The Woman King (2022): A Review

The Woman King opens with a gruesome raid on an Oyo Empire slavers' encampment by a company of strong and ferocious female warriors known as the Agojie. The Agojie successfully raid the camp, freeing the captives and killing most of the Oyo warriors. In this battle, we are introduced to the main character, General Nanisca, played by Viola Davis. She is a fierce warrior and steadfast leader who commands the respect of her people and her king, Ghezo. Released in North American theatres on September 16, 2022, the film grossed over $19 million USD at the box office on its opening weekend. Although it has generally received very positive reviews for its performance, story, and action choreography, The Woman King has also been criticized for its lack of historical accuracy. Reviewers have given it a “4/10 for how it deals with history,”1 claiming “it begins as portraiture and then surrenders to melodrama when faced with the challenges of translating history for the screen and constructing a coherent geopolitical thread.”2 However, how historically inaccurate is The Woman King? Has the film played as fast and loose with its source material as the reviewers claim or has it done well within the genre of historical fiction to adapt that history to the big screen? The film’s historicity ought to be evaluated on the historical points it attempts to convey within its genre: that is, in its portrayal of historical events, in its representation of dress, place, and culture for the period, and in its characterization of real people. The Woman King is not without its challenges to historicity, but overall creates a generally accurate representation of Dahomey, while bringing the viewer in for a grand epic.

Three parallel plotlines run throughout the film, covering major events in Dahomean history. The first is Dahomey’s fight to free itself of its vassalage under the Oyo Empire; the second plotline follows Dahomey’s attempt to change its economy from being dominated by the Atlantic slave trade to palm oil production; the third storyline follows the re-establishment of The Woman King, which according to the movie has fallen from tradition under the past monarchs, who have refrained from choosing a ruling counterpart.

The film is set in 1823 recounting the events that began King Ghezo’s war against Oyo. When the emissaries from Oyo come to take tribute, Ghezo sends his Agojie to deliver the head of the emissary to Oyo as his message that Dahomey will no longer pay its tributes and will be independent of the Oyo empire. Over the course of the film, Ghezo’s male and female armies struggle to free Dahomey through a series of battles that ultimately will end in a hard-fought victory for the Kingdom of Dahomey and the expulsion of the Portuguese slave traders from their shores. There is truth to this narrative, as Dahomey did engage in a war with Oyo freeing itself from tributary status in 1823. However, where the film gets this progression wrong is in the expulsion of the Brazilians and Portuguese from its coastal trade ports. King Ghezo’s rise to power was partially due to the backing of Francisco Félix de Sousa, a powerful Afro-Brazilian slave trader. Ghezo’s brother and the former ruler of Dahomey, King Adandozan, had owed money to de Sousa and chose to imprison him instead of repaying him. De Sousa escaped and from exile he sent money and gifts to Ghezo; Ghezo used those gifts to establish support for his own claim to the throne. Ghezo had a strong trading relationship with the Brazilian and Portuguese slave traders and did not drive them out of Dahomey. In fact, Ghezo would back a later faction that had the support of de Sousa’s representatives and some key Dahomean officials in order to prevent the Atlantic slave trade from ending during the 1850s.3 Although the slave traders were not expelled, Dahomey did exert its power in the slave trade by setting the terms of the trade and exerting its own interests. It was able to control its own ports rather than have that trade under the

control of the Oyo Empire. In this regard, The Woman King portrays the Dahomean struggle for power and independence mostly accurately, though in driving the anti-slavery message, the film makers sacrifice accuracy in order to portray the victory of Dahomey over slavery. In a concluding scene, the European ships are sent away as an enemy who has lost the war, leaving us to assume that Dahomey will not trade in slaves.

The depiction of the transition of Dahomey’s slave trade economy to one based on palm oil production and export is rather mixed when it comes to historical accuracy. In The Woman King, Nanisca urges Ghezo to end Dahomey’s slave trade with the Portuguese and to shift the economy into palm oil production instead, and after debate among the officials, Ghezo decides to do so. Ghezo did change the slave trade over into palm oil production, though not in 1823. The film does a good job of showing that Dahomey’s wealth is the result of the slave trade, but playing loose with the timelines and presenting Ghezo and the Agojie as altruistic for ending the slave trade is a stretch. Dahomey had gained regional power by conquering neighbouring states and doing slave raids. They had been a major player in the Atlantic slave trade for centuries. However, the slave trade was declining over Ghezo’s reign, and in 1852 Ghezo agreed to end it only after the British blockaded the slave ports to force the end of the slave trade. This forced them to try to transistion the economy to palm oil production as the main source of royal income.4 This agricultural labour came from Dahomey’s internal slave economy, but it never produced enough income for the royal court. Ghezo would oversee internal pressures from two factions over whether to resume the slave trade or invest more in palm oil production and would ultimately decide to resume the slave trade. The Woman King presents the events surrounding the slave trade during Ghezo’s reign more simply and altruistically than they occurred. The Agojie are presented as liberators of slaves rather than the slave raiders and slaveholders that they historically were at the time; they are more problematic and morally ambiguous than their portrayal in the film allows. However, it is true that in the 1850s, the Agojie would be on the side of the faction that did not want to resume the slave trade and favoured palm oil production. Historical fiction will always play with timelines of events. Therefore, this plotline is more mixed in terms of how well it adapts those historical events of Dahomey’s transitioning economy.

The third plotline, narrating the re-establishment of The Woman King, is much more in line with Dahomian traditions. Dahomey traditionally had a “kpojito,” a female reignmate second in rank only to the king. The woman who was chosen to become the kpojito was often central to the establishment of the king’s legitimacy. Oftentimes, in periods of succession, powerful women of the king’s household worked together with a prince to help him seize the throne. Nanisca, as an Agojie, would be considered one of the king’s wives, and thus the background information given by the king’s eunuch as to why Ghezo favours her is keeping with this tradition of the kpojito helping the king to take the throne and inform his legitimacy. As a fictional character, Nanisca was obviously not the real kopjito of Ghezo. To establish his legitimacy, the historical Ghezo selected Agontime as his kopjito as a symbol to connect his reign to his father’s and remove his still-living brother and predecessor, Adandozan, from the record. Agontime was a wife of Agonglo whom Adandozan sold into slavery in Brazil when he became king, as she had supported a rival prince in the succession struggle. Ghezo failing to kill his brother was a threat to his legitimacy, and so he sought to remove all records of Adandozan, and establish himself as the successor to their father Agonglo. The tradition of Dahomey recounts Ghezo finding and bringing Agontime back to

Depiction of Dahomey in dress, place, and culture is where The Woman King shines. The outfits worn by the Agojie are well-designed to match historical accounts. Their wraps were designed with authentic prints, and the women wore cross straps to carry their weapons. As well they gave the Agojie matching binding style tops. Although the Agojie actually fought topless, this is a creative interpretation of their famed androgyny that does not take away from the historicity of the Agojie while adapting them for a wider audience. Furthermore, Dahomey itself is well depicted. The architecture of the royal palaces is faithfully interpreted, and the seventeenth-century Castle of Good Hope in South Africa is used to situate the viewer in the slave port of Quidah. Even the currency of Dahomey is accurately produced as cowry shells. Culturally, the ferocity and determination of the Agojie is acted out well, and the respect afforded them that no Dahomean man may look at them is depicted as well. In terms of being transported to Dahomey in 1823, the film does amazing work recreating the historical setting. As a work of historical fiction, it is important to remember that The Woman King is not a documentary. Therefore, in evaluating its historical accuracy, the critical points of examination ought to be threefold: visual accuracy, how well historical events are adapted to the story, and how well the historical persons are represented in their characterizations. In comparison with other films in the genre, Prince-Bythwood’s work is great at adapting the history. Historical fiction has space for artistic license in order to adapt a story to the silver screen. that is grand in scale and has immense depth of character. It is an inspiring epic of the same quality as the historical fiction films

Frederick Forbes, Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh, leader of the Dahomey Amazons, drawn by Frederick Forbes in 1851, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. NANISCA Nanisca, played by Viola Davis, is a fictional character not based on any historical individual. Her character stands as a strong representation of the bravery and fierceness of the Agojie generals, although her antislavery stance is not consistent with those historical women. Although she is fictional, there was a female Agojie warrior, who is most likely Nanisca’s namesake. In 1889, a French Naval officer named Jean Bayol visited Dahomey and wrote an account of a female recruit named Nanisca who had yet to make her first kill. He wrote that a prisoner was brought before her bound and sitting in a basket. He stated, “[she] walked jauntily up to, swung her sword three times with both hands, then calmly cut the last flesh that attached the head to the trunk… She then squeezed the blood off her weapon and swallowed it.”1 Bayol would later claim to recognize her corpse after the second FrancoDahomean war in 1894. The real Nanisca’s life was much shorter than Viola Davis’s middle-aged general, only living through adolescence into early adulthood. pressured Ghezo to end the slave trade from Dahomey, and he gave in to their blockades, promising to end it in 1852. However, with growing domestic pressures to resume the slave trade and complex struggles with neighbouring states for trade supremacy, Ghezo resumed the slave trade in 1857. Ghezo was assassinated in 1859 and succeeded by his son Glele.

shines. The outfits worn by the Agojie are well-designed to match historical accounts. Their wraps were designed with authentic prints, and the women wore cross straps to carry their weapons. As well they gave the Agojie matching binding style tops. Although the Agojie actually fought topless, this is a creative interpretation of their famed androgyny that does not take away from the historicity of the Agojie while adapting them for a wider audience. Furthermore, Dahomey itself is well depicted. The architecture of the royal palaces is faithfully interpreted, and the seventeenth-century Castle of Good Hope in South Africa is used to situate the viewer in the slave port of Quidah. Even the currency of Dahomey is accurately produced as cowry shells. Culturally, the ferocity and determination of the Agojie is acted out well, and the respect afforded them that no Dahomean man may look at them is depicted as well. In terms of being transported to Dahomey in

is not a documentary. Therefore, in evaluating its historical accuracy, the critical points of examination ought to be threefold: visual accuracy, how well historical events are adapted to the story, and how well the historical persons are represented in their characterizations. In comparison with other films in the genre, Prince-Bythwood’s work is great at adapting the history. Historical fiction has space for artistic license in order to adapt a story to the silver screen. The Woman King takes advantage of this historical setting to create a story of female empowerment that is grand in scale and has immense depth of character. It is an inspiring epic of the same quality as the historical fiction films Saving Private Ryan and Master and Commander: Far Side of the World.

NAWI Nawi’s character, played by Thuso Mbedu, is an indignant and strong-willed adolescent given to the Agojie to be trained after she refuses an arranged marriage. Nawi is also fictionalized. However, she, too, shares a namesake with a real historical Agojie warrior. Nawi was the name of the last surviving member of the Agojie who saw battle. She was found by a historian of Benin in the remote village of Kinta and was interviewed in 1978. She claimed to have fought against the Viola Davis (left) and Thuso Mbedu in The Woman King, The Hollywood Reporter, September 20, 2022, Fair use. French eighty two years prior in 1892. She died in 1979 well over one hundred years old. KING GHEZO King Ghezo, played by John Boyega, is depicted as a strong leader fighting to free his kingdom from the vassalage of the Oyo. His character has a unique rapport with General Nanisca as she offers him counsel, often in private. Ghezo is the only character based on a real historical figure. King Ghezo reigned from 1818 to 1858. He replaced his brother Adandozan in a struggle for succession that finally ended in a coup, in which he became King of Dahomey. In 1823, he also managed to free Dahomey of its tributary status with the Oyo Photo by Ilze Kitshoff, Fair Use. Empire. He dealt with significant economic and political pressure during his reign. The British pressured Ghezo to end the slave trade from Dahomey, and he gave in to their blockades, promising to end it in 1852. However, with growing domestic pressures to resume the slave trade and complex struggles with neighbouring states for trade supremacy, Ghezo resumed the slave trade in 1857. Ghezo was assassinated in 1859 and succeeded by his son Glele.

Andrew Dick

MAIH (History stream)