Our final #HRPHandover for #BlackHistoryMonth is with @LukePepera, a writer and broadcaster specialising in African history & culture

Read on as Luke compares the lives of two contemporary kings: one you’ve definitely heard of, the other you possibly haven’t…

This is a story of two kings: Mvemba a Nzinga, or Afonso I, of Kongo (1460-1543), a king of Africa, and Henry VIII of England (1491-1547), a king of Europe. [LP]

(Sadly an image of Afonso doesn't survive; on the left is the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Kongo issued to him.)

In many ways, these kings were very similar. Both spent their lives in pursuit of the same goal: the stability of their kingdoms. For both, their concern with stability lay in personal insecurities. And both felt that religion was key to the achievement of their ambitions. [LP]

Where they differed was in how they viewed and used the same religion: Catholicism. Afonso, who felt that Kongo's future depended on a good relationship with Portugal, adopted it. Henry, who felt that England's future depended on a male heir, rejected it. [LP]

In Kongo, it wasn't believed that the king's firstborn son should inevitably succeed him. Kings were elected out of a pool of potential candidates, and people would give their support to the candidate they thought would rule best. [LP]

But if two or more factions gained considerable support, war would follow. Succession in Kongo was thus inherently unstable, and Afonso, having succeeded the throne after just such a conflict, knew this first-hand. [LP]

When his father, Nzinga a Nkuwu, died in 1506, supporters led by his mother, Leonor, rallied around him. She kept her husband's death secret and sent a message to Afonso telling him to come quickly from Nsundi, the region he governed, to the capital. [LP]

With her help, he disguised his soldiers as food deliveries and snuck them into the city. It worked like a charm. Mpanzu, Afonso’s half-brother and rival, was caught completely off-guard. He scrambled together his army and attacked, but was swiftly beaten. [LP]

After the battle, Mpanzu was executed. Once Afonso was enthroned as the sixth king of Kongo, he asked the Portuguese king for support, expanded his kingdom, and established his rule by putting his allies in charge of the different regions. [LP]

Meanwhile in England, Henry Tudor was crowned Henry VIII after his brother Arthur’s untimely death a few years earlier. He was only 17 when he ascended the throne, and unlike his elder brother had not been groomed from an early age to be king. [LP]

@nationaltrust

Henry's childhood had been rather carefree, but now he was forced to shoulder the heavy burdens of kingship, which included nothing less than the survival of his entire dynasty. [LP]

And Henry’s knowledge of his family’s weak claim to the throne, and the previous century of bloody civil war, only added to the pressure. To avoid the destruction of the Tudor dynasty, Henry knew he needed to produce a legitimate heir, a healthy baby boy. [LP]

This proved easier said than done. Henry and his wife Catherine tried years for a boy. But after many pregnancies and births, their only surviving child was a girl, Mary. It soon looked unlikely that Catherine would give birth again at all, let alone to the heir. [LP]

@RCT

Henry lost interest in her, and became infatuated with Anne Boleyn. He also felt God was punishing him and scoured the Holy Scriptures for answers. There, he found an obscure passage that suggested his marriage to Catherine (once Arthur’s widow) might be the problem. [LP]

In the early 1530s, he asked Pope Clement VII’s permission to divorce Catherine and marry Anne. The Pope refused.

But Henry did it anyway. In the process, he severed ties with Rome, made himself the head of a new, English Church, and executed his best friend, Thomas More. [LP]

And while Henry, to preserve the Tudor dynasty, rejected Catholicism, Afonso, to protect Kongo, embraced it...

In 1483, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão had met with Afonso’s father. With Nzinga's blessing, he took back to Portugal several Kongolese noble children. [LP]

When he returned a few years later, Cão was again sent away, this time with Kongolese ambassadors who told the Portuguese king that Nzinga wanted to become Catholic. They were taught Latin, literacy, and Christianity. On their return, Nzinga, Leonor and Afonso were baptised. [LP]

But though Nzinga introduced Catholicism to Kongo, Afonso loved it more. Near the end of his life, Nzinga rejected Catholicism and expelled the Portuguese priests. Afonso welcomed them to Nsundi, where, for some time, he’d been forcibly converting his subjects. [LP]

After Nzinga’s death, Afonso put the Christianisation of Kongo into overdrive. He sent more noble children to Portugal, including his son Henrique, who Pope Leo X made a bishop in 1518, and asked the Portuguese king to send him priests. [LP]

One of these priests, Rui d’Aguiar, who likened Afonso to ‘an angel… that the Lord sent [to Kongo]…in order to convert it’, described how the Kongo king would read Christian texts late into the night, and next morning would be found sleeping on them. [LP]

Afonso also set up a school in the capital, filled them with noble boys and girls, and made the priests, and the Kongolese youths who’d accompanied Cão, teachers. He even built a wall around the school to prevent the children from escaping! [LP]

Once educated, these youths were sent all over the kingdom to convert more Kongolese, and teach them to read and write. Afonso’s strategy was hugely effective. Literacy expanded rapidly, and conversion, instituted by Kongolese, not Europeans, was peaceful. [LP]

@metmuseum

In the end, though, these kings’ actions, intended to preserve their kingdoms, had the opposite effect.

During Henry’s reign, so much division was sown that it troubled the reigns of all three of his children, and with them his dynasty died. [LP]

In Kongo, Portugal’s increased demand for slaves after America’s colonisation led to so much greed and corruption that even Afonso feared for his kingdom’s survival. He wrote twice to Pope Clement VII asking him to regulate the slave trade. Twice, he was cold-shouldered. [LP]

The Portuguese, growing tired of his interferences, tried to assassinate him in 1540.

Two years later, Afonso died, and as per his final wishes was buried in a stone, Catholic church. [LP]