page_title: Kaʻiulani
section_title: Matchmaking and engagement rumors
hierarchical_section_title: Kaʻiulani / Personal life / Matchmaking and engagement rumors
caption_attribution_description: English: Princess Kaiulani in kimono and holding a parasol
context_page_description: Kaʻiulani was the only child of Princess Miriam Likelike, and the last heir apparent to the throne of the Hawaiian Kingdom. She was the niece of King Kalākaua and Queen Liliʻuokalani. After the death of her mother, Princess Kaʻiulani was sent to Europe at age 13 to complete her education, under the guardianship of English businessman and Hawaiian sugar investor Theo H. Davies. She had not yet reached her 18th birthday when the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom altered her life. The Provisional Government of Hawaii rejected pleas from both her father Archibald Scott Cleghorn, and provisional president Sanford B. Dole, to seat Kaʻiulani on the throne, conditional upon the abdication of Liliʻuokalani. The Queen thought the kingdom's best chance at justice was to temporarily relinquish her power to the United States.
  Davies and Kaʻiulani visited the United States to urge the restoration of the kingdom; she made speeches and public appearances denouncing the overthrow of her government and the injustice toward her people. While in Washington, D.C., she paid an informal visit to President Grover Cleveland and First Lady Frances Cleveland, but her efforts were in vain.
context_section_description: During his 1881 world tour, Kalākaua held a secret meeting with Emperor Meiji and proposed to unite the two nations in an alliance with an arranged marriage between his 5-year-old niece Kaʻiulani and the 13-year-old Prince Yamashina Sadamaro. From extant letters to the king, the proposal was declined both by Prince Sadamaro, upon advice of his father, and by Japanese foreign minister Inoue Kaoru on behalf of the government of Japan. In February 1893, the Japanese Imperial Navy gunboat Naniwa was docked at Pearl Harbor with the Japanese prince on board. Rumors circulated in the American press that the Japanese considered intervening militarily.
  From 1893 until her death, rumors of whom Kaʻiulani would wed circulated in the American and Hawaiian press, and she was pressured on one occasion by Queen Liliʻuokalani to marry. When Clive Davies, son of Kaʻiulani's guardian Theo H. Davies, was a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1893, he was rumored to be the fiancé of Kaʻiulani. Although the princess had stayed with the family occasionally while she was in England, her father said there was no engagement between the two young people and the rumors were "absurd and preposterous". In spite of the denial, the rumors persisted for a time. However, Clive was engaged to Edith Fox, daughter of civil engineer Francis Fox, between 1896 and 1898 while he resided in Honolulu and handled his father's business. Another rumour, which circulated after Kaʻiulani's return to Hawaii, stated she was to marry Clive's brother George Davies. This was denied by members of Kaʻiulani's household.
  On January 29, 1894, when Kaʻiulani was nineteen, Liliʻuokalani wrote asking her to consider marrying either Prince David Kawānanakoa, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, or an unnamed Japanese prince (then studying in London). She reminded her, "To you then depends the hope of the Nation and unfortunately we cannot always do as we like." It took five months for Kaʻiulani to respond to Liliʻuokalani's suggestion. In a June 22, 1894 letter, Kaʻiulani asserted that she would prefer to marry for love unless it was necessary, stating "I feel it would be wrong if I married a man I did not love". Based on personal letters and letters by her friends, Kaʻiulani was courted by many suitors while she resided in England and Europe. Prior to her return to Hawaii in November 1897, Kaʻiulani confided in her friend Toby de Courcy that she would have to end her courtship with one of her "young men" because there was an arranged marriage waiting for her in Hawaii. She further hinted that the union, which was approved by her father and Theo H. Davies, was being kept secret for political reasons. She lamented, "I must have been born under an unlucky star as I seem to have my life planned out for me in such a way that I cannot alter it." Historian Marilyn Stassen-McLaughlin and biographer Sharon Linnea couldn't identify the gentleman behind the secret union from the primary sources but conjectured it was Kawānanakoa because he was the only likely candidate for a political union after Kūhiō had married in 1896.
  Records indicate that there may have been a written agreement of betrothal with Kawānanakoa, that was quickly aborted. An unsubstantiated announcement dated February 3, 1898, was printed in The San Francisco Call and later reprinted in newspapers across America. According to the report, the betrothal was dependent upon the finalization of deeds to a sizeable real estate holding, transferred from Queen Kapiʻolani to both Kawānanakoa and Kalanianaʻole. On February 19, a denial of betrothal from Kawānanakoa was printed in the newspapers. Kapiʻolani did deed all her property, real and personal, to the brothers on February 10, with express stipulation that the documentation not be executed until she was ready. Kapiʻolani wanted to hold off the transfer until she was too old to manage the property herself, and/or otherwise would believe she was close to death. She last saw the document with her notary Carlos A. Long, with her instructions to have changes made in t
caption: Kaʻiulani wearing a traditional Japanese kimono
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4960", "Image ImageLength": "7015", "Image BitsPerSample": "8", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "100", "Image YResolution": "100", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:10:21 10:43:12", "Image ExifOffset": "244", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "576", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "958"}