Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV (Siaosi Tāufaʻāhau Tupoulahi; 4 July 1918 – 10 September 2006) was King of Tonga from 1965 until his death in 2006. He was the tallest and heaviest Tongan monarch, weighing 209.5 kg (462 lb) and measuring 196 cm (6 ft 5 in).
Biography
The Crown Prince as a student at Newington College
He was born to Viliami Tungī Mailefihi and Queen Sālote Tupou III.[1] His full baptismal name was Siaosi Tāufaʻāhau Tupoulahi, but he was soon better known by the traditional title Tupoutoʻa, which was bestowed upon him in 1935 and subsequently became reserved for crown princes of Tonga.[2] This title was supplemented by the one he inherited from his father, Tungī (or using both: Tupoutoʻa Tungī, in that time written as "Tuboutoʻa Tugi"). He kept the Tungī title until his death. From a traditional point of view he was not only the Tungī, which is the direct descendant from the Tuʻi Haʻatakalaua, but he was also, on becoming king, the 22nd Tuʻi Kanokupolu. The link with the Tuʻi Tonga line, however, was more indirect. He was not a Tuʻi Tonga in his own right (the office having gone over into the Kalaniuvalu line), but his grandmother Lavinia Veiongo (wife of George Tupou II) was the great-granddaughter of Laufilitonga, the last Tuʻi Tonga, and his wife Halaevalu Mataʻaho (not to be confused with the King's wife of the same name and same family), who was the daughter of Tupou ʻAhomeʻe, who was the daughter of Lātūfuipeka, the Tamahā (sister of the Tuʻi Tonga). By consequence, the King's daughter, Pilolevu, was the first Tongan woman to descend from the bloodlines of the three major royal dynasties and become the highest-ranking person ever.
Tāufaʻāhau was a keen sportsman and religious preacher in his youth. He was educated at Newington College[3] and studied law at Sydney University while resident at Wesley College in Sydney, Australia. His graduation from Sydney University was described as the first of any Tongan.[4][5] He was appointed minister of education by Queen Sālote in 1943, minister of health in 1944, and in 1949, premier.[6] During his tenure as education minister, he initiated reforms to standardise the Tongan alphabet.[4]
He remained a lay preacher of the Free Wesleyan Church until his death, and in some circumstances, was empowered to appoint an acting church president.
Tāufaʻāhau became King of Tonga on the death of his mother in 1965. His coronation took place on 4 July 1967, his 49th birthday, in Nukuʻalofa, with dignitaries including the Duke of Kent and New Zealand Prime Minister Keith Holyoake in attendance.[8][4] He visited many far-flung countries during his reign.[9]
At one point in the 1970s, he was the heaviest monarch in the world, weighing in at 209.5 kg (462 lb).[10] For his visits to Germany, the German government used to commission special chairs that could support his weight. The King used to take them home, considering them as state presents.[citation needed] He was also very tall, standing at 196 cm (6 ft 5 in).[11][12] Swedish shoemaker Per-Enok Kero reported that he "weighed 180 kilos and had shoe size 47 in length and 52 in breadth."[13] In the 1990s, he took part in a national fitness campaign, losing a third of his weight.[14]
In the 1980s, his government adopted a tone of appeasement towards France in its Pacific nuclear tests at Moruroa, which he visited at the invitation of Gaston Flosse. When he was questioned by a journalist on this issue, the king said that "if France considered [the tests] necessary for its defence it was a choice which must be respected". His government's position put Tonga at odds with other Pacific countries which publicly opposed the conduction of the nuclear tests.[15]
He wielded great political authority and influence in Tonga's essentially aristocratic system of government, together with the country's nobles, who controlled seventy per cent of the Legislative Assembly of Tonga at the time. His involvement in an investment scandal in 2001, involving his American financial advisor Jesse Bogdonoff, led to calls for greater government transparency and democratisation. The fact he had previously appointed Bogdonoff the official court jester, though likely only done as a joke for Bogdonoff's birthday which happened to fall on 1 April (April Fools' Day), compounded the scandal's embarrassment.[16][17]
The king himself had dismissed calls for a democratisation of the system, pointing to political crises in neighbouring Fiji.[5] In 2004, he was named a press freedom predator by Reporters Without Borders, a move which was criticised by the owner of an independent newspaper in Tonga.[18]
In 2005, the government spent several weeks negotiating with striking civil service workers before reaching a settlement. The king's nephew, ʻUluvalu (the 6th Tuʻipelehake), served as mediator. A constitutional commission presented a series of recommendations for constitutional reform to the King a few weeks before his death.[19]
Death and funeral
On 15 August 2006, Tongan Prime Minister Feleti Sevele interrupted radio and television broadcasts to announce the king was gravely ill in the Mercy Hospital in Auckland and to ask the 104,000 people of the island chain to pray for their monarch.[20][21] He died 26 days later, on 10 September 2006 at 23:34 NZST.[a][22] He was 88 and had reigned for nearly 41 years, making him the fourth-longest serving head of state at the time, after King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, Queen Elizabeth II, and Samoa's head of state, Malietoa Tanumafili II. He was succeeded by his eldest son, George Tupou V.[23][24][25]
King George Tupou V (Siaosi Tāufaʻāhau Manumataongo Tukuʻaho Tupou; 1948–2012), better known during his tenure as heir by the hereditary title Tupoutoʻa.
Prince Fatafehi ʻAlaivahamamaʻo Tukuʻaho (1954–2004); stripped of his title after marrying a commoner, later bestowed with the hereditary title of Māʻatu.
King Tupou VI (ʻAhoʻeitu ʻUnuakiʻotonga Tukuʻaho; born 1959), known prior to his ascension to the throne by his hereditary titles: ʻUlukālala Lavaka Ata, then after his elder brother's ascension, Tupoutoʻa Lavaka. As his brother died without legitimate issue, he became king in 2012.
Honours
2 paʻanga coin commemorating Tāufaʻāhau Tupou's coronation in 1967.
^"The Crown Prince of Tonga, Taufa'ahau". Pacific Islands Monthly. Vol. VI, no. 5. 20 December 1935. p. 9. Retrieved 17 December 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
^Huffer, Elise (1993). Grands hommes et petites îles: la politique extérieure de Fidji, de Tonga, et du Vanuatu. Collection Etudes et thèses (in French). Paris: ORSTOM. pp. 249–250. ISBN978-2-7099-1125-2.
^"DOUBLE WEDDING OF TONGAN PRINCES". Pacific Islands Monthly. Vol. XVII, no. 12. 18 July 1947. p. 13. Retrieved 18 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
