1Considering the heated, often violent and radicalised debates around homosexuality in Uganda and Africa more generally, I have chosen to give this book a specific cautious form. I have also tried to adapt my writing to selective reading.

2As a historian, discussing both sources and the way to read them is the only acceptable manner to retain or reject an argument. I have felt compelled to document and sustain my arguments by sharing the sources I use in minute detail, much more than I would have done on another topic. Subsequently the book is full of quotations in the text, lengthy footnotes and annexes. I have chosen to quote long full paragraphs rather than short sentences to better preserve the coherence and nuances of the sources. This also means that reading may be repetitive from one testimony to another. Readers that resent the lack of fluidity of a text interrupted by long quotations can actually just skip them. They will not lose the global thread and meaning, only nuances and some of the work’s wealth of details.

3Everybody does not have the time, the taste or the skills for historian groundwork and methodology. Rushed readers can go directly to the conclusion and ignore the rest. They can also add the introduction if they care for context and methodology. The reading of the conclusion and obviously the introduction alone should make sense on their own. Of course, this type of selective reading requires faith that I demonstrated diligently in the chapters in between. The price for this type of writing is that patient readers that will take time to read the book from front to cover will sometimes be annoyed by small repetitions, however considering the complexity of describing the history of an African kingdom, repetition may sometime help keep the arguments and facts clear.