Special Guest Blogger: Lili’uokalani

I was born in a grass hut and in the Hawaiian tradition, children’s names must have a link to an event that happened around the time of birth. Unfortunately for me the only event at this time was a Princess who caught an eye infection. Because of this tradition, my full name of Lydia Lili'uokalaniu Loloku Walania Kamaka'eha means smarting, tearful, burning, sore eyes. Try singing that in my birthday song.
Another unusual Hawaiian tradition is to adopt children out, so at birth my parents gave me to another family who raised me along with their own children and sent me away to a boarding school run by American missionaries whose idea of medical intervention was praying so when an epidemic of measles struck, it went as well as you expected and half the class died.
Those of us still alive would go on school excursions which required an escort to get us safely home afterwards. My guy was an American missionary and he immediately fell off his horse and broke his leg in the process but he continued his escort me home which i thought was impressive so i agreed to marry him but on the day of the wedding the Crown Prince of Hawaii became ill and died and my brother became King and made me the heir apparent and he sent me on Royal duties including a visit to Washington where i met Grover Cleveland and London for Queen Victoria's Royal Jubilee.
Back home the anti-monarchists, spurred on by the missionaries, were after change because of sugar because the exporters had to pay the tariffs on sugar sales to the lucrative US market and wanted Hawaii to be part of America, so the tariffs would be eliminated.
My brother didn’t get removed from power, but he did have a stroke and die which made me Queen, the first in Hawaiian history and as it turned out the last as the Bible thumpers and sugar-heads wanted me out of power so they could annex Hawaii to the USA.
I thought my husband, being an American missionary himself, would have some sway but he went and died so when the USS Boston full of Marines and two companies of sailors arrived in Honolulu to begin a coup i said there was no need for war, let's negotiate which they did, agreeing to ignore me and set up a government and make themselves leader ready for the annexation.
Hawaii became the Republic of Hawaii but there was one last attempt to win it back so i declared myself Queen again but the anti-monarchists just locked me up in an upstairs bedroom of the palace and on my release from my luxury prison i headed to Washington to beg the president to stop the annexation but William McKinley was now in power and he wasn’t at all sympathetic but he did offer me a pension of $1,250 a month for the rest of my life.
I was therefore forcibly replaced by a bunch of Jesus-loving sugar warriors. I hope the bastards all got diabetes.