Overview

When the debased Njoumen seeks sanctuary in his grandfather's royal palace, she is more concerned about her mental health. As she glosses in her recovered status as a princess and unleashes the full force of her free-spiritedness, her unfamiliar ways make her the source of attention, even though nobody knows what she wants in life. That is, until she engages her grandfather the king. What she wants most is a man of the heart to fill the void in her soul, a sense of worth her husband never stirred in her bosom. So, when three years after, Njoumen's dejected husband challenges this dignified African king in a French administrative court for marrying off his unhappily-married grand-daughter, we see a clash of occidental and African cultures that is unprecedented in the land. Did the African king break the law of France, the new colonial master, by exercising his royal prerogative? "His Majesty's Trial" is the fifth story in the short story collection entitled "The Usurper: and Other Stories", and it precedes "The Dowry".