Andriantsitakatrandriana

[1] During his reign, he chased his second wife and son from his territory, and constructed dikes to transform the Betsimitatatra swamps around Antananarivo into vast rice paddies to feed the local population.

Until his time, only zozoro (an indigenous sedge), rushes, and clusters of trees grew in the marshy lands around the capital city of Antananarivo, which his father had at last wrested from its Vazimba occupants several decades before.

According to legend, Andriantsitakatrandriana made an unusual request of his second wife, Rafoloarivo: he asked her to travel to the village of Ambohitrakely to give hasina to her son (i.e. engage in actions that were believed to multiply his metaphysical worth)—an act that a woman was viewed as unfit to enact for the benefit of a royal male.

Rafoloarivo and her son escaped the angry crowd and first fled north to Ilafy, then west and south to Mahatsinjo and Ankosy, all without finding a single person willing to open their doors to the pair.

Her son, sighting a rocky outcropping in the distance that the locals called Anosivato, declared an interest in continuing to the more distant location, but the queen preferred to remain at Amohitrinimanjaka where Andriamanjakatokana is buried.