Imoinda and Onahal are punished for their actions by being sold as slaves. The Prince and Imoinda are reunited for a short time and consummate their marriage, but they are eventually discovered. Over time the Prince plans a tryst with the help of the sympathetic Onahal (one of the king's wives) and Aboan (a friend to the prince). Imoinda unwillingly, but dutifully, enters the king's harem (the Otan), and Oroonoko is comforted by his assumption that the king is too old to ravish her. Despite his Intelligence saying she had been claimed by Oroonoko, the king gives Imoinda the royal veil, thus forcing her to become one of his wives, even though she is already promised to Oroonoko. The king hears Imoinda described as the most beautiful and charming in the land, and he also falls in love.

Portrait of Aphra Behn, aged approximately 30, by Peter Lely. Oroonoko decides to honorably visit the daughter of the deceased general to offer the 'Trophies of her Father's Victories', but he immediately falls in love with Imoinda and later asks for her hand in marriage. In sight of this event, the Prince takes the place of General. During a battle the best general sacrifices himself for the Prince by taking an arrow for him. At a very young age Prince Oroonoko was trained for battle, becoming an expert captain by the age of seventeen. Within this is a historical tale concerning the Coramantien grandson of an African king, Prince Oroonoko. The narrator opens with an account of the colony of Surinam and its inhabitants.

Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a relatively short novel set in a narrative frame. The novel's success was jump-started by a popular 1695 theatrical adaptation by Thomas Southerne which ran regularly on the British stage throughout the first half of the 18th century, and in America later in the century. Interest in Oroonoko has increased since the 1970s, with critics arguing that Behn is the foremother of British female writers, and that Oroonoko is a crucial text in the history of the novel. Published less than a year before she died, Oroonoko is sometimes described as one of the first novels in English. She began writing prose fiction in the 1680s, probably in response to the consolidation of theatres that led to a reduced need for new plays. īehn, often cited as the first known professional female writer, was a successful playwright, poet, translator and essayist. Behn's text is a first-person account of Oroonoko's life, love, rebellion, and execution. The eponymous hero is an African prince from Coramantien who is tricked into slavery and sold to European colonists in Surinam where he meets the narrator. Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a work of prose fiction by Aphra Behn (1640–1689), published in 1688 by William Canning and reissued with two other fictions later that year.

Oroonoko author