ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Hawaiian royal visit as a touchstone in the cultural relationship between Britain and Hawaii: a relationship that occasioned historically significant reflections, in both countries, on the integrity and legitimacy of monarchical power at the end of the nineteenth century. It chronicles the contentious partnership that joined the two nations in this period. The chapter surveys the various accounts of Kapiolani's visit, initially in the British periodical press and then in Liliuokalani's 1898 memoir, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen. In her memoir, for instance, Liliuokalani's calls Kapiolani and Victoria "sister sovereign," and Curtis Iaukea—Kalakaua's special envoy to the Jubilee—later addressed England as Hawaii's "sister nation." The meeting culminates in Victoria offering Liliuokalani's another parting kiss and then introducing the Hawaiian heir apparent to her children. Liliuokalani's proffers her most pronounced reflection on this change not in her history of Hawaii, but in her sketch of the lands around Cliveden, the ancestral seat of the Duke of Buckingham.
