Meet 6 black princesses – from African and European royals

With little more than a month left for the wedding with Prince Harry, Meghan Markle has already been highlighted a few times as a “black princess” – although she will not receive the title of princess, but of duchess, and has publicly declared that she considers herself biracial, a since she is the daughter of a black mother and white father –, as if it were unheard of for a non-white woman to be part of royalty. Is not. It’s not even very rare, as long as you open your field of view and look outside of Europe.

We bring, below, six black princesses and their stories. Five are from African kingdoms and one from a European principality. All fascinating.

Akosua Busia, Princess of the Royal Family of Wenchi (Ghana)

You may recognize Akosua from seeing her as Nettie in “The Color Purple” (1985) or as Patience in “Tears of the Sun” (2003). Despite having blue blood, the Ghanaian opted to study dramaturgy at the Central School of Speech and Drama, in London, and pursue an acting career. Her first stage appearance was at Oxford University, playing Juliet in a production of “Romeo and Juliet” – she was the only black person in the cast, and snatched the lead role straight away.

Akosua’s royal title comes from his father, Kofi Abrefa Busia, prince of the Royal Family of Wenchi (in the Ghanaian territory of Ashanti). The quest for more than just one crown seems to be in his DNA: despite being the prince of one of the country’s most important regions, Kofi pursued a political career and was Prime Minister of Ghana from 1969 to 1972). And his sister, Abena Busia, pursued a diplomatic career and is Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil.

Akosua is 51 years old and lives in London. She continues in showbusiness as a writer, director and eventually actress, when she’s invited.

Sikhanyiso Dlamini, Princess of Swaziland

The rank of eldest daughter of King Mswati III, who has no less than 30 children and 10 wives (her mother, Inkhosikati LaMbikiza, was the first he married), could make Sikhanyiso a meek and obedient woman.

But none of that! She was a rebellious young woman and was even beaten with a stick – with official authorization – because of her public stances against Swaziland customs. Her most controversial statement was undoubtedly: “Polygamy gives all the advantages of a relationship to men, and that, for me, is unfair and bad”.

Having studied in the UK, US and Australia, Sikhanyiso is much more open-minded than her family. An example that may even seem silly to us, in Brazil, is the fact that she wears pants, which is prohibited for women in her country.

Graduated in Digital Communication and back in Swaziland, the princess is now 30 years old and is a member of the board of a multinational mobile telecommunication company and works in attracting investments for the Kingdom of Swaziland.

Elizabeth Bagaaya, Princess of the Kingdom of Toro (Uganda)

She is the daughter of Rukidi III, the King of Toro between 1928 and 1965. Because of ancient rules that determined that men had an advantage in the succession to the throne, Elizabeth never had a chance to be Queen of Toro, so she carries the title of princess until today, at the age of 81.

Knowing that she would never put the queen’s crown on her head, Elizabeth decided to mind her own business. She studied law at the University of Cambridge (UK) and was the first African woman to receive the official title of lawyer in England. She was also a model in the USA, one of the first black women to be hired by Ford Models.

After she became a widow, in 1986, she embarked on a diplomatic career. She was Uganda’s ambassador to Germany and the Vatican and is currently a member of the Ugandan diplomatic corps in Nigeria.

Sarah Culberson, Princess of Sierra Leone

Sarah’s story is almost a modern fairy tale. Adopted by a US couple as a baby, she lived quietly in West Virginia until 2004, when she was contacted by her biological family: the royal family of the Mende tribe, one of the kingdoms of Sierra Leone.

The “almost” in the paragraph above is due to the fact that the country was devastated by the civil war and Sarah was devastated when she got to know her homeland. Therefore, she returned to the US and in 2005 created the Kposowa Foundation, in California, with the aim of raising funds for Sierra Leoneans. Among the foundation’s actions are rebuilding schools destroyed by the war and sending clean water to the most needy population in Sierra Leone.

Sarah is 42 years old and lives in the USA. Her story is reported in more detail in the biography “A Princess Found: An American Family, an African Chiefdom, and the Daughter Who Connected Them All”, released in 2009 and without a Brazilian version.

Keisha Omilana, Princess of Nigeria

An American from California, USA, Keisha was a rising model when Prince Kunle Omilana, from a Nigerian tribe, met her and fell in love with her. After he insisted a lot, she agreed to get to know him better and that was it. They got married and are Diran’s parents.

Despite their noble blood, the family chose to settle in London, where they own the Wonderful-TV Christian television network.

Angela, Princess of Liechtenstein

The first black woman to marry a member of the European royal family, Angela Gisela Brown is from Panama and was already a fashionista graduated from the Parsons School of Design, in New York (USA), when she met Prince Maximilian, from the principality of Liechtenstein. He is 12 years younger than her.

The wedding took place in 2000 and unlike what happens in the United Kingdom, where the wives of princes receive titles of duchesses, in Liechtenstein Angela was immediately considered a princess. In 2001, when Angela was 43 years old, Alfons, the couple’s only child, was born.

Today they live in Hamburg, Germany.