Those damned lawyers mess up everything:

MBABANE, Swaziland – For centuries in this tiny African nation, the king of Swaziland, the supreme political leader and spiritual guide of the Swazi people, has taken his pick of young women each year to be his new wife.
…
The royal marriage practices are as old as the steep green mountains that ring this secluded country of sugar cane fields and cow pastures. Each year, the king has been allowed to choose one or more wives from thousands of young women who, naked from the waist up, parade before him during an annual springtime reed dance.

But now there is trouble in paradise. The king has chosen, the maid in question allegedly says “I’m going to make him the happiest man on Earth” — but she’s a year too young and her mom is pissed.

The king will be violating his own ban on sexual relations with female subjects younger than 19 if he marries Mahlangu. But it may not matter. When Mswati married another 18-year-old this year, he fined himself one cow for the violation – a small price for a monarch with hundreds of cattle to his name.