Tonga crowns King Tupou VI in lavish public coronation, parties

Updated July 05, 2015 17:30:33

Tonga's King Tupou VI has been formally crowned before thousands of people including heads of state and dignitaries from around the world.

The new king also becomes the 24th Tu'i Kanokupolu, an ancient Tongan title that pre-dates the monarchy by centuries.

The 55-year-old Tupou VI officially took the Tongan throne of the only constitutional monarchy in the South Pacific, following the death of his brother in 2012.

An estimated 15,000 people, mainly expatriate Tongans, flew in for the coronation, with the invited guests including Japan's Crown Prince Naruhito, his wife Princess Masako, and European royals Prince Georg von Habsburg from Hungary and Princess Marie-Therese von Hohenberg from Austria.

It was a day of royal pomp and ceremony at the Centenary Church where Tupou VI was anointed with holy oil, adorned with a ring and sceptre, and crowned king of Tonga.

With the ceremony complete, the royal couple went for a drive to meet their subjects.

"This is very historical, it's kind of once in a lifetime. Glorious and majestic and a blessing to all the Tongan people," said one of the new king's people.

"The whole atmosphere was wonderfully happy with the best singing one can find anywhere in the world," said another.

Tonga's pro-democracy prime minister, Akilisi Pohiva, has long advocated for less royal involvement in politics, but said the king is an important figurehead.

"We love our king we will continue to maintain our monarchy from now on until the future," he said.

Retired Australian Methodist minister D'Arcy Wood was flown in to perform the crowning.

"No Tongan citizen can do it as it is forbidden for a Tongan to touch the king's head," the 78-year-old retired minister told Pacific Beat before flying to Tonga from his home near Melbourne.

Eleven days of celebrations

Celebrations and ancient rituals leading up to the coronation began last Saturday with a taumafa kava, a traditional ceremony in which Tupou VI drank the mildly narcotic kava to confirm his title as king of Tonga.

The historic rite, in which about 150 nobles, wearing traditional ta'ovala mats around their waists, sat in a circle to drink kava from coconut shells, launched seven days of street parties, black-tie balls, fashion shows and feasting before the king was crowned by Mr Wood.

Mr Wood was born in Tonga, where his father worked in 1924, and met the new king when he was Tonga's High Commissioner to Australia in the 1990s.

Tonga's monarchy can trace its history back 1,000 years, and by the 13th century the nation wielded power and influence over surrounding islands, including Samoa, nearly 900 kilometres to the east.

Tupou I, who converted to Christianity after coming under the influence of missionaries, was proclaimed king in 1845 after winning control of the monarchy from two other royal lines.

By 1900 the country had become a British protectorate and acquired its independence in 1970.

The reign of the new king's brother, Tupou V, saw a six-year reign that introduced major reforms that expanded democracy in the nation of about 110,000 people.

ABC/AFP

Topics: royal-and-imperial-matters, tonga, melbourne-3000, pacific

First posted July 04, 2015 18:22:46