I wonder if the King will wear silk breeches for his coronation, like his brother, or revert to trousers like his father. I liked the silk breeches, and the late King George Tupoa V sure could pull off an eccentric outfit with panache. But maybe that is not King Tupoa VI's style.
Tongan King to be crowned on July 4th | Radio New Zealand News
I don’t think King Tupou will wear breaches. He is comes over as being very traditional in his ways like his grandmother Queen Salote. When she ascended the throne Tongan nobles wore European clothes and she opened parliament wearing robes and crown. She done away with all that opting to wear Tongan dress most of the time, even at the opening of parliament.
A Tongan friend told me that King George had delusions of grandeur. He very seldom wore Tongan dress and from the start of reign he refused to live in the eight roomed royal palace opting to remain in his far larger and opulent “villa.” His father King Taufa’ahua only moved out of the palace when he could no longer manage the stairs, as did Queen Salote before him.
It has to be said that the palace was too small for purpose. When King Tupou was a child the entire royal family lived there, The Queen, her two sons, two daughters in law, eight grandchildren and two of Queen Salote’s elderly aunts all crammed into the small building. The ground floor consisted of the throne room, Privy Council Room which doubled as a dining room (both only the size of a large sitting room,) and two small sitting rooms. On the first floor there were four bedrooms. The toilets and shower rooms were outside on the verandas. During Queen Salote’s reign there were plans to build a larger palace but she is reported as saying “they can build as many palaces as they like, but I am staying here where I was born.” King George did set about enlarging the palace but had no intention of living there instead giving over part of it to house the Tongan archives.
King George was a great admirer of British royalty as so based his coronation on that of Queen Elizabeth, hence the Archbishop and being crowned while sitting on a large throne, (apparently some in Tonga wondered if he would order a golden coach but he didn’t.) This was going against Tongan tradition where the monarch knelt to be crowned by a Wesleyan minister as had his father, grandmother and great grandfather before him. At King Tauf’ahua’s coronation the other members of the royal family wore Tongan dress but at King George’s it was European dress with the ladies wearing tiaras and the Queen Mother in her coronation robes.
King Tupou wears Tongan dress most of the time, even when opening parliament (his father wore a uniform) and I think that he will return to the more Tongan style of coronation by kneeling to be crowned.
