Orompoto
Yoruba · mortal · oyo empire · mortal
The thing Oyo was feared for in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was its cavalry, and the cavalry traces to a woman who took the throne in the 1550s because her house had run out of men. Oyo was in exile at Igboho when she reigned — the Nupe had taken the old capital — and she is the ruler who turned that round. The transformation story, that she became a man before mounting the throne, is reported in the oral tradition and is reported here as tradition rather than as event; what the same tradition does not do is doubt that she reigned. She was absent from a registry that carried three Oyo rulers already.
Domains
- queenship
- horsemanship
- warfare