Macaya's declaration in 1793 that he was the subject of the kings of Kongo, France and Spain has long been read as proof that Africa-born rebels in Saint-Domingue were monarchists by habit. Thornton reconstructs what kingship meant in the Kongo those rebels came from, drawing on Capuchin missionary reports, court memorials from the reign of Pedro IV, Kikongo dictionaries compiled between 1652 and 1805, and French archival correspondence. He finds a contested tradition, one story making the founder a conqueror obeyed like a military commander, another making him a blacksmith chosen for settling disputes and sharing his wealth, with selfish rule classed as witchcraft. Because Kongo's civil wars supplied a large share of the colony's captives, many arrived as veterans, which helps explain the rebels' early tactical success and the trouble Creole commanders had controlling them. Royalist language, read this way, carries a demand that power serve the common good.