That he has reported his personal acquaintance with her accurately there is no reason to doubt. His account of Madagascar and its strange customs accords with other sources, as do his descriptions of such minutiae as the Queen's eccentric wardrobe, her Napoleonic paintings, furniture, idols, place-cards at dinner, drinking habits, and even musical preferences. His picture of her fantastically dressed court, her midnight party, and the public ceremony of the Queen's bath can be verified in detail. As to her behaviour with him, it is known that she had lovers - possibly even before her husband's death, although that admittedly is pure speculation based on a study of the events which brought her to the throne, on which Flashman touches only briefly.
King Radama, her husband, had died suddenly at the age of 36 in 1828. Since they had no children, the heir was the king's nephew, Rakotobe; his supporters, foreseeing a power struggle, concealed the news of the king's death for some days to enable Rakotobe to consolidate his claim. In the meantime, however, a young officer named Andriamihaja's, who was ostensibly among Rakotobe's supporters, betrayed the news of the king's death to Ranavalona, for reasons which are not disclosed. She promptly got the leading military men on her side, put it about that the idols favoured her claim to the throne, and ruthlessly slaughtered all who resisted, including the unfortunate Rakotobe. She rewarded Andriamihaja's treachery by making him commander-in-chief and taking (or confirming) him as her lover - he was presently accused of treachery, put to the tanguin, and executed. (See Oliver, vol. i.)
The next 35 years were a reign of terror, religious persecution, and genocide on a scale (considering Madagascar's size and limited population) hardly matched until our own times. That Ranavalona escaped assassination or deposition is testimony to the strength with which she wielded her absolute power, and to her capacity for surviving plots. How many of these there were, we cannot know, but none succeeded - including the Flashman coup of 1845, and a later conspiracy in which Ida Pfeiffer, then aged 60, found herself involved, to her considerable alarm: she describes in her Travels how Prince Rakota (still evidently intent on getting rid of mother) showed her the arsenal he intended to use in his revolt, and how she then went to bed and had nightmares about the tanguin test.
Since we know that Rakota and Laborde both survived the plot which Flashman describes, it seems likely that it simply died stillborn, or that the Queen, for some reason, forebore to take vengeance on the conspirators. It would be pleasant to think that Mr Fankanonikaka, at least, was spared to continue his devoted service to his queen and country.
Notes
1. Since most of the Flashman Papers were written between 1900 and 1905, it seems likely that Flashman is here referring to the Test Match series of 1901-2, which Australia won by four matches to one, and possibly also to the series of summer 1902, when the Australians retained the Ashes, 2-1. It was in this year that an attempt to amend the ever-controversial leg-beforewicket rule failed. [p. 12]
2. Flashman's behaviour on the football field is memorably described in Tom Brown's Schooldays, where Thomas Hughes refers to his late arrival at scrimmages "with shouts and great action". [p. 131
3. Flashman's memory is playing him false here, but only slightly. The so-called Rebecca Riots did not begin until some months later, in 1843, when a peculiar secret society known as "Rebecca and her Daughters" began a terrorist campaign against high toll charges in South Wales. They went armed, masked, and disguised as women, and would descend by night on toll-houses and toll-gates, which they wrecked. They apparently took their name from an allusion in Genesis xxiv, 60: "And they blessed Rebekah … and said … let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them." (See Halev's History of the English People, vol. iv, and Punch, vol. v, Introduction, 1843.) [p. 21]
4. This is the earliest mention in any sporting or literary record of the "hat trick", signifying the feat by a bowler of taking three wickets with successive balls, which traditionally entitles him to a new hat. The phrase has now, of course, a wider application outside cricket, covering three successive triumphs of any kind - a hat-trick of goals or election victories, for example. It is interesting to speculate, not only that the phrase had its origin in Mynn's impulsive gesture to Flashman, but also that it was first used ironically. [p. 34]
5. Lords Haddington and Stanley were respectively First Lord of the Admiralty and Colonial Secretary; Lord Aberdeen was Foreign Secretary. Flashman is being malicious in coupling Deaf Burke and Lord Brougham as rascals - one was a famous prize-fighter and the other a prominent Whig politican. [P. 44]
6. Alice Lowe, mistress of Lord Frankfort, figured in a notorious court case over gifts he had given her, and which he claimed she had stolen. Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, then nearing completion, was something of a laughing-stock - Punch noted gleefully that the statue of the great sailor closely resembled Napoleon. The Royal Hunt Cup was first run at Ascot in 1843 and "The Bohemian Girl" opened at Drury Lane in November of that year. [p. 45]
7. Various government reports appeared in the early 1840s on conditions in mines and factories; they were horrifying. The atrocities referred to in Morrison's conversation with Solomon may be traced in those reports and in others from the preceding decade. As a result, Lord Ashley (later Earl of Shaftesbury) got a Bill through the Commons in 1842 prohibiting the employment of women or childen below thirteen in the mines, although the Lords subsequently lowered the age to ten; in 1843 the publication of the report of the Children's Employment Commission ("Home's report") led to further legislation, including a reduction in factory working hours for children and adolescents. (See Report of the Children's Employment Commission (Mines) 1842; the second report of the CEC, 1843; and other papers quoted in Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution, by E. Royston Pike.) [p. 47]
8. Lola Montez was Flashman's mistress for a brief period in the autumn of 1842, until they quarrelled; he took revenge by engineering a hostile reception for her when she made her debut as a dancer on the London stage in June, 1843. Following this incident, she left England and began that astonishing career as a courtesan which led to her becoming virtual ruler of Bavaria - an episode in which Flashman and Otto von Bismarck were closely involved. (See biographies of Lola Montez, and Flashman's own memoir on the subject, published as Royal Flash.) [p. 48]
9. From Flashman's description of the "bluff-looking chap in clerical duds" with the crippled arm, it seems certain that he was Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845), author of The Ingoldsby Legends, of which one of the most famous relates how Lord Tomnoddy, accompanied by " … M'Fuze, and Lieutenant Tregooze, and … Sir Carnaby Jenks of the Blues", attended a Newgate execution, and revelled the previous night at the Magpie and Stump, overlooking the street where the scaffold was erected. However, Barham's inspiration did not come from the execution which Flashman describes; he wrote his famous piece of gallows humour some years earlier, but may well have attended later executions out of interest. Thackeray's presence is interesting, since it suggests that he had got over the revulsion he felt at Courvoisier's hanging three years earlier, when he could not bear to watch the final moment. (See Barham; The Times, 7 July 1840, and 27 May 1868, reporting the Courvoisier and Barret executions; Thackeray's "Going to See a Man Hanged", Fraser's Magazine, July 1840; Dickens' Barnaby Rudge and "A Visit to Newgate", from Sketches by Box; and Arthur Griffiths' Chronicles of Newgate (1884) and Criminal Prisons of London (1862).) [p. 55]