After the death of her mother, Princess Kaʻiulani was sent to Europe at age 13 to complete her education under the guardianship of British businessman and Hawaiian sugar investor Theo H. Davies.

The Committee of Safety rejected proposals from both her father Archibald Scott Cleghorn, and provisional president Sanford B. Dole, to seat Kaʻiulani on the throne, conditional upon the abdication of Liliʻuokalani.

Davies and Kaʻiulani visited the United States to urge the Kingdom's restoration; she made speeches and public appearances denouncing the overthrow of her government and the injustice toward her people.

Father and daughter spent the years 1893–1897 drifting among the European aristocracy, relatives and family friends in England, Wales, Scotland and Paris, before finally returning to Hawaii.

Kameʻeiamoku was one of the royal twins along with Kamanawa depicted flanking the Hawaiian coat of arms, and his son Kepoʻokalani was the first cousin of the conqueror on the side of Kamehameha's mother Kekuʻiapoiwa II.

Kaʻiulani's father was a Scottish financier from Edinburgh; he served as Collector General of Customs from 1887 to 1893 and as the final Governor of Oahu from 1891 until the office was abolished by the Provisional Government of Hawaii after the 1893 overthrow of the monarchy.

The Hawaiian government sent her cousins[note 3] David Kawānanakoa (known as Koa), Edward Abnel Keliʻiahonui and Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole to attend Saint Matthew's School in the United States in 1885.

Local businessmen accused Kalākaua's cabinet under Prime Minister Walter Murray Gibson of influence peddling in elections and manipulation of legislative governance.

[60][61][62] By September, Kaʻiulani and Annie were sent to Northamptonshire and enrolled at Great Harrowden Hall, a boarding school for young girls, under the elderly schoolmistress Caroline Sharp.

[69] Davies persuaded her family to remove Kaʻiulani from Great Harrowden Hall in early 1892[70][note 4] to attend a finishing school to prepare her for society.

By February, Kaʻiulani moved to Hove, Brighton, where she was placed in the care of Phebe Rooke who set up private tutors and a curriculum that included German, French, English, literature, history, music[note 5] and singing.

[84][85] Kaʻiulani learned of her uncle's death by the next day through the Transatlantic telegraph cables while news did not reach Hawaii until January 29, when the Charleston returned to Honolulu with the king's remains.

[88] On March 9, with the approval of the House of Nobles, and as required by the Hawaiian constitution, Liliʻuokalani appointed her niece Kaʻiulani as her heir apparent and eventual successor to the throne.

"[96] The Committee of Safety, under the leadership of Thurston, met for two days in the final planning of the overthrow, and unanimously selected Sanford B. Dole to lead the coup and organize a provisional government.

[110][114] Dole, the leader of the Provisional Government, had stated that it would have been "far more tactful" to "hold the power of the throne" through a "regency in the name of the young Princess Kaʻiulani until she reaches her majority".

[144] A migraine episode in Paris on May 4, 1897, prevented her from attending the Bazar de la Charité, which caught fire and killed a number of French noble women including the Duchess of Alençon.

While he agreed to assist with the finances, he took the princess to task for her careless spending in 1894, "I am disappointed in what you say about money matters because I have always been disagreeably plain about them ... You have the chance to be a heroine but unless you exercise resolution and self control ... we shall all fail".

[155][158] By August and September, Kaʻiulani and her father were making farewell calls to friends, hiring an Irish maid, Mary O'Donell,[159][160] to assist her and preparing for their return to Hawaii.

"[164][165] According to historian Andrea Feeser, the contemporary portrayals of Kaʻiulani were "shaped by race and gender stereotypes, and although they aimed to be favorable, they granted her no authority" with emphasis placed on her Caucasian features, Victorian manners, feminine fragility and exoticism.

[167][168] Her father had built a two-storied new Victorian-style mansion designed by architect Clinton Briggs Ripley next to the bungalow which had been her childhood home in the intervening years when she was abroad.

The poet spent nearly three years in the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he became a good friend of King Kalākaua and Ka'iulani.

During his 1881 world tour, Kalākaua held a secret meeting with Emperor Meiji and proposed to unite the two nations in an alliance with an arranged marriage between his 5-year-old niece Kaʻiulani and the 13-year-old Prince Yamashina Sadamaro.

[note 9] From extant letters to the king, both by Prince Sadamaro, upon the advice of his adoptive father, and by Japanese foreign minister Inoue Kaoru declined the proposal on behalf of the government of Japan.

[215] The Bishop Museum collection has a number of jewels owned by Kaʻiulani, including a diamond and aquamarine necklace given to her by Queen Kapiʻolani in 1897, in honor of her engagement to an unnamed suitor.

[216] According to a letter written to Liliʻuokalani dated to June 22, 1894, in which she declined the idea of an arranged marriage, she mentioned that she had rejected a proposal by an "enormously rich German Count".

Later, George W. Macfarlane, a family friend and King Kalākaua's chamberlain, told a reporter from the San Francisco Call that the princess possibly died of a broken heart.

[229] The route from ʻĀinahau to the lying in state at Kawaiahaʻo Church became a growing funeral procession as native Hawaiians fell in line with lit torches and wailed mournfully.

[234][235] In a ceremony officiated by Liliʻuokalani on June 24, 1910, the family's remains were transferred for a final time to the underground Kalākaua Crypt after the main mausoleum building had been converted into a chapel.

[241][242] Forby's film is not the first project to bring the Princess to the screen: Kaʻiulani biographer Kristin Zambucka produced a docudrama called A Cry of Peacocks for Hawaiian television, broadcast in 1994 by Green Glass Productions and KITV.

You can appoint a board of regents to act during her minority, and I assure you that the community will have a very different state of affairs to deal with from that which Kalakaua and Liliuokalani have presented.” “You know my regard for Kaiulani, Mr. Cleghorn, " I replied.