ABSTRACT In 1848, Dahomey’s army enslaved a five-year-old Yoruba girl, named Aina, whose fate on the surface was unusual. She was given as a ‘gift’ to a British diplomat who presented her to Queen Victoria in England in 1850. This girl was ‘liberated’ according to anti-slavery law that was applied to Africans taken off slave ships, and she can be identified as a ‘Liberated African’. The Queen’s special interest in Aina was expressed further through her baptism as Sarah Forbes Bonetta (c. 1843–1880), although she was generally known as ‘Sally’. Because of this relationship, British newspapers romanticized her as an ‘African princess’ who symbolized public endorsement of anti-slavery policy. Sally’s apprenticeship centres a fascinating story within the context of the suppression of the slave trade and imperial ambitions in Africa. While not captured on a ship, as 200,000 ‘Liberated Africans’ were, she was enslaved by Dahomey’s army, British diplomats ‘liberated’ her, and the Queen became her legal guardian until the age of 21. The Queen paid for her Christian education in Sierra Leone and England, and in 1862, arranged her marriage to James Pinson Labulo Davies, a wealthy merchant based in Lagos.