Sarah Bonetta Forbes, 'Queen Victoria's African Princess', was rescued from Africa as a girl of seven after the slaughter of her family. Offered by King Gezo of Dahomey as a gift to the Queen, she was taken to England. Spending part of her childhood there and part back in Africa, she married Captain James Davies in 1862 and they settled in their native continent, where she became a teacher and died of tuberculosis at Madeira in 1880. Her story has rarely been told before by earlier biographers, or even noticed in lives of the Queen. It makes one of the most unusual, not to say fascinating, episodes in the annals of the British Victorian court.

Myers pens this biography of an African princess saved from execution and taken to England where Queen Victoria oversaw her upbringing and where she lived for a time before marrying an African missionary.

A richly imagined story of two sisters' struggle for true freedom in the mid-nineteenth century as their paths diverge in the middle passage—one to the court of Queen Victoria, the other to an American plantation. Salimatu and her sister Fatmata are captured, sold to slavers, renamed and split apart. Forced to change their names to Sarah and Faith, they end up on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Faith is taken to America, where slavery is still legal and she is stripped of all rights. Sarah ends up in a Victorian England and as the goddaughter of Queen Victoria. Can the two sisters reclaim their freedom and identity in a world that is trying to break them down? Will these once inseparable sisters survive without each other? And if they do find each other again, will they find the other changed beyond recognition? Based on the true story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Breaking the Maafa Chain is by turns epic and intimate and will take the readers on a journey of loss, survival, and hope.

An African Princess is saved from beheading and taken to London and becomes goddaughter to Queen Victoria.

Includes author's note, a reading group guide with discussion questions, and an excerpt from Blackbirds.

This resource covers the life, times, and relationships of Queen Victoria, providing information about her children, her personal interests, the historic times in which she ruled, and the leaders she influenced. In this fascinating guide to every aspect of Queen Victoria's life, author Helen Rappaport analyzes the queen's personality, celebrates her achievements, and details the shortcomings of her empire, both in Britain, with its continuing divide between rich and poor, and overseas, where Britain's great empire was won by repression and exploitation. A–Z entries—including topics barely touched in standard biographies—cover things like the various assassination attempts on her life, her interest in dancing and Jack the Ripper's murders, and how her husband Prince Albert introduced the celebration of Christmas to England. Queen Victoria also describes individuals such as her companion Lady Jane Churchill, her physician Sir James Clark, and politicians such as William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli; events like the Irish potato famine; inventions like steam power; and issues such as missionary activity and prostitution. It also includes bibliographies both for each entry and overall, and a chronology.