As a great magical practitioner, the queen was set apart from ordinary people, first by her sex - a woman instead of a man in an authoritative position. She was incestuosly conceived and did not die, but commited ritual suicide after the fourth initiation school of her reign. She controlled awful magic in which skin and body-dirt of departed rulers were ingredients.
Incestuously conceived. Ritual suicide. Skin and body-dirt of departed rulers.
Another job I won't be applying for...
At a more practical level, the queen was connected through marriage to all the important political officers in the tribe. As 'cattle beget children', woman-to-woman marriage is possible in Africa. 'Every Lobedu induna [headman] sends a daughter to be mothanoni [wife] of the queen as do any of the nobility who wish to be on a good foothing with her.' The queen only keeps a proportion of the many wives she recieves: others are given by her to important subjects.
Whoa wait... I can marry a woman? Or I could if I were a member of the Lobedu tribe in Southern Africa some time between 1800 and 1894. That's what Basil Sansom writes in his article Traditional Rulers and their Realms.
I'm reading for the exam on Monday in my anthropology course on Southern Africa. How am I supposed to concentrate on anything when I have shocking new information like this sneaking up on me? Then again... I wish more of the information was a little more interesting. At least then I'd have a chance of getting through, let alone remembering, half of it.
Just by the way...the Lobedu people are still very much in existence: I am one of them :)
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