Know Your 'Victoria' History: "Comfort and Joy"

Our new series runs down the truth behind the popular period drama Victoria and asks how accurate each week's episode is. This week, the show's first Christmas Special - and Season 2 finale - "Comfort and Joy."

Was Victoria Gifted An African Child?

The main plot of "Comfort and Joy" is one that's based in history. However, as this season has been wont to do, it's once again shuffled in out of order, timeline-wise. Princess Aina was the daughter of the ruling family of the Egbado clan of Yoruba descent in West Africa. In 1849, her family was slaughtered and her people conquered by the army of Dahomey. The only survivor, she was taken by King Ghezo, who kept her as a slave, with the clear intentions of selling her to the highest bidder once she was of breeding age. She was rescued from this fate by Frederick Forbes of the Royal Navy. Forbes convinced Ghezo to turn the child over to him and he would present her as a gift to Victoria on Ghezo's behalf.

I get on Victoria a lot for making the central character too much of a modern feminist figure, giving her credit for ideas she wouldn't have had. But in this case, they are extraordinarily unfair in taking things in the other direction.  The show portrays the Queen as accepting the renamed "Sarah" as a gift and keeping her in the palace like another exotic pet to put next to her parrot, and only slowly wakes up to what a horrific thing that is over the course of the child living with them.

In reality, when Forbes arrived with Sarah at the Palace in 1850 and explained how he promised the King to "give" the child to Victoria, the Queen understood at once that this was a sham to keep the child safe. She was deeply impressed by how intelligent and cultured Sarah was and, thinking fast, declared she would become the child's godmother. Thus she "accepted" the gift, appeasing Ghezo, without actually taking her. Sarah continued to live with the Forbes family until the Captain died, whereupon Victoria made arrangements for her education, found a middle-class family to stay with during her debutante London season, and approved of her marriage to Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, another refugee of Yoruba descent who had become a wealthy businessman.