Queen Ramonda is the ruler of a secret and highly-technological African nation known as Wakanda. She is a supportive and diplomatic Queen to the Wakandans and their Royal Family, including their leader and powerful warrior known as the Black Panther.
A Foreign Beginning
Ramonda is from South Africa and when on a walkabout to resist apartheid, she came upon the lost T’Challa, a young Wakandan prince. She reunites him with his father King T’Chaka and the King offers her refuge in Wakanda. Ramonda knows she will return to her homeland but sees that T’Challa needs her more. She marries the widowed King despite resistance from the Wakandans who see her as a foreigner and still mourn T’Challa’s biological mother and former queen N’Yami. Now Queen Ramonda, she becomes a mother to T’Challa and bonds with an adopted son to the King, Hunter, AKA White Wolf, over being outsiders. Later, she bore a daughter with King T’Chaka and they named her Shuri.
Years later, Ramonda returns to her native South Africa to attend her father’s funeral and during this time rumors spread that she left the Wakandan king for another man. Unbeknownst to everyone, Ramonda is kidnapped by a powerful politician named Anton Pretorius whose obsession with her turns into violence and abuse. He convinces T’Chaka that Ramonda ran off with another man, so with no one seeking her, she spends more than 10 years imprisoned in Pretorius’s Johannesburg estate. She is later rescued by T’Challa after he ascends to the throne and becomes the Black Panther. They become inseparable.
The Queen of Duty
Queen Ramonda is a supportive parent and equally a dutiful diplomat to her people. She is also skilled at deception, having deceived Achebe into thinking she would share power over Wakanda with him but really, she spies on him for T’Challa.
Criminal Opposition
Politician Anton Pretorius kidnaps Ramonda and keeps her as a prisoner for more than a decade. She survives his years of abuse.
Achebe coordinates a coup in Wakanda, and Queen Ramonda agrees to share power to halt a civil war, but Ramonda feigns an alliance with him and reports to Black Panther. Though Achebe apparently kills her for her betrayal.
Blood Ties and Chosen Family
King T’Chaka meets Ramonda when she finds his lost son, T’Challa. He offers her refuge, and she finds kinship in Wakanda. Seeing that she is needed as a mother to T’Challa, she marries T’Chaka and rules over Wakanda as its Queen. Together they have a daughter, Princess Shuri (a Black Panther in her own right). Though Queen Ramonda is eventually widowed, she remains T’Challa’s stepmother and close ally.
Queen Ramonda’s Royal Diary
Sometime after Queen Ramonda is returned to Wakanda, the Reverend Achebe leads a coup against Black Panther’s forces and she strikes a bargain with him, to share rule and plot against her son. Though she deceived him and fed all intelligence reports to the Black Panther. Achebe changes his mind about ruling together and knocks her over the head, apparently killing her, but Black Panther revives her.
When the People, a superhuman terrorist group, attacked the Golden City in Wakanda, Queen Ramonda was injured. She was kept in a coma until she awoke after the People were defeated. She mostly recovered from her injuries and walked with a cane.
After Ramonda encouraged T’Challa to seek a wife, the Panther initially sought out Monica Lynne, but they both soon realized that T’Challa was really in love with Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm. They married but their marriage was annulled but Ramonda knew the King’s heart despite the rule of law.
