Citation Needed - Queen Nzinga of Angola

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Nzinga or Njinga Ana de Sousa Mbande (/nəˈzɪŋɡə/; c. 1583 – 17 December 1663) was a southwest African paramount ruler who ruled as a queen of the Ambundu Kingdoms of Ndongo (1624���1663) and Matamba (1631–1663), located in present-day northern Angola.[1] Born into the ruling family of Ndongo, her grandfather Ngola Kilombo Kia Kasenda was the king of Ndongo, succeeded by her father.

I'm telling you, dude, it's all about the stars. I have a giant sword, Cecil. I'm gonna use it. That is fair. Absolutely. Oh, hey guys. Hey, Eli. Nice, uh, nice statue. Oh, you'd like it. It's the Queen Zinga of the Angola, the subject of today's episode. Oh. Yeah, it's good.

Yeah, we commissioned a queer sculptor of color, the representation. Yeah, we thought it would be best. Cool. Cool. no, no shenanigans. Mm. About what?

Well, I mean, you could... I suppose you might... So a queer artist of color, you said. Indeed, Cecil, from the inner city. Excellent. That is an excellent choice. We are cowards. We are.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Is this the internet? And that's how it works now. I'm Eli and I'll be the Sheldon tonight, but I'll need the rest of the cast here to help me make a big bang.

So first up, Eli, um, stab, sorry, podcast listener, I have just been informed that contrary to my prior belief, the subject of this week's essay is not named Queen Bazinga.

Um, so pretty much, none of my jokes are going to make any fucking sense this week. God. Oh. Oh shit. Fuck. Okay. Noah, Heath and Cecil are here.

Oh, well, okay, so of all the jokes I was afraid I'd have to correct, that's pretty low on the list, Eli, so congrats. Yeah, Eli's going to go way down in coherence today. That'll be crazy. Eli, I am still, I'm still here to bleep things out. If you want me to bleep some things out that are nonsensical, people just think you're racist, if that'll work for you. I feel held in your hands. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our page. Our patrons, our patrons get a fun little before the show sketch where we die.

There's a podcastiverse and problematic animals that make excuses for war crimes. If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Noah, what person placed thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today? Queen Zinga of Angola. And Noah, why are you trusting me with the story of an African queen? That's a great fucking question, man. Yeah. So I've been on a bit of an African history kick lately, which is awesome in terms of learning about a part of the world that I didn't know enough about. But it's terrible for finding new subjects for citation needed, right? Because there's not enough upbeat, happy ending type stories. I hate to break it to you, Noah, but this show isn't really known for its upbeat, happy ending type stories. I don't know. Okay. All right. Okay. I talked about Robert Kraft in the episode about that. That's true. It's true. Happy ending. is a happy ending.

We can get away with some pretty downbeat stories but the thing about the fucked up African stories is it's always our ancestors

doing the terrible shit well not not Heath's ancestors they never sobered enough to do colonization I don't think and I guess Eli's

but it was drunk in colonies yeah right okay well Eli's ancestors are off the hook more or less and I think Cecil's ancestors

experience with African colonization was mostly just getting their asses kicked in Ethiopia so I guess it was mostly my ancestors, but still

trying to find the funny bits of African history can sometimes feel like one of them sushi chefs trying to tease the 46 delicious atoms out of an otherwise poisonous fish. Right? All that being said... I've got to sign a waiver before we continue

at the pod. I'd love it if you did. So all that being said, I did eventually come across the story of Queen Nzinga, sometimes pronounced Njinga, and she is a shining counter example. She's legitimately one of the most badass human beings who ever badassed.

And though her story is predictably filled with tragedy, betrayal, and horror, it's also filled with victorious battles, narrow escapes, and brilliant moments where she outwits the shit out of all the white people who keep trying to tell her how much better than her they are. Also, she has a man harem. So I really kind of have to tell this story. Yeah, and the man harem is one full debate bro podcast career. Yeah, that's what it was. I wonder if harems hang out like after work the way like you know

like a lot of jobs you're just like oh let's go let's go have some beers I bet there's one in the harem who always wants to hang out and everyone else is like dude I'm I'm not interested you're my work wife okay exactly like me and Cecil and Heath going on super cool vacation so tell us Noah before I cry cheers to you cecil was queen,

Zingga. We are work spouses. So Nzinga Mbonday was born sometime around 1583 into the royal family of Ndongo, an Mbundu kingdom in Central West Africa. That would be the northern part of modern day Angola,

but I will forgive the listeners if that didn't actually shed any light on where the fuck I'm talking about. So the key to the location, though, what you need to know is that this story takes place on the Atlantic coast of Africa in the 15 and 1600s.

Queen Inzinga's life is going to play out against the background of the Portuguese slave trade, really getting its feet under it. I actually know the area from Hats off to Botswana, the musical that we've been writing. Developing, developing, developing. We have some producers interested. They. It's deep lore, deep lore, folks. Don't bother Googling it. You won't find it.

So, Inzinga's dad was the king or Ngola, which is where the name Angola comes from. Anyway, so he was Angola Colombo Mbonday of Ndongo, and her mother, Kengela Lankomei, was one of his slave wives. Now, the wiki says she was his favorite concubine. But that seems like a weird distinction to note. Said like a man who doesn't have the guts to pick his favorite concubine. Steve, I feel like royalty always has a least favorite concubine. You know what I mean? Sure.

Like they're about to get benched or whatever. like a shitty little. Who's running for some steps? You heard the whistle. Steve's in now. Steve, get in here. Oh, my girl's turn again. All right.

I'll wait on the ball. I'll start jerking off because I'm about a bulls me. So anyway, so according to legend, she got her name, which means to twist or to turn in the kombundu language, because she was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

And that actually matters. in a local legend, children of the royal household who survived difficult or unusual births were said to have spiritual gifts or unusual powers. Yeah, beyond surviving childbirth and old timey times, would you say something? Yeah, right, right.

That's a special power all by itself. Now, I got that Funko Pop head. I wonder if I have powers. Right, yeah. Well, you weren't born into a royal household, I don't think. So now, Zingka had two sisters, Camphu and Fungi, also known as Lady Barbara and Lady Graham.

and a brother Mbondi, but none of them had difficult or unusual birth, so they didn't get any of the ancillary destiny. Now, her brother Mbondi, he's the heir to the throne. Yes, the culture with the king who had a number of slave wives was patriarchal, but her father recognized early on that Nzingo was a gifted child.

She wasn't just smart. She was a complete and total badass. The Wikipedia article says she displayed, quote, considerable aptitude with a battle axe. Nice. The traditional weapon of Ndongan warriors. end quote, which is so much more badass than anything that will ever be said about any of us. Yeah, well, we would have had to been weapons maxing from a very young age to do that.

Okay, I was an axer-maxer. You know what I'm talking about the body spray. I feel like you're talking about the body spray. And of course, because it was a patriarchal society and nobody considered Nzinga to be a threat to succession, her dad got away with giving her pretty much the same training and education that her brother God. So in addition to military training, she also had a hand in a number of governmental duties alongside her dad. She was involved in legal councils, war councils, important rituals, basically everything an Mbundu leader needed to know how to do. She even learned to read and write in Portuguese.

Now, at the time, Nzinga's dad's kingdom wasn't doing great. The Portuguese appetite for African slaves had grown increasingly ravenous, and it was becoming clear that they weren't going to be content to just take the people that the Ndongo ruling class considered slaves. When the Portuguese responded to her dad's complaint that they were enslaving the children of nobles with a sarcastic boo-hoo gesture, their relationship descended into open conflict. The Portuguese also allied with Ndungo's rival to the north, the kingdom of Congo. So by the time Nizhya came of age, large portions of her ancestral kingdom had already been gobbled up by European empires and rival African nations. Guys, I think slavery might be bad. I don't want to fill this episode with hot takes, but.

Okay. If you want to learn some nuance about that, check out the rapper named Ye. Interesting. Or the UN vote. Apparently, it's still being debated. So in 1617, her dad died and her brother inherited the fractured kingdom. And like so many new claimants to Thrones throughout history, the first thing he did was kill anybody that had a decent rival claim to his throne. This would include her older half-brother and his entire family.

it also critically included in Zinka's young son. She and her two sisters were spared, but they were all forcibly sterilized to ensure none of them would ever bear a rival claimant afterwards. Man, I'm so glad you were able to eventually find one of those upbeat stories you were looking for, Noah, and this is really good. I still don't know why we cut the sketch

where we reenact this moment, and she goes, that's a spicy meat the bowl. I just, it's like... It's insensitive to Italians, Eli. I was the no vote. at our other show called Bleep. It's all the stuff behind the bleeps. You can hear it.

Behind the BLEAPT.com slash bleep and bleep. So her brother takes over a kingdom at war. He kills a bunch of the competent leader type folks and then he turns his eyes to the Portuguese. Now, by this time the kingdom was so weak that it was also getting attacked by a group from the East called the Mbangala.

And Mbandi did manage to form an alliance with them and get them to unite with him against the Portuguese but he was still largely getting his ass kicked by their superiority and firepower. So when Bondi turns to his sister, who he begrudgingly recognizes as being better than him at every fucking thing,

and despite the fact that he's murdered her son now, she agrees to help him out and leads his delegation and negotiate with the Portuguese. No, it is nice not to ever have to hear baby shark again. Oh, okay, I'll help you. Oh, God.

This is Christ. Hey, Eli? Yeah. Join me in the Worcester whisper corner real quick. Yeah. So, um, you doing good? No.

You're all good? No. Okay, so she goes to Portugal. You get hit in the face today by a child? Yeah. No, that's a lot of. She goes to, did he get it, at least in a spot in the jaw that made your jaw line better and sexier?

It was a small tack hammer that he had in the basement. I didn't get him that little playmobile set with a hammer in it. Well, that's on you. Okay, so she goes to Portugal's main trade. colony in the area Luanda. And she goes in style. She reasons that if she shows up with a large enough royal retinue, the governor is going to treat her party like a foreign dignitary and in so doing pick up all the expenses, which they did. So before she even got there, she had tricked the Portuguese into paying for her trip. And rather than following the lead of most African men

that negotiated with Europeans who traditionally tried to present themselves as westernized by wearing European clothes and styling themselves after European standards, and Zingo went in there wearing the traditional feathers and jewels of the endungan people in an effort to say your culture isn't better than mine motherfuckers. So she gets to the negotiation. Now, the Portuguese delegates are already kind of indignant about having to deal with a black person at all. And when they realize it's going to be a fucking lady, they're apoplectic. So in an effort to assert some dominance, they arrange for there not to be a chair for her in the room where the negotiations are going to happen. So when she comes in, they just sort of wave at an open spot on the floor, thinking they've treated her into taking a

subordinate role by either standing the whole time or sitting on the floor beneath them. So she orders somebody from her entourage to just stand on their hands and feet and form a little bench for her to sit on for the duration of the hours-long negotiations. When she's done, she does like a double tuck roundoff off his back. She's like, she's up kind of high. The Portuguese guys, they're just panicking, bringing in taller chairs to try to get back above. She just keeps adding servants, human pyramid building.

Anyway, so she proceeds to flatter the shit out of the Portuguese negotiators. She twists them in circles. She throws her brother under the bus a couple of times. She agrees to be publicly baptized into their religion because that's nothing. Who gives a fuck? And in exchange for letting the Portuguese do shit they were already

doing, she gets them to sign a peace treaty that includes abandoning all forts in Andongo territory and the understanding that the endangos people would not be paying any tribute to the Portuguese. And I am taking three of these peppermints for later. Thank you very much.

Two for my chair. I'm mugging the shit out of all of you. I've destroyed you establishing my dominance. Mugged. You're devastated. But while she was succeeding on the Portuguese front, her brother was losing on a different front. He ended up fucking

things up with his new Mbingala allies and they ultimately drove him and his whole royal family into exile. And the fact that her family was no longer in control, gave the Portuguese all the excuse that they needed to disregard the treaty that they had just signed with her. But in 1624, the endunga would finally get a lucky break because that's the year Mbondi died. Now, the cause is unclear. The two competing theories are suicide and poisoning, but either way, upon his death, it was clear to everybody who should succeed him. Patriarchy be damned. All right. Well, we're off to a badass start.

So while we pump some fists, we'll take a little break for some apropos. of nothing. Presenting the illustrious Queen Nanzinger of the Angola. Your highness. Gentlemen. Oh, I'm sorry,

Your Highness. It seems we have forgotten to get you a chair. How unfortunate. That is no matter. Servant. Oh, fuck, dude, that was so cool.

Dude, relax. You have to relax. I'm good. I. shall sit on Colonel Jenkins here as well. To do what? Go on, Jenkins, let's begin the meeting. I'm not doing that.

I've got a bad shoulder. Then go get a butler or something. I just sent the butler into town for more tea. You three have chairs? Just use your chairs. You know what? That's fine. We're going to do a little lean thing.

All right. Here, back to back. Back to back. What? Get back to back. And then link your arms. There we can link my. Stop it.

Stop it. It's embarrassing. There we go. Leaning on each other, the three. Seventh of the realms. Okay, but you sure? You want to keep doing that? I expect this negotiation will take any hour.

We are fine. Your Highness, please let us begin. It appears your kinsmen have fainted. That's fine. It's fine. I'll just sit right here on top of there. once and we can negotiate. And one of them chad himself.

No? No? That was you. And we're back. When we left off, three European diplomats had bled to death when the queen got their nose. How will she outwit these Elmer Fuds next? Okay. So in 1624, Nzinga takes power and her most serious rival to the throne is her brother's kid, her seven-year-old nephew.

you. Now, normally the move here would be to kill the kid, right? I mean, he killed her son after all, but at first she couldn't get to him because he was under the guardianship of an Bengala war chief named Casa. So she proposed to Casa, married him, killed the kid, and then divorced him. I thought it was weird when the wedding imitation looked like little battle axes. That was strange. Well, when they said it was a child free wedding, I didn't know they meant like actively. Jesus Christ. Now, there's two things I need to be clear about at this point. One, that not every Ndango Noble backed her succession. The fact that she was a lady was a problem,

and the fact that she was willing to negotiate with the Portuguese was another, even if she did keep getting the better of them in the negotiations. The simple fact that she didn't just want to go to war made her seem weak in some people's eyes. The other thing I have to clear up is that Nzinga is not a shining beacon of morality.

She was a slave owner, and she freely profited from the slave trade in the area. So one of the main points of agreement that made her negotiations with Portugal, possible was their mutual desire to get the slave trade back up and running without all the wartime interference. Okay. The thing you got to understand about Faddy Arbuckle is he was so gentle,

guys, like a nice, such a nice guy. All right, but ultimately, her negotiations with the Portuguese broke down. They weren't willing to settle for anything short of vassalhood, and that was a non-starter for Tzinza. So then they started, like, undermining her rule by turning all the regional leaders that paid tribute to her and to direct vassals of Portugal instead. So she retaliated by granting freedom to any Portuguese slaves that managed to escape their plantations and make it to endongo lands. See, the thing about Nsinga was that she immediately recognized where the Portuguese

weakness was. They were in Africa for money. Anything she did that fucked up the profitability of their colonies, that was going to hit them the hardest. So that's where she focused. And pretty soon, they were so flustered that they were financing rebellious factions from within her kingdom to take her down. Eventually, they settled on a rival claimant named Kulwanjee, who seemed like a pliable puppet. They formally recognized him as king of Ngongo, and then they declared war on Nzinga on March 15th of 1626. That is, the Portuguese Empire declared war on a lady who at this point was technically stateless, and it's a war they would ultimately lose. So one of Nzinga's biggest advantages was that she and her armies knew the region. They were comfortable in areas that terrified the Portuguese. So whenever they

needed to, they could just sort of dissolve into the interior and the Portuguese couldn't pursue them without heavy losses. In the meantime, their puppet king dies as smallpox. So they have to go with even a more puppety second choice guy who was so obviously in the Portuguese pocket that the people swung strongly towards Zinca. This was made all the worse when Zinca started like making very public challenges to fight him one-on-one or her. army against his. And he had to keep chickening out because he would totally get his ass kicked

and he didn't really have an army. Okay, why don't we do that now? We should be doing that now. Just, you know, at a press conference, yelling whatever from the back and then like, oh, fight, fight, fight, fight. Honestly, we need to just get these people to fight.

Keith, I say this with the fullest, most open of hearts. We could absolutely do that tomorrow to Pete Hags at. We are just 100. Oh, fight, fight, by the way for making that out. No, of course. If he's listening right now, he's like, turn around and swing up. He's taking a tie off.

He struck Sarah Huckabee Sanders right in the solar plexus, and she currently has absorbed his fist and won't let it go until he apologizes. Spear tackle the table in the room he's in. Archimedes clawing out his eyes. That's her falcon. It's okay. So, of course, as badass as she was with the battle axe, her armies still couldn't stand toe to toe to toe with the Portuguese. They had muskets.

Their superiority in armament wasn't something you could overcome with toughness or knowledge of the train. Whenever she was forced to engage with them directly, she lost, including one devastating loss where our army was halved and both her sisters were kidnapped. By late 1628, her and her forces had been effectively expelled from the kingdom. But in Zingas best power, rested in her ability to form alliances. So when all looked lost, she married an in Bengala dude named Kassan. and officially join their society. Now, according to the wiki, the right of initiation into the Mbangala involved drinking human blood and then anointing herself with oil made from an infant crushed in a mortar. That was apparently the standard ritual for becoming a war leader in Mengala.

God forbid a girl have hobbies in my way. Look, listener, I know that sounds shocking, but that's basically the byproduct of one day at a religious run daycare here in the States. So I don't worry too much about it. It's cool. It's cool. I got this. It's just a table side guise. Yeah, and by the way,

if this seems like savage to you, I should tell you about what the Portuguese. It's baby ganus. Baby ganus is fantastic. By the way, if this seems savage to you or anything, I should tell you about what the Portuguese were doing there or anything, right? So I want to emphasize that a little bit.

So rather than abandoning... Also, it's savage. This is both... Well, there's... Yeah, right, right. No, but I'm just saying, like, it's not savage in comparison to what the Europeans were doing.

But rather than abandoning her old culture, Zingham managed to form a hybrid that appealed to both the Mbengala and her traditional Mbundu culture. So the Portuguese driving her out of her homeland ultimately just made her popular with a larger swath of African natives, including a war-loving tribe

that made you cover yourself and fucking crushed baits. paced to take leadership. So, I mean, this seems like a terrible outcome for her enemies. Okay, really feels like she's about to hatch some drag. You're right.

Every second of this fucking story. Yeah, I know. So by 1631, she'd remade her forces after the bottle of the much more effective in Bengala army and swelled her numbers by granting freedom to escape slaves and in, and bringing in Dango refugees.

And all this added up to a devastatingly effective guerrilla war against the Portuguese. And look, I don't want to dwell on this kind of shit too much, but I should at least mention that it was in Bengal accustomed to eat a motherfucker after you executed him. So you can imagine that the way outnumbered Portuguese soldiers were scared as ever loving fuck despite their superior firepower. Okay. Okay. I feel like I'd be scared if they did the eating before the execution. Yeah, that would be. After is like, you know, Riyadh's queen. She ate that. Now, over the next few years,

Zingha expanded her influences by taking over the nearby kingdom of Matamba, which actually had a cultural tradition of female leadership. At this point, she took on a lot of masculine traits and would start presenting herself in public in the clothing and accessories usually associated with men.

Queer icon, icon, clap pants, clap pants, clasp, yeah. Now, she also established an all-female bodyguard. This is where she gets the man-herom, and she made all her male concubines wear women's clothing as well. There are also apocryphal stories that she'd make them bite to the death

for the honor of fucking her and then she would kill the winner when she was done. But there's almost certainly no truth to any of that. Why is it got to be a black widow? No, of course, as powerful as she was getting, it still wasn't enough to push the Portuguese

out of her home. I feel like that's much laughter if it should have. I feel like you guys are cowards. You guys are cowards. You won't laugh at that joke. It's not drag race? No, absolutely. chicken right the fuck out of that joke.

Searle. Seen and sniped. I was like, actually I didn't laugh at that joke guys. They said later I was uncomfortable. My audience took my balls. Salas, Ruth Paul was entomologically correct. I used to be so funny.

All right. So her guerrilla tactics were effective at slowing down Portuguese's expansion and she was a constant thorn in their side. But she knew that if you really want to kill the fuck out some white people. You need other white people. So she allied with the Dutch. Pretty soon, the Dutch had run the Portuguese the fuck out of Luanda and they were sending soldiers to help her hunt the fuckers down wherever they still clung to territory. At this point, after decades of ignoring

peace overtures from Zinga, it was the Portuguese governor's turn to have a few peace and treaties ignored of his own. Now, by now, she controlled a huge land area and a big chunk of the slave trade and she used her newfound fortune and her alliance with the Dutch to buy guns. By 1644, her army was strong enough to defeat the Portuguese outright. This was aided by the fact that one of her sisters, who was still in Portuguese captivity at the time, had been sneaking letters to her telling her all the shit her enemies were plotting along the way. It is weird this one post box has these bars behind the slot, but neither ring or shine or soon as no. Now, eventually, the Portuguese did manage to turn the Dutch away, and eventually

the Dutch abandoned Angola and their native outside. allies. That would happen in 1648, but her hold on the interior was too great at that point for them to do much more than just hold her advances. So in 1651, a quarter century after they declared war on a woman who was out of power and stateless, the Portuguese sued for peace. The two sides ultimately agreed to a border between her kingdom and theirs, and they even agreed to provide military assistance of if any of the puppets they'd propped up in the past came back trying to fuck with her again. It was a treaty they would honor until her death in 1663. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? You guys are cowards. Indeed we are, Noah. Indeed, we are. Are you ready for the quiz?

Sure am. Hey, Noah, what's the name of the heist movie about this subject? A, a fish called Wakanda forever. Fantastic. You can stop there, Cecil, I am sold. It is a, a fish called Wakanda forever. All right, Noah. we often get criticized for covering the same topics as other comedy history topic podcasts,

but not this one. Why are those cucks at the dollop afraid to cover this lady? A, they weren't ready to make the baby sacrifice jokes we were. B, they already covered a forced sterilization last week or C, Portuguese apologies. I think we can agree it's D all of the above. Kid as those Portugal loving bastards. All right.

No, what's the best cannibal salad dressing? Since that's a topic from today. A, baby Caesar. B. Dude Ranch. C. Moyle and Vinegarine. Nicely done. That one's amazing.

Or D. Soilent green guys. Oh, wow. All right. There's some good ones in there. But I'm going to go, I'm going to go out on the limb here and go with B, Dude Ranch. Oh, it was doing nice. Oh, shit.

All right. Noah got him all right. That means he is this week's winner. All right. Well, he's not here now, so I think Tom should have to write an essay next. Yeah, let's roll those dice. All right, well, for Noah, Cecil and Heath. I'm Elon Bosnick.

Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, Tom will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can listen to our other podcast where I promise we go full force against some white people. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation. patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. All right. Our treaty is made. Your terms are accepted.

Very good. Very good. Show me shake on it. If I move my hands, all three of us will die. Yeah, got it. Watch the poop on your way out. I'm taking these mince again.