Liliʻuokalani spouse John Owen Dominis
Courtship and married life
After the boarding school was discontinued in 1850, Liliʻuokalani lived with her hānai parents at Haleʻākala, which she referred to in later life as her childhood home. Around this time, her hānai sister Pauahi married the American Charles Reed Bishop against the wishes of their parents but reconciled with them shortly before Pākī's death in 1855. Kōnia died two years afterward and Liliʻuokalani came under the Bishops' guardianship. During this period, Liliʻuokalani became a part of the young social elite under the reign of Kamehameha IV who ascended to the throne in 1855. In 1856, Kamehameha IV announced his intent to marry Emma Rooke, one of their classmates. However, according to Liliʻuokalani, certain elements of the court argued "there is no other chief equal to you in birth and rank but the adopted daughter of Paki," which infuriated the King and brought the Queen to tears. Despite this upset, Liliʻuokalani was regarded as a close friend of the new Queen, and she served as a maid of honor during the royal wedding alongside Princess Victoria Kamāmalu and Mary Pitman. At official state occasions, she served as an attendant and lady-in-waiting in Queen Emma's retinue. Visiting British dignitaries Lady Franklin and her niece Sophia Cracroft noted in 1861 that the "Honble. Lydia Paki" was "the highest unmarried woman in the Kingdom".Marriage consideration had begun early on for her. American merchant Gorham D. Gilman, a houseguest of the Pākīs, had courted her unsuccessfully when she was fifteen. Around the time of Kōnia's final illness in 1857, Liliʻuokalani was briefly engaged to William Charles Lunalilo. They shared an interest in music composition and had known each other from childhood. He had been betrothed from birth to Princess Victoria, the king's sister, but disagreements with her brothers prevented the marriage from materializing. Thus, Lunalilo proposed to Liliʻuokalani during a trip to Lahaina to be with Kōnia. A short-lived dual engagement occurred in which Liliʻuokalani was matched to Lunalilo and her brother Kalakaua to Princess Victoria. She ultimately broke off the engagement because of the urging of King Kamehameha IV and the opposition of the Bishops to the union. Afterward, she became romantically involved with the American-born John Owen Dominis, a staff member for Prince Lot Kapuāiwa (the future Kamehameha V) and secretary to King Kamehameha IV. Dominis was the son of Captain John Dominis, of Trieste, and Mary Lambert Jones, of Boston. According to Liliʻuokalani's memoir, they had known each other from childhood when he watched the royal children from a school next to the Cookes'. During a court excursion, Dominis escorted her home despite falling from his horse and breaking his leg.Following her accession, John Owen Dominis was given the title Prince Consort and restored to the Governorship of Oʻahu, which had been abolished following the Bayonet Constitution of 1887. Dominis' death on August 27, seven months into her reign, greatly affected the new Queen.  Liliʻuokalani later wrote: "His death occurred at a time when his long experience in public life, his amiable qualities, and his universal popularity, would have made him an adviser to me for whom no substitute could possibly be found. I have often said that it pleased the Almighty Ruler of nations to take him away from me at precisely the time when I felt that I most needed his counsel and companionship." Cleghorn, her sister's widower, was appointed to succeed Dominis as Governor of Oʻahu. In 1892, Liliʻuokalani would also restore the positions of governor for the other three main islands for her friends and supporters.From May 1892 to January 1893, the legislature of the Kingdom convened for an unprecedented 171 days, which later historians such as Albertine Loomis and Helena G. Allen dubbed the "Longest Legislature".  This session was dominated by political infighting between and within the four parties: National Reform, Reform, National Liberal and Independent; none were able to gain a majority. Debates heard on the floor of the houses concerned the popular demand for a new constitution and the passage of a lottery bill and an opium licensing bill, aimed at alleviating the economic crisis caused by the McKinley Tariff. The main issues of contention between the new monarch and the legislators were the retention of her cabinet ministers, since political division prevented Liliʻuokalani from appointing a balanced council and the 1887 constitution gave the legislature the power to vote for the dismissal of her cabinet. Seven resolutions of want of confidence were introduced during this session, and four of her self-appointed cabinets (the Widemann, Macfarlane, Cornwell, and Wilcox cabinets) were ousted by votes of the legislature. On January 13, 1893, after the legislature dismissed the George Norton Wilcox cabinet (which had political sympathies to the Reform Party), Liliʻuokalani appointed the new Parker cabinet consisting of Samuel Parker, as minister of foreign affairs; John F. Colburn, as minister of the interior; William H. Cornwell, as minister of finance; and Arthur P. Peterson, as attorney general. She chose these men specifically to support her plan of promulgating a new constitution while the legislature was not in session.
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