Konadu Yaadom

Konadu Yaadom, also Kwadu Yaadom (c.1750 - 1809) was the fourth Asantehemaa of the Ashanti Empire, whose multiple marriages and spiritual influence meant that she became an important and powerful ruler in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Biography Yaadom was born around 1750. Her parents were the Mamponhene Asumgyima Penemo and her mother was Yaa Aberefi, their marriage was made as a political arrangement in order for Penemo's clan - the Bretuo - to gain power in the region which was otherwise controlled by the Oyoko clan, which Aberefi was from.

Marriages When Yaadom was approximately ten years old, a similarly strategic marriage was arranged for her to Apahene Owusu of Mampon. According to the tradition, her second husband was Safo Katanka the Mamponhene.

According to tradition, her third marriage was to Adu Twum of Kumasi, who she had four children with: Opoku Kwame; Yaa Dufie; Akua Akrukruwaa; Opoku Fofie. They had two children: Osei Yaw, who later became Asantehene and an unnamed child. Both Yaadom and this final child died as a result of complications during the birth. However David Owusu-Ansah makes the date 1770. In addition to the supposed poisoning, one of the reasons given for her actions is that she was opposed to Osei Kwame's closeness to Muslims from outside the kingdom, and his intention to establish "Koranic law for the civil code". Additionally if Kwame's conversion to Islam had continued it would have challenged the matrilineal inheritance policy of the people: instead of uncle to sister's son, it may have moved to a father-to-son model.

Historiography Asantehemaa Konadu Yaadom is an important figure in Asante history for several reasons. Firstly, her marriages illustrate the competing power structures at work in the royal lineages of the Asante. She also features in the sequel to Ama, which is called Brave Music of a Distant Drum. Her great-grandson Kwame Poku features in a novel by Arthur Japin, set during Dutch expansion into West Africa in the nineteenth century and telling the story of two Asante princes who were presented to the Dutch royal court in 1837.