Orompoto: The Alaafin Who Exposed The Myth Of ‘Un-African’ Queerness

FOR decades, African politicians, preachers, and public commentators have insisted that queerness is a foreign import — a Western invention smuggled in through colonization and reinforced by globalisation. Yet history carries a different testimony, one so powerful and so disruptive that it threatens the very foundation of this narrative. Buried in the layers of Yoruba oral tradition lies the story of a 16th-century monarch whose life defies every modern claim that LGBTQ+ identity is “un-African.”

Her name was Orompoto — Orompotoniyun — the first and only female Alaafin of Oyo. But her story is far more complex than simply being a woman on the throne. She occupied a gender space that did not fit neatly into the binaries modern society enforces. And contrary to today’s rhetoric, her people not only accepted her — they crowned her.

The Forgotten Monarch Who Challenged Gender Norms

Orompoto was the daughter of Alaafin Ofinran and granddaughter of Alaafin Onigbogi, born into a royal line during a period when the Oyo Empire commanded immense political and military power in West Africa. When her father died, the throne passed to her brother Eguguoju, who soon died without an heir. The next male princes were still children. The empire needed a stabilizing force, a leader strong enough to hold the dynasty together and defend Oyo from external threats.

That leader emerged in Orompoto.

Initially serving as regent, she displayed strategic brilliance early on, driving the Nupe forces from Oyo in 1555. But when the time came to crown a permanent Alaafin, the Oyo Mesi — the council of chiefs — resisted. Their objection was not about lineage or qualification; it was about gender. A woman, they argued, could not sit on the throne.

A Challenge That Changed History

Oral tradition recounts that when the chiefs sought to humiliate her by demanding “proof” of maleness — their narrow prerequisite for kingship — Orompoto prepared meticulously. For seven days she cut her hair, donned male attire, and took on the posture of a king. On the seventh day, in the palace courtyard, she revealed her body in stages until, before the stunned chiefs, she exposed physical traits they interpreted as male genitalia.

Whether intersex, transgender, gender-fluid, or simply beyond the binary categories imposed today, Orompoto disrupted the assumptions of her time — and ours.

The chiefs who had plotted her exclusion fell to the ground in full prostration. She was crowned Alaafin Orompotoniyun, also known as Ajiun — “the custodian of the vagina that kills evil plots,” a title whose linguistic complexity alone challenges the idea that the Yoruba saw gender as fixed or simplistic.

A Monarch Who Ruled With Courage — and Defiance

As ruler, Orompoto expanded the empire’s cavalry, personally trained horseback warriors, and led her army into battle. She fought at the Battle of Illayi, where she died on the battlefield — one of the few Alaafins ever to die in active combat. Her bravery is well documented; her gender complexity is quietly preserved; her legacy is loudly inconvenient.

Orompoto was not a cultural anomaly. She was part of a larger African reality that predated colonial moral codes. Across the continent, historical records reveal:

• gender-fluid and intersex individuals

• same-sex relationships

• women who became “female husbands”

• men who served as “male wives”

• cross-gender priests and spiritual custodians

• queer-coded royal courts

• communities with nonbinary social roles

These stories are often buried, dismissed, or violently denied — not because they are untrue, but because they are inconvenient.

The Myth of African Homophobia

The belief that queerness is “un-African” is a historical distortion. What is truly foreign is the homophobia imported through Victorian-era colonial laws and missionary doctrines. While Europe was criminalizing LGBTQ+ identity under puritanical codes, African societies were navigating gender and sexuality through cultural lenses far more nuanced than today’s rhetoric suggests.

Orompoto’s reign is not just a footnote in Yoruba history — it is a direct counterargument to modern intolerance. Her life exposes the lie that queer identity emerged from Western influence. It demonstrates that African societies once embraced forms of gender diversity that would be persecuted today.

What Her Story Demands of Us Now

When leaders today proclaim that LGBTQ+ identity is “not African,” they are not protecting tradition; they are erasing it. When pastors condemn queer people as unnatural, they are preaching colonial doctrine, not indigenous truth. When society insists that gender diversity is new, it is ignoring its own ancestors.

Orompoto’s legacy forces us to ask: If a gender-nonconforming monarch could rule one of Africa’s greatest empires with honor, why is modern Africa struggling to grant dignity to its queer citizens?

Her story is not merely an anecdote; it is evidence.

Evidence that African identity has always been broader than today’s political narratives.

Evidence that queerness is older than colonial borders.

Evidence that intolerance — not queerness — is the foreign intrusion.

African history is vast, complex, and frequently uncomfortable for those who prefer simplified myths. But the truth remains: before the missionaries, before the colonizers, before the imported laws and imported hatred, Africa crowned a ruler who lived beyond gender — and celebrated her.

Orompoto is not just a historical figure. She is a rebuttal. A reminder. And a mirror held up to a continent that has forgotten its own wisdom.