
Speaker 1: you know, love finds itself in many different forms, So
Speaker 1: true everyone, how did you get together? So how did
Speaker 1: you two met? Well, funny story. I had a harem
Speaker 1: of sixty men. Country insisted I get rid of them.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool for Sebastia to be chosen like those, So
Speaker 1: maybe there's some real love here. Speculation station there was
Speaker 1: named some real love here because she's married a couple
Speaker 1: of times just for gain, and now she picked her favorite.
Speaker 1: So maybe she really had some tender feelings for this guy.
Speaker 1: That's a sweet way to think of it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: my stop in speculation station is that it was more
Speaker 1: like a bachelorrette kind of thing, and they all had
Speaker 1: to compete with each other. They each had to go
Speaker 1: on one date, and she was like, I will choose
Speaker 1: the best. They they're all ship talking each other, trying
Speaker 1: to dig up each other's dark past. Now I would
Speaker 1: watch this like a historic, historical fiction bachelor show with
Speaker 1: Jinga and her sixty man. Honestly, I would watch that.
Speaker 1: Let's get on it so if anyone's listening, we'll make
Speaker 1: it one of our nineties shows. In our deal that
Speaker 1: we have with HBO, we are pitching like crazy. So
Speaker 1: Jinga had achieved everything she'd ever wanted. She was the rightful,
Speaker 1: internationally recognized queen of not only her hereditary homeland of Dongo,
Speaker 1: but also Matomba. Her nation was prosperous, independent and stable,
Speaker 1: and now all that was left was to figure out
Speaker 1: who would come next. The older she got, the more
Speaker 1: worried about this she was. She was afraid that somebody
Speaker 1: would come in and upset her very carefully built Christianity
Speaker 1: apple carts to get the Portuguese all worked up and
Speaker 1: just you know, throw it all into the wind. So
Speaker 1: she named her sister Coomba now Barbara, as her heir.
Speaker 1: In October of sixteen sixty three, Jinger got sick with
Speaker 1: a throat in fiction. By December, it had spread to
Speaker 1: her lungs. She died in her sleep on December seventeenth
Speaker 1: of sixteen sixty three and was laid to rest with
Speaker 1: great ceremony. Antario says that Jinga made clear that she
Speaker 1: wanted a Christian burial. She writes quote After she died,
Speaker 1: Jinga's body was carefully washed by her attendants, who anointed
Speaker 1: it with herbs, perfume, and powders. Her hair was styled
Speaker 1: with corals, pearls, and feathers, and her crown was placed
Speaker 1: on her head. Her limbs were loaded down with jewelry
Speaker 1: and arrangements of elephant hair, a symbol of royalty. Her
Speaker 1: body was wrapped in two richly wrought brocade cloths, and
Speaker 1: velvet slippers were placed on her feet. Then, mindful of
Speaker 1: her instructions, her attendants replaced all this with a habit,
Speaker 1: a crucifix and a rosary, though they left her hair
Speaker 1: and crown as they were. This ceremonial dressing and redressing
Speaker 1: represented a middle ground between the two traditions. Jinga had
Speaker 1: spent decades navigating. I kind of love that that they
Speaker 1: kind of did both would give you both. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do one, undo it and then to the other.
Speaker 1: The poor funeral guys were like, oh god, I gotta
Speaker 1: do this twice. You know, only get paid for one
Speaker 1: job here. I get paid by the body, not by
Speaker 1: the clothes. That's the queen, alright, the double queen should
Speaker 1: get married, Go get the crucifix. Now. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: as we've told her story, you can see her legacy
Speaker 1: is very confident. Yet, I mean, she's super badass and
Speaker 1: cool and there's a lot to like about her. A
Speaker 1: lot of slave stuff that's a little bit more like
Speaker 1: it's like slein infants, some blood drinking and stuff is
Speaker 1: sort of like hey, yeah, yeah, well again. A lot
Speaker 1: of the over sex, blood drinking rumors that abound about
Speaker 1: her today came from one Portuguese guy who wrote a
Speaker 1: biography about about her in like the seventeen hundreds after
Speaker 1: she was dead. It became a sensation in the West,
Speaker 1: but it had very little basis in fact, and a
Speaker 1: lot of basists in disliking an African queen who refused
Speaker 1: to be conquered. Now for Angola, which by the way,
Speaker 1: this area in Dongo and Matamba is now what is
Speaker 1: called Angola, because was the name for king or ruler, right,
Speaker 1: that's right, And the Portuguese misunderstood that when they heard it,
Speaker 1: they thought it was the name of the country, so
Speaker 1: they were like, anglad to everybody. And but it's called
Speaker 1: that now translation error. So for Angola. Jenga is still
Speaker 1: remembered as a great ruler, a brilliant military strategist, and
Speaker 1: a certified badass. She's often called the mother of the nation.
Speaker 1: And after all the hullabaloo that Dongo had put her
Speaker 1: through about having a woman in charge, everything changed after
Speaker 1: Jinga and the one hundred and four years after her death,
Speaker 1: women ruled for eighty of them, so she kind of
Speaker 1: like just blew all that problem out of the water.
Speaker 1: They were like, I mean, what do you know, We've
Speaker 1: got a great example of a great queen, So I
Speaker 1: guess it's fine. Within those hundred and four years, twenty
Speaker 1: four of them were men. If they were like, oh no,
Speaker 1: here comes a guy again. We all know men can't
Speaker 1: rule here. They're too emotional. I mean, and Bundy did.
Speaker 1: He's out here just flailing around. In nineteen five and
Speaker 1: Gola shook off the Portuguese once and for all and
Speaker 1: gained their independence, and they used Jinga as a symbol
Speaker 1: for their nation's independence. And that's when scholars got interested
Speaker 1: in Jinga's story and they finally started fact checking all
Speaker 1: this stuff that was written about. There is a street
Speaker 1: named for her in Luanda. And in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: Angola put up a statue of Jinga, and women like
Speaker 1: to get married next to it, or at least have
Speaker 1: like newly wet photos taken next to it, like you
Speaker 1: would with your mom and dad. They would have it
Speaker 1: taken with Jinga, maybe as a subtle message to the fellas,
Speaker 1: like you might be my husband, but I inevitable look
Speaker 1: at that, and I don't know. I'll say that. Anne
Speaker 1: Terry Old said that the slave trade stuff. Apparently if
Speaker 1: you look at historical records, she claims that the numbers
Speaker 1: of slaves leaving Jinga's kingdom eventually dropped to zero, so
Speaker 1: that maybe she, you know, was willing to use the
Speaker 1: slave trade until she didn't need it as much anymore. However,
Speaker 1: I could not find anything to back that up, and
Speaker 1: it was seems odd to me that she would make
Speaker 1: a monopoly in her kingdom and then there was no
Speaker 1: slave slave trade there at all. I don't know that
Speaker 1: I see that, So if any if anyone knows what
Speaker 1: that is, I would love to hear more about that,
Speaker 1: because I found it really interesting. It is interesting, and
Speaker 1: it's just one of those things where it's like, maybe
Speaker 1: she had to use the slave trade to get rid
Speaker 1: of the you know, to to gain power to ultimately
Speaker 1: get rid of the Portuguese, and it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: a good end game for her to do terrible things.
Speaker 1: I think when you do that, you also accept that
Speaker 1: people are going to have an opinion of you based
Speaker 1: on those terrible things that you did. It's not always
Speaker 1: just like, you know, ends justifying the means. It's also like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you still did those things and it's not cool, um,
Speaker 1: but that's you know, that's that's reality, right, That's the
Speaker 1: real history of especially war and conquest all these things,
Speaker 1: is that like it's the good people do bad things
Speaker 1: and bad people do good things, and it's very murky
Speaker 1: and muddled. Yeah, And I know Anne Harry Old had
Speaker 1: also said, like, you know that she up in a
Speaker 1: place where it's incredibly common, she had slaves of her own,
Speaker 1: you know, so and so forth. You know, I I
Speaker 1: have said before, I hate that, like woe is different
Speaker 1: in her time or their time or whatever. But it's
Speaker 1: not untrue. And the main thing is, it's just interesting
Speaker 1: that we're so willing to muck around in the complicated
Speaker 1: legacies of a lot of Western kings and queens, but
Speaker 1: we don't care to learn about the African kings and
Speaker 1: queens who did very similar good and bad things and
Speaker 1: you know, kind of see see what their deal was,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Instead, we're like we're just
Speaker 1: talking about them drinking blood and stuff and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: treating them more harshly then Thomas Jefferson, you know, like exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll say too that I had a little bit I
Speaker 1: was felt a little bit like uh, ambivalent or whatever
Speaker 1: about the Christianity conversion because to me, I know that
Speaker 1: the Portuguese did not actually conquer Dongo and Matamba because
Speaker 1: they had to negotiate with her as an equal. She
Speaker 1: got to maintain her authority and all that. But they
Speaker 1: also kind of got what they wanted because she converted
Speaker 1: her whole country and that's sort of what they were
Speaker 1: going for. So it feels like they got she. They
Speaker 1: kind of did get colonaiesed in a different way. And
Speaker 1: of course it's her prerogative to have whatever religion she
Speaker 1: wants and everything, you know. I was just like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it kind of feels a little whatever. They
Speaker 1: didn't conquer her militarily, but in the marketplace of ideas whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the country did not democratically switched to Christianity. It
Speaker 1: was not like something we all agreed on. It was okay,
Speaker 1: from now when all our babies are getting baptized. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's true. So I was kind of like,
Speaker 1: see saw and about that one. I do want to
Speaker 1: make sure that we zero in a little bit on
Speaker 1: I think the ridiculous romance that sort of spiraled out
Speaker 1: into this story for us a couple of places, both
Speaker 1: when she married, um obvious, when she married the Bengala
Speaker 1: Costa Cosa just for that little that little trick, and
Speaker 1: she just bailed on him after that. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: so pretty much. Hopefully he found love. We're up there
Speaker 1: for years. Kasa was like, I'm swearing off love. It
Speaker 1: will never happen for me again. Where's Kassa's Hallmark movie?
Speaker 1: You know, he's like the scorned lover and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm done with love, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: then he goes home and he meets like a beautiful um,
Speaker 1: you know, copywriter for a magazine or something, and Cake
Speaker 1: Baker and it's the same universe because he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: and my ex, the one who jilted me, she's on
Speaker 1: it's the spinoff show where she's doing a dating show.
Speaker 1: She's doing Bachelorette. Okay, we just need a whole history
Speaker 1: historical fiction channel where we get to just make up
Speaker 1: makeup shows like this. Sometimes I think if we're living
Speaker 1: in a simulation, that's all it is. There's just so
Speaker 1: many stories somebody came up with that they're just like
Speaker 1: they're just all happening all over the globe at once,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're living in. Yeah, so what I
Speaker 1: need is earth wide simulation. It's got to have like
Speaker 1: between six and eight billion people. Um, all these stories
Speaker 1: are happening simultaneously. It's the only way to fill them
Speaker 1: all in. So that's my plan. WO call me hbo.
Speaker 1: Let's get started on this. Let's get started on the
Speaker 1: worldwide simulation. Well, if you're excited to live in Eli simulation,
Speaker 1: or if you have any other comments about this episode,
Speaker 1: because it is, I mean, this is a really fascinating one.
Speaker 1: It was, it was it was really easy to look
Speaker 1: like her a lot, and then there was a hard
Speaker 1: other times when I was like, yeah, you know, she's
Speaker 1: not a cut and dried type of historical figure. But
Speaker 1: reach out to us, you know, we love hearing from you.
Speaker 1: Our email is ridic Romance at gmail dot com. That's right.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at
Speaker 1: Oh great, it's Eli. I'm at Dynamite Boom and the
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Speaker 1: it right, we'd love it. Helps they're goodcovering the show.
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Speaker 1: but if it's good, please do share. It helps people
Speaker 1: discover the show, and we would love to have more
Speaker 1: beautiful listeners like you. Thanks so much, I'll will catch
Speaker 1: you the next episode. Love you so long. Friends, It's
Speaker 1: time to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell
Speaker 1: your friend's name's Uncle sandece to listen to a show
Speaker 1: ridiculous roll dance