Ranavalona III

Razafindrahety was born in Amparibe, in the Imerina kingdom of Madagascar, on the twenty-second of November 1861. She succeeded her aunt Ranavalona II as Queen of Madagascar on the thirteenth of July 1883, taking the regnal name Ranavalona III.

Her reign coincided with the consolidation of French colonial designs on Madagascar. The First Franco-Hova War (1883 to 1885) ended in a French protectorate over the island; the Second Franco-Hova War (1894 to 1895) ended in the abrogation of Malagasy sovereignty. French troops occupied Antananarivo in September 1895.

Ranavalona III remained nominally on the throne until 1897, when the French abolished the Malagasy monarchy outright and exiled her to Réunion. She was subsequently transferred to Algiers, where she was held under French surveillance for the next twenty years.

She conducted herself in exile with notable composure. She received Malagasy delegations who travelled to Algiers, hosted Algerian and French Algerian guests at her residence on Boulevard Saint-Saëns, attended cultural events in the city, and maintained correspondence with surviving Malagasy nobility and with European royals sympathetic to her position. She was permitted to visit France twice but never returned to Madagascar in her lifetime.

She died in Algiers on the twenty-third of May 1917, age fifty-five. Her remains were repatriated to Madagascar in 1938, twenty-one years after her death, and entombed at the royal tomb at Ambohimanga.

Madagascar achieved independence from France in 1960. The Malagasy monarchy was not restored, but Ranavalona III is recognized in modern Madagascar as the last sovereign of the pre-colonial Imerina state.

She is honored here as the queen who, deposed and exiled, kept the dignity of a sovereign for twenty years on a foreign coast.