QUEEN RANAVALONA THE CRUEL

NOTABLY NOTORIOUS (MADAGASCAR)

REIGN: 1782–1861

HUSBAND: Radama / MOTHER: Unknown

SUCCESSOR: Radama II

OTHER NAMES: Ranavalona the Bloody, the Devil Incarnate

WHAT WAS SO TERRIBLE ABOUT RANAVALONA?

“She is certainly one of the proudest and cruel women on the face of the earth, and her whole history is a record of bloodshed and deeds of horror,” said Ida Pfeiffer, an Austrian explorer who met Ranavalona during her reign. The queen’s bloodthirsty reputation was built on decades of doing away with anyone who disagreed with her.

PLOT TWIST

Ranavalona’s life started out fairly ordinary. Ramavo (her name when she was a little girl) was the daughter of commoners. When her father heard of a plot to overthrow the then current Madagascan king, he informed the monarch. To reward Ramavo’s father, the king said that Ramavo could marry his son, the prince Radama. In this way, Ramavo became the first of Radama’s twelve wives.

BECOMING RANAVALONA

Radama became king upon his father’s death, and Ramavo rose in power along with him. However, King Radama and Ramavo never really got along, and they never had children. Ramavo especially didn’t like the way her husband let so many foreigners come into Madagascar as missionaries or businesspeople. When Radama died after eighteen years on the throne, his nephew Rakotobe was supposed to take over according to the country’s rules of succession. But Radama swooped in and declared herself queen and ruler of Madagascar, to be known as Ranavalona. Then she had Rakotobe, his mother, and many of his other relatives killed, getting her reign off to a murderous start.

THE BUFFALO HUNT

One of the most famous stories about Ranavalona centers on an 1845 buffalo hunt. According to her wishes, around 50,000 members of her court—including servants and slaves—took off looking for buffalo. They brought barely any food or supplies with them on the hunt. They also had to build a road to get where they were going. Along the way, around 10,000 of the hunting party died from starvation and disease. Since they had to keep moving, there was no time to bury the dead. The road became full of dead bodies, one eyewitness said, and after the four-month expedition, no buffalo were ever found and killed.

AND STAY OUT!

Ranavalona closed the door to Madagascar for the British and French, breaking trade agreements and kicking missionaries out of the country. She wrote a letter to the two countries that went something like this:

“Dear British and French People: Thanks for stopping by our island! We appreciate some of the stuff you shared with us. I especially like the French fashion! We are going to take a pass on the new languages. The religion stuff is a hard no for me. We’ve already got one. While you’re here, feel free to do what you do, but don’t try to convert us. You’re wasting your time. We’ll never change our beliefs and if any of my subjects try to follow your customs instead of ours, they will be killed.”

To make sure the message was taken seriously, she had the heads of French and English soldiers (who had been killed in battles) mounted on pikes and displayed on the beach so that their countrymen’s passing ships would see them and be frightened away. In time, she banished all French and British people from the country—all except one. Ranavalona fell in love with a French sailor who was shipwrecked and washed up on the shore. He became one of the country’s most powerful people over time and built a French-style palace for the queen (she had a bit of a love-hate relationship with everything French).

THE WAR AT HOME

Ranavalona was tough on foreigners, but she was even tougher on her own people.

Some had converted to Christianity during the reigns of the previous kings. Now, Ranavalona demanded they return to the traditional belief system, based on ancestor worship and local deities. If they didn’t, they were taken to a place called The Rock of Hurling, a giant cliff. Eyewitnesses described the gruesome things that happened there: the condemned were attached to ropes and then launched over the edge; some sang church hymns as they fell. There was even a report of a rainbow appearing over the spot where they’d fallen. Some were boiled or buried alive. As many as 30,000 citizens were executed each year during Ranavalona’s reign. Some of those whose lives were spared were sold into slavery.

TRIAL BY ORDEAL

Many cultures in the past used “trial by ordeal” to determine a person’s guilt or innocence. When accused of a crime, a person would have to undergo a test of some sort. If they lived, they were innocent. If they died, obviously they had been guilty.

During Ranavalona’s time, those accused of a crime were required to drink a poison extracted from the tagena plant. The accused person was fed three chicken skins along with the poison. If all three chicken skins were vomited up, the person was innocent. If they kept anything down, they were guilty of sorcery. Between 20 percent and 50 percent of those who did the test ended up dying. During Ranavalona’s reign, it’s thought that 100,000 people died this way—which was about 20 percent of the population.

THE QUEEN’S BATH

One of the stranger stories about Ranavalona involves her love of soap. While she hated just about everything foreigners brought to her island, soap was the exception. Two British missionaries reported that when they told her the many things they would teach her subjects—Greek, Hebrew, the Bible—the queen politely declined, stating that her people didn’t need to learn any dead languages. There was one thing she did want them to teach her people, however, and that was the art of soap making. They were able to do so with some effort.

The queen used the soap during the fadroana—the annual bathing ritual. On this morning of the first day of the year, she would be anointed with rooster blood, then take a purifying bath. Ranavalona conducted this ritual on her balcony, bathing behind a screen. When she was done, she sprinkled the bath water over the side of the wall into the crowd. (Having some of the bath water land on you was considered good luck for the coming year.)

Ranavalona also started a series of civil wars that wiped out a good portion of the population. She didn’t do much in terms of helping her people, so a lot of them died of disease during her time as well. The island’s population decreased by between 50 percent and 75 percent during her reign because of the wars, disease, and the brutal executions she carried out.

Interesting fact: Ranavalona’s son was secretly a Christian, and he actually wrote to Napoleon III of France, inviting him to invade the island to get rid of her—that’s how bad she really was.

Queen Ranavalona lived to a ripe old age. But even in death, she caused catastrophe. At her funeral, a barrel of gunpowder exploded, several buildings caught fire, and several of those there to witness her burial ended up dying.

Ranavalona’s Legacy

While she’s remembered outside her country as ruthless, opinions in Madagascar are mixed about Ranavalona’s reign. There are many who agree that choosing to keep her country independent was a good goal. However, the queen went about it in a terrible way. Today, in Madagascar, a woman who is considered to be loud-mouthed or demanding or a strict mother is called a Ranavalona as an insult.

IF YOU HAD LIVED IN RANAVALONA’S TIME… YOU WOULD HAVE:

lived through the infamous “year without a summer,” when a volcanic explosion in Indonesia in 1815 caused weather changes in 1816 that ruined crops and caused food shortages

witnessed slave ships coming and going from the island

believed that lemurs were magical protector animals