Sarah Forbes Bonetta was gifted to Queen Victoria by King Ghezo of Dahomey, through her envoy Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy in 1850. Much of her early narrative is parsed through Forbes’ book Dahomey and the Dahomans, published in 1851.

King Ghezo of Dahomey seems to have captured the imagination of the many Europeans who wrote about and depicted him. Alternately dashing and horrific, he is regularly associated with opulence and death. The descriptions of his habits and his practices see echoes throughout the following hundred and fifty years in everything from "Heart of Darkness" to depictions of Mobutu Sese Seko. He is most often depicted as surrounded by skulls and accompanied by his all-female Royal guard.