Parents' Guide to African Queens: Njinga

This powerful, informative, and highly stylized docuseries combines expert interviews with scripted drama to tell the story of an African princess in the 1600s. In African Queens, she succeeds at becoming a monarch that was able to push back against the expanding slave trade in Central Africa. It shows how Queen Njinga, who could read and write in Portuguese, and who consistently demonstrated the political savvy and military prowess necessary to pursue multiple avenues of diplomacy and resistance, had to negotiate her culture's patriarchal system and the brutality of colonial exploitation to ascend and remain on the throne. It also reveals the power struggles within her own family that she had to accept and endure. But it's Njinga's strategic efforts to secure peace treaties with the Portuguese, and later, partner with other powerful entities such as the Dutch and the Catholic Church, that are the most interesting parts of her story.

The interpretation of these alliances, which required her and her subjects to convert to Christianity and work with colonial slavers, underscore the complicated nature of her rule, and that of the future queens Ndongo, until the territory was completely colonized and renamed Angola. There's a lot to be learned from African Queens: Njinga, but the overall story also goes far to ensure that people around the world learn more about this important queen in African history, and to ensure that she will not be forgotten.