This article contains spoilers for The Woman King

In a relatively slow September, one of the hottest movies has been The Woman King. It debuted to a $19 million opening weekend, almost double what it was expected to perform at. Even more impressive, however, is the critical response. It currently sits at 94% from critics and 99% from viewers on RottenTomatoes.

The Woman King is a very rare thing in Hollywood: a historical epic that takes place in Africa. And, believe it or not, it's not about white Europeans conquering the countries of Africa and extracting their riches. Quite the opposite. It's about the people of an African nation who, led by an all-female regiment of soldiers, fights against the slave trade. It is an incredible and inspiring story, but how much of it is historically accurate?

How Historically Accurate Is the Plot?

The Woman King
Sony Pictures Releasing 
 

The plot centers around the Kingdom of Dahomey in western Africa, where King Ghezo employs an all-female unit of soldiers called the Agojie. However, they are forced to pay tribute to the neighboring Oyo Empire. All of this is based on fact. Dahomey was a real country — today, the nation of Benin — while the Agojie, King Ghezo, and the Oyo were real as well. The Oyo Empire was a historically significant empire controlled by the Yoruba ethnic group. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was one of the most significant forces in all of Western Africa and was known for its strong administrative structure and powerful cavalry.

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By the time of The Woman King, which is set in the 1820s, Dahomey had been a tributary state of the Oyo Empire for almost a century. In 1823, they really did engage in minor fighting with the Oyo and eventually won their independence, which is depicted in the movie. As we can see, the most basic historical sketch of the time period and the countries involved in the film is fairly accurate. However, the specifics of the characters and the role of slavery in Dahomey are not.

Are the Characters Based on Real People?

John Boyega in Woman King
Sony Pictures Releasing

While most of the basic historical framework is fairly accurate, many of the characters are not. The only one that is clearly based on a real person is King Ghezo. However, Ghezo is not the great leader and wise man the movie makes him out to be. He was the son of Dahomey's King Agonglo, who, upon his death, passed the throne to Ghezo's older brother Adandozan in 1797. In 1818, Ghezo initiated a coup to overthrow his brother and establish himself as king.

The exact details of what happened during the coup are unknown, as Ghezo rewrote history while on the throne and passed down an oral tradition that was suspiciously glowing about his reign. Historians generally consider Ghezo to have been a cruel king who ruthlessly engaged in the slave trade, although he also won Dahomey's independence from the Oyo. He died in 1859 by assassination.

As mentioned earlier, the female soldiers of the Agojie were absolutely real, but many of the specific characters in the movie are fictional. General Nanisca (Viola Davis) is not based on a specific person, but History vs. Hollywood speculates that her name might have come from the journals of French naval officer Jean Bayol, who described a young Agojie recruit named Nanisca. However, this real Nanisca was only a teenager and a new initiate, showing almost no similarities to the Nanisca in the movie. Additional inspiration may have been taken from any of the Agojie's generals, who were, of course, all female, but there is no obvious one-to-one correlation.

The other main character, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), could also have been very loosely inspired by a real person. As History vs. Hollywood writes, the last surviving Agojie in history was a woman named Nawi, who was interviewed in 1978 at the age of 100. However, it doesn't seem that much more than her name was used by the character in The Woman King. The real Nawi was born in 1879, more than two decades after Ghezo died.

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Other than the Oyo forces, the film's main antagonist is the Portuguese slave trader Santo Ferreira (played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin, the nephew of Ralph Fiennes). Portugal was indeed one of the strongest colonial powers at the time and participated heavily in the enslavement of African peoples. Ferreira himself may be very loosely based on Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Sousa. De Sousa was, in fact, not an enemy of Dahomey but a close friend and powerful ally of King Ghezo, who was instrumental in the coup that brought Ghezo into power.

The final major character is Malik, the Brazilian son of a slave who travels to Dahomey to see the land where his mother was born. While Malik does not seem to be based on a specific historical figure, it is true that Brazil was a major colony of Portugal and was a frequent destination of enslaved Africans, who were used to exploit and steal the rich natural resources of the country. Brazil actually has the largest Black population of any country outside Africa. Although there is some debate over what counts as Black or mixed race in the country, as much as half the entire population of Brazil could be considered Black.

Did Dahomey Oppose Slavery?

The Woman King movie
Sony Pictures

As alluded to earlier, the most significant historical inaccuracy in The Woman King is Dahomey's relationship to slavery. In the movie, Nanisca and Ghezo are passionately opposed to the slave trade and vow to end the practice. In reality, King Ghezo was one of the most vicious slavers in all of West Africa. He ordered frequent military raids on villages to kidnap innocent people he could trade to the Portuguese as slaves. Slavery was the primary source of Dahomey's wealth and power.

Not only did King Ghezo never attempt to end the slave trade, he actually explicitly fought to keep it. In the 1850s, he faced severe pressure from the British Empire (who had outlawed slavery in 1833) to end his participation in the slave trade, and he even fought several unsuccessful battles to keep it. Eventually, he gave up and agreed to end his slave raids, but continued them secretly until his death a few years later.

It should be noted that Britain's aggressive practice of fighting to end the slave trade in Africa wasn't entirely altruistic. Many European nations used the end of slavery as an excuse to invade, conquer, and colonize vast swaths of Africa in the second half of the 19th century. This resulted in what has been called the Scramble for Africa, and it was in this period that Europe colonized almost the entire continent.