Two years later, the fourteen-year-old Kaiulani was sent to school in England. While life abroad was quite civilized, even luxurious, her health was marginal at best . Summers spent touring Scotland, the French Riviera and the Channel Islands with her father; winters in England and Germany, until 1893, when word came that her aunt, Queen Liliuokalani had been deposed, and the Kingdom abrogated by American businessmen who had established a provisional government. Life became an endless chorus of bad news. Her father blamed her aunt for the government takeover. Then he blamed her again for not agreeing to amnesty for the plotters in exchange for the return of the Kingdom, resulting in a falling out between Cleghorn and his sister-in-law, the Queen. The American government could not decide what to do about the Hawaiian problem. While the stalemate continued, rumors of revolution were heard, then confirmed. The revolt was quelled and the queen was jailed. Kaiulani’s father attempted to negotiate with the Dole group regarding a role for Kaiulani in the new Hawaiian government, but he was unsuccessful. There was no place for a post-script princess. The Kalakauas had poisoned the well. The Kingdom would not survive. In 1897, at age twenty-two, Kaiulani at last returned to the islands. The Kingdom had been lost, replaced four years earlier by a provisional government . Her favorite half-sister, Annie Cleghorn Wodehouse, was dead. Hawaii was about to be annexed by the United States. Finally, word came from Washington that the American government had agreed to annexation.
That winter, Kaiulani’s good friend Eva Parker invited her to Parker Ranch on the Big Island, where, in December, Eva would marry her cousin, Frank Woods. If Parker had waited until June, perhaps the outcome for Kaiulani could have been different. Waimea in December was freezing, wet, miserable. Kaiulani stayed too long at the ranch. She became seriously ill after too many long horseback rides in the ua ki’puupuu rain (the rain that raises gooseflesh.) Her father was summoned from Honolulu. He took his daughters Rose and Helen with him to frigid Mana, where they collected the Princess, the holokus and the ball gowns, and then returned to Waikiki where she lingered, bedridden, for a month at home at Ainahau before she died.
The Ruler of the Heavens 