Cynthia Erivo to Star in Film About Queen Victoria's Adopted Goddaughter
Harriet actress Cynthia Erivo is set to star in and produce a film chronicling the remarkable life of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the 19th-century African princess "gifted" to Queen Victoria by a West African king.
Born Omoba Aina, an Egbado princess of the Yoruba people, her family was slaughtered and her people conquered by the army of the Kingdom of Dahomey when she was just five years old. When Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the British Royal Navy arrived to try and negotiate the end of the Atlantic slave trade, the Dahomeyan king, Ghezo, refused, but offered up the then seven-year-old princess as a "gift" to Forbes' queen. Upon her arrival, she was renamed Sarah Forbes Bonetta, and the monarch was so impressed by the young girl that Victoria adopted her as a goddaughter.
The Queen’s patronship was a thorny rose that put Sarah at the centre of British aristocracy but did not shield her from public scrutiny, personal suffering, or the dangers of a capricious court that was fundamentally suspicious of her as a strong, educated Black woman.
