Modjadji III, personally Khesetoane, was the rain-queen whose reign spanned the first half of the twentieth century and whose court the Kriges observed at first hand, making her the best-documented figure of the dynasty. Around her the classic pattern of the queendom is described: the secluded sacred person on whom the rains depend; the reciprocal flow of tribute cattle and daughters into the capital and of royal wives, wedded to district heads, out of it; and the reading of weather as a barometer of the queen's serenity and the realm's order. Her reign shows the institution persisting under colonial administration, its ritual authority intact even as its political independence eroded.