Brit Obit of the Day

His Majesty King Taufa’Ahau Tupou IV of Tonga from the Telegraph:

The son of Queen Salote, who endeared herself to Londoners when she came over for the Coronation in 1953 and drove smiling through the rain in an open carriage, the King was the world’s only Methodist sovereign and for many years, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the world’s heaviest.
A jovial man-mountain of energy, he was 6ft 4in tall and at his peak weighed some 35 stone. Although he belonged to a people famous for feasting, he was sometimes troubled by his size: “In his heart,” as one of his aides once put it, “His Majesty is a thin man.” But cutting down did not come easily. “My doctor’s put me on a diet,” the King said in 1999. “I’m only allowed to eat three yams a day. But a yam can be 6ft long.”
advertisementWhen the King, who succeeded his mother in 1965, came on visits to London he would sometimes decline the use of his Embassy’s Mercedes (number plate TON 1), preferring a more commodious Rolls-Royce — with, as he explained, “more leg room”.

And later:

The Crown Prince belonged to the 43rd generation of direct descendants of Aho’eitu, the first Tui Tonga (supreme ruler) who lived in the 10th century. More distantly, he descended from the sky god Tangeroa.

Posted by on September 11th, 2006 at 12:01 pm


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