Painful Story: Enslaved African Princess who was later donated to colonialist Queen Victoria
By Antonnate S. Mugodi
LONDON,United Kingdom. (News of the South)-Omoba Sara Forbes Bonetta also know as Princess Aina is a Yoruba princess whose parents whose parents were decapitated by the British.
She was brought to England as Queen Victoria’s servant. She was a child of Yoruba royalty and a princess of the Egbado clan in West Africa.
Her parents were decapitated and siblings slaughtered by the brutal army of Dahomey when her village was attacked when she was only four years old.
After she was orphaned, King Ghezo whose army had killed the princess’s family kept her as a slave in his court.
She was supposed to become a human sacrifice but upon Captain Fredrick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy’s visit to King Ghezo he was able to rescue her.
He was on a mission to convince the King to abandon slavery and managed to bargain for the girl’s life by convincing Ghezo to give her to Queen Victoria.
The princess was to be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the White.
Forbes named her after himself and his ship and was impressed by her quick learning and talent for music and writing.
Queen Victoria gave her over to the Church missionary Society to be educated.
The Queen was so impressed by Sara’s natural regal manner and her gift for academic studies that she gave her allowance for her welfare.
At the age of 18 Sara was proposed to by James Pinson Labulo Davies, a 31 year old Yoruba businessman of considerable wealth who was living in Britain but she refused.
August 1862, Queen Victoria sanctioned Sara to be married and shortly after marriage Sara gave birth to a daughter who she named Victoria, with the permission of the Queen and the Queen also became her godmother.
Sara visited the Queen in 1867 with her daughter then returned to Lagos and had two more children.
Later, upon Sara’s death the Queen wrote in her diary, “Saw poor Victoria Davies, my black godchild, who learnt this morning of the death of her dear mother”.
So proud was Queen Victoria of Sarah’s daughter, that when she passed her music examination, teachers and children had one day holiday.
Throughout her life Sarah had a long lasting cough that was caused by the climate change between Africa and Britain.
In 1880, suffering from tuberculosis, she went to convalesce in Madeira off of the coast of West Africa. She died, around the age of 40, in 1880 and was buried in Funchal, Madiera.
Her daughter Victoria was given an annuity by the Queen and she continued to visit the royal household throughout her life.
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