About Me
My full name is quite a mouthful. Princess Victoria Kawekiu Lunalilo Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kaʻiulani Cleghorn. See? I told you.
I was born in October 16, 1875, to Princess Miriam Kapili Likelike and Archibald Scott Cleghorn. My father was Scottish, making me “hapa-haole,†or part Hawaiian. Since neither my uncle nor my aunt had any children, I was crown princess to the throne of Hawai’i…meant to be queen some day! But things don’t always go as planned.
I made friends with Robert Louis Stevenson when he arrived with his family in 1889. He found me very intelligent for a 13-year-old. He was very kind and respected our people; something not many people did. Unfortunately he was in Hawai’i for barely four months. Still, it was good fun! We had storytelling sessions, family dinners, and tea parties under the banyan (our house was name Ainahau, and the banyan was famous, though it’s there no longer). He tried to make me a little happier about leaving for school in Britain, too, telling me exciting legends and folk-tales of Scotland.
I left my beloved home on May 10th, 1889, and was devastated when my British guardian Theophilus Davies was forced to read me the terrible news that the Hawaiian monarchy had fallen. A handful of white renegade businessmen, unwilling to see their interests curtailed by the laws of the Kingdom, conspired against my Aunt Lili’uokalani and made her abdicate. They had assistance from representatives of the American military!
My health declined after this, and I never really got it back (I had chronic migraines and got sick easily), but I was still devoted to my people’s interests. I could not sit and watch while my country was stolen away from its people. I went to America myself and (even though it was hard because I was shy) made this speech to the public press:
"Seventy years ago Christian America sent over Christian men and women to give religion and civilization to Hawai'i. Today, three of the sons of those missionaries are at your capitol asking you to undo their father’s work. Who sent them? Who gave them the authority to break the Constitution which they swore they would uphold? Today, I, a poor weak girl with not one of my people with me and all these ‘Hawaiian’ statesmen against me, have strength to stand up for the rights of my people. Even now I can hear their wail in my heart and it gives me strength and courage and I am strong - strong in the faith of God, strong in the knowledge that I am right, strong in the strength of seventy million people who in this free land will hear my cry and will refuse to let their flag cover dishonor to mine!"
Racist propagandists had been portraying me as the "heathen Princess" and a clownish "Princess Koylani." I surprised them all; as opposed to a savage traveling across the United States, they saw an exquisite Royal Princess wearing the latest Paris gowns and speaking cultured English, Hawaiian, French or German, depending on the occasion. My arrival foiled all plans to show us as children trying incapably to rule ourselves. My loyalty to my aunt the Queen never wavered. Had it not been for a few things like the outbreak of the Spanish-American war and an American President devoted to the idea of "Manifest Destiny," perhaps I would have saved my nation.
I was only 23 when I died, finally at home in Hawai'i, but health destroyed by heartbreaking losses. I lost my governess, godmother, mother, uncle, my half-sister, guardian, and my country. I've heard that the peacocks living at home at Ainahau abruptly began to scream when I died, though of course I don't know this for sure myself.
Based partially on a bio by Mindi Reid because I was too lazy to write my own About Me.
