Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV


Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV was King of Tonga from 1965 until his death in 2006. He was the tallest and heaviest Tongan monarch, weighing and measuring.

Early life and career

He was born to Viliami Tungī Mailefihi and Queen Sālote Tupou III. His full baptismal name was Siaosi Tāufaʻāhau Tupoulahi, but he became better known by the noble title Tupoutoʻa, which was bestowed upon him in 1935 and was subsequently reserved for crown princes of Tonga. This title was supplemented by the one he inherited from his father, Tungī. 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, but his grandmother Lavinia Veiongo was the great-granddaughter of Laufilitonga, the last Tuʻi Tonga, and his wife Halaevalu Mataʻaho, who was the daughter of Tupou ʻAhomeʻe, who was the daughter of Lātūfuipeka, the Tamahā. By consequence, his children all descended from the bloodlines of the three major historical royal dynasties of Tonga.
He was educated first at Tupou College, then continued his studies at Newington College in Australia. He thereafter studied law at Sydney University while residing at Wesley College. His graduation from Sydney University was described as the first of any Tongan.
In 1943, the crown prince was appointed minister of education by Queen Sālote. He was made minister of health in 1944, and ultimately prime minister in 1949, while also serving as minister of agriculture, communications and foreign affairs. During his tenure as education minister, he initiated reforms to standardise the Tongan alphabet and in 1959, his government approved the publication of a bilingual Tongan-English dictionary. He also supervised the establishment of the Tonga Chronicle and the Tonga Broadcasting Commission.
In 1964, Tungī visited the United Kingdom for negotiations regarding the future independence of Tonga. He requested that the Colonial Office grant Tonga permission to appoint its own diplomats to Britain and the United States. The British government declined, citing cost concerns.

Reign

Tungī ascended the throne on 16 December 1965, following the death of his mother. He continued negotiating with the UK to arrange Tonga's transition to a sovereign state within the Commonwealth. His coronation took place on 4 July 1967, his 49th birthday, at the royal chapel in Nukuʻalofa, in a service that combined Methodist and traditional Tongan customs. The coronation was attended by international dignitaries including the Duke of Kent and New Zealand Prime Minister Keith Holyoake.
On 4 June 1970, he presided over a ceremony marking the end of the British protectorate over Tonga and its transition to a sovereign state. He visited many far-flung countries during his reign and modernised Tonga's contact with the outside world.
The king adopted a tone of appeasement towards France in its Pacific nuclear tests at Moruroa during the 1980s, which were publicly criticised by other Pacific countries. He visited Moruroa twice and was invited by Gaston Flosse to visit Tahiti. When he was questioned by a journalist on his view, he said that "if France considered "necessary for its defence it was a choice which must be respected".
Towards the end of his reign, increasing authoritarianism within Tonga's essentially aristocratic system of government, coupled with the influence of the monarchy and nobles in politics and the economy, led to the formation of a pro-democracy movement in Tonga. Tāufaʻāhau himself had dismissed calls for democratisation of the political system, pointing to political crises in neighbouring Fiji. His involvement in an investment scandal in 2001, involving his American financial advisor Jesse Bogdonoff, attracted much media attention; the fact he had previously appointed Bogdonoff the official court jester, though likely only done as a joke for Bogdonoff's birthday on 1 April, compounded the scandal's embarrassment.
Another controversy emerged in 2003, when his government banned an independent newspaper, the Times of Tonga published in New Zealand, and later attempted to amend the constitution to restrict freedom of the press in response to the country's chief justice ruling against the ban. The following year, Reporters Without Borders named him a press freedom predator, a move which was criticised by the owner of another independent newspaper in Tonga.
In 2005, the government spent several weeks negotiating with striking civil service workers before reaching a settlement. The king's nephew, ʻUluvalu, served as mediator. A constitutional commission presented a series of recommendations for constitutional reform to the King a few weeks before his death.
Tāufaʻāhau suffered from heart and age-related problems in his final years, which necessitated medical care at the Mercy Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. He returned to Tonga intermittently, with his last such visit being in early July 2006 for his 88th birthday.

Death

On 15 August 2006, Tongan Prime Minister Feleti Sevele interrupted radio and television broadcasts to announce the king was gravely ill and to ask the 104,000 people of the island chain to pray for their monarch. He died at the Mercy Hospital on 10 September at 23:34 NZST, with the Queen, his daughter Princess Pilolevu and other members of the royal family by his bedside. His reign of nearly 41 years made him the fourth longest-serving head of state at the time. He was succeeded by his eldest son, George Tupou V.
Following his death, Tonga entered a month-long period of national mourning, with the royal family and court observing a longer mourning period of six months. After a period of lying in state at his residence of ʻAtalanga in Epsom, his body was taken to Tonga on 13 September by a Lockheed C-130 Hercules owned by the Royal New Zealand Air Force, also carrying members of the Tongan diaspora for the funeral.
A state funeral was held for Tāufaʻāhau on 19 September, comprising a procession through Nukuʻalofa and a burial service at Malaʻekula, the royal cemetery in Tongatapu, which blended Christian and ancient Polynesian burial rites. A crowd of around 10,000 attended the funeral, which was overseen by the royal undertaker and his men, known as the nima tapu. Mourners included foreign dignitaries from 30 countries, among them Australian governor-general Michael Jeffery; New Zealand governor-general Dame Silvia Cartwright and prime minister Helen Clark; Fijian vice-president Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi and prime minister Laisenia Qarase; Vanuatu president Kalkot Mataskelekele; governor of American Samoa Togiola Tulafono; Niue premier Young Vivian; president of French Polynesia Oscar Temaru; Japanese crown prince Naruhito; and the Duke of Gloucester, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II.

Personal life and family

Tāufaʻāhau was a keen sportsman in his youth, engaging in rugby, tennis, cricket and rowing, and an admirer of Otto von Bismarck. He remained a lay preacher of the Free Wesleyan Church and in some circumstances, was empowered to appoint an acting church president.
He married a distant relative, Halaevalu Mataʻaho ʻAhomeʻe, on 10 June 1947, during a double nuptial ceremony with his brother Prince Fatafehi Tuʻipelehake. The couple had four children:

Weight

At one point in the 1970s, Tāufaʻāhau was the heaviest monarch in the world, weighing in at. 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. He was also very tall, standing at. Swedish shoemaker Per-Enok Kero reported that he "weighed 180 kilos and had shoe size 47 in length and 52 in breadth." In the 1990s, he took part in a national fitness campaign, losing a third of his weight. By 2003, his weight had been reduced to.

Honours

National

Foreign

Namesakes