ʻElisiva Fusipala Taukiʻonetuku

Princess Fusipala in a photograph taken by Josiah Martin, c. 1885

ʻElisiva Fusipala Taukiʻonetuku (18 May 1850 – September 1889) was the mother of King George Tupou II.

Born to Tēvita ʻUnga and his first wife Fifita Vavʻau, her father was, according to newly adopted Christian law, an illegitimate son of King Tupou I because his mother was a secondary wife of the king. Her family's luck changed when the king's only legitimate son, Prince Vuna Takitakimālohi, died, leaving her father as King Tupou's heir.

She married her paternal first cousin Prince Siaʻosi Fatafehi Toutaitokotaha (1842–1912), the fourth Tuʻi Pelehake, grandson of Tupou I through his mother Princess Salote Pilolevu Mafileʻo, her aunt. They had one son, the future King George Tupou II. Her father died 1879, her elder brother Uelingatoni Ngū died childless in 1885 and the same fate befell her younger brother Nalesoni Laifone 1889. She became the heir to the throne after her last brother's death in 1889 and held the status of heir apparent for two months before her own death. Her son succeeded his great-grandfather in 1893. Thus the royal lineage passed through her. Her son's second daughter Princess ʻElisiva Fusipala Taukiʻonetuku is named after her.

In July 1865, English explorer Julius Brenchley visited Vavaʻu for five days and met governor ʻUnga and his family including Fusipala. Brenchley noted that she was "twelve years old, is strongly built, and has her breasts perfectly developed, as is usual in a country where the women are generally mothers before they are thirteen.^[1]

References

1. Brenchley 1873, pp. 94–95.

Bibliography

• Brenchley, Julius Lucius (1873). Jottings During the Cruise of H. M. S. Curac̜oa Among the South Sea Islands in 1865. London: Longmans, Green, and Company.

Sources

• article on succession at the death of Tupou I
• Christopher Buyers Page 8. "Tonga: The Tupou Dynasty Genealogy". Royal Ark web site. Retrieved July 27, 2012.