Talk:Ranavalona I

message: I'm unsure that a fictional description belongs in the main body of the article. Rhinoracer 10:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I recall reading that she did sit for portraits during this time and even requested European artists to come to Tana to do the work despite her distrust of foreign motives - there was day-to-day normality in the capital then as under many authoritarian regimes today. The accounts of this queen by people researching primary sources are likely to be biased and Fraser's description is proof: Ranavalona was Merina, meaning in genetic terms that she had primarily Austronesian genetics and so would have been much fairer than the majority of her subjects who were non-Merina and therefore had some African genes in their background. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 15:27, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Hold on, I have to retract that. It seems she may have been from Menabe, the western part of the island, in which case she did have more African genetic background. That could explain the description - darker than the average Merina, but most likely the same as the average Malagasy (that is to say, still much fairer than the peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa). But in the end, it's pretty irrelevant - especially without the information about where she's from, which could have at least provided some insight into where she grew up etc. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed that description. It was so biased, it felt like it threw off the neutrality of the article. -- Lemurbaby 14:22, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Fictional description?

message: It looks pretty weird in the category page this way. All the other Ranavalonas are sorted under their first name as would be natural.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.24.104.52 (talk) 05:15, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fixed. It's now sorted as Ranavalona 01 -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:01, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is she default-sorted under I instead of under Ranavalona? 

message: "Ranavalona's objections to Christianity were generally based on her antagonism to the Christians' behavior. They prayed frequently, but refused to pray to her idols. They shunned fornication. They assembled repeatedly for worship.": Although anyone might condemn her behavior, why not represent her *motives* a little more faithfully (or at least with some contextual explanation)?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.208.82.61 (talk) 07:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: POV?

message: "The death of nearly half the population (largely by torture) during her reign is seen as a unique cultural quirk."
A cultural quirk?! Would anyone put such a description in a Holocaust article, I wonder? 94.193.35.68 (talk) 23:43, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Ridiculous euphemisms

message: I made substantial edits to this piece that were afterward reverted by another user; I have since reverted those reverted edits (!) and finished inserting the citations that provide the sources for the additions I made. These edits are intended to fix the issues of bias and inaccuracy in the earlier version of the article due to the largely missionary-based source material and the Laidler book (which is widely condemned as sensationalistic and itself draws primarily on older, outdated and biased European source material).  I also added significant new factual information that paints a more accurate and complete portrait of the queen while providing better historical and cultural context for her actions. The contributions of earlier users were retained when substantiated by reliable sources to the extent that they contributed to a balanced and factual presentation of this historic personage. Please do not undo these major and substantiated edits without giving due consideration to the content and reasons for the changes. Thank you. Lemurbaby (talk) 04:11, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for explaining your edits and adding references. In future please try to include explanations in edit summaries and use references, especially when you make major changes to articles that remove sources and significantly alter the presentation of the subject. We don't all have telepathic powers. :) Tameamseo (talk) 19:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I will try to be more systematic about that in the future. :)  Lemurbaby (talk) 22:45, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

text: You're right, ScSabella. I'll compare several credible sources and flesh that part out in the next couple of weeks. Lemurbaby (talk) 21:29, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope it's clear now that the persecution of Christians resulted in very few deaths (there were very few Christians in Madagascar at the time, after all - about 5,000 by most estimates), relative to the deaths caused in warfare etc -- Lemurbaby 14:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Major edits justified

message: I am going to remove the following from the introduction:I am aware that there has been controversy over whether or not this woman truly was the monster she seems to have been, and I do not intend by this edit to engage in that controversy. However, the assertions I am removing are not developed within the body of the article, nor are they supported by any reliable sources cited anywhere in the article. The introduction should summarize the article, and these statements do not. If someone has reliable sources to support the claims, please cite those sources and develop your position more thoroughly within the body of the article instead of presenting them without support and only in the introduction. Thanks.--Jim10701 (talk) 13:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for identifying a weakness in the article, Jim. Although I thought the discussion throughout the article made it clear how historic characterization of her was biased, your comment shows me that I could do more to make that more explicit. I can't agree with your assertion, however, that the assertions in the lead are not supported by any reliable sources in the article - they are, but again the connection was evidently not explicit enough so I've now indicated which sources can be consulted to verify those assertions. But since I'm into this material so deeply sometimes I forget what other people don't already know or what isn't obvious enough (I'm writing so many of the articles on WP about Madagascar so more complete information about a tangent is often found in a linked article, and then I don't recognize when I've left out something in the first one that is critical to developing the article's ideas fully)  - so it would be helpful for me if you could describe a bit more what seems to be missing or not making sense in terms of seeing the links between the lead's assertions and the content of the article. I tried to demonstrate how Ranavalona repelled numerous foreign threats to her sovereignty, how foreign Christian missionaries put all the emphasis on how terrible a person she was due to how she treated the Christian converts when in reality very few were executed for this reason and far more died in warfare that had begun before she took the throne, etc.  If you could help me to see where I could make things more explicit, I would appreciate it. I'd like this article to get to FA eventually, after I can spend some more time writing about the political choices of her reign, particularly in regards to foreign policy and her patronage of technological advances in Madagascar. Lemurbaby (talk) 17:09, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editing introduction 

message: Philip72 flagged the Christianity section as having an "op-ed" style. Please sahre any comments to clarify issues with the section or provide recommended changes here. If no concrete issues are identified I will remove the tag. Lemurbaby (talk) 08:31, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: *Tag removed. Lemurbaby (talk) 04:31, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Op Ed tag 

message: I'd like to see something contemporary and controversial be improved to featured article status, like LAPD, currently diluted with infotainment.199.33.32.40 (talk) 22:50, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  featured articles are great, but  

message: I'm trying to understand the sequence and dates of the early Prime Ministers under Ranavalona I and have begun a conversation about it at Talk:Prime_Minister_of_Madagascar#Two_major_problems. That page has a low number of watchers and I would be glad if contributors to this article might be able to weigh in. - Astrophobe (talk) 21:53, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Ranavalona's Prime Ministers

message: Is it really the case that no biographer comments on the fact that she had her only child at the age of 51? Pregnancy over age 50 is rather infrequent without medical assistance. Surtsicna (talk) 22:28, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Advanced maternal age 

message: I've been reading something by david graeber, who discussed malagasy history and this queen in some detail in the book 'On Kings', and he says this of Gwyn Campbell :   
" Campbells work cites only European sources, almost entirely uncriticially,while systematically ignoring almost all sources written in the Malagasy language ..... in his 'economic history of imperial madagascar', he provides a chapter with what he claims is a comprehensive list of sources on nineteenth century merina demography containing no sources that have not been translated, and shows no awareness that Ranavalona's governemnt carried out a census in the 1840s, and that the census documents still exist, easily accessible, within the Malagasy national archives"
Keep in mind that graeber worked for years in madagascar and wrote an ethnography, has cited data from the malagasy national archives and could read malagasy, so is probably not speaking out his ass, in my opinion. 
Sorry if this isnt the right tone for wikipedia, this is the first time I've done anything on here in a while, but i figured it was important so thats why i opened this topic. 86.8.166.19 (talk) 18:42, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is gwyn campbell a reputable source for this article? 

message: There are a lot of unsupported claims made in this article. Why? wilful (talk) 03:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi , what claims are you talking about? Can you give examples? - Astrophobe (talk) 20:31, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where are the citations??