[2] Her reign lasted forty years during a crucial time in the history of Rarotonga and the Cook Islands.

[5] In the 1860s she married Ngamaru Rongotini Ariki, one of the three high chiefs of Atiu and of the adjoining islands of Mauke, and Mitiaro.

Their married life was a happy one, in spite of the prince's violent character, and when he died, the widowed queen took all her splendid robes of velvet, silk, and satin gorgeously trimmed with gold, tore them in fragments, and cast them into his grave, so that he might lie soft, as befitted the prince who had been loved so well by such a queen.

The first British Resident was Frederick Moss, a New Zealand politician who tried to help the local chiefs form a central government.

After much maneuvering and politicking, the Cook Islands was formally annexed by New Zealand on 7 October 1900 when a deed of cession was signed by five ariki and seven lesser chiefs without any debate or examination of its ramifications or implications.

The palace is where the queen signed the treaty accepting the Cook Islands' status as a British protectorate on 26 October 1888.

We walked through the blazing hot sun of the tropic afternoon, down the palm-shaded main street of Avarua town, to the great grassy enclosure that surrounds the palace of the queen.

One enters through a neat white gate; inside are one or two small houses, a number of palms and flowering bushes, and at the far end, a stately two-storeyed building constructed of whitewashed concrete, with big railed-in verandahs, and handsome arched windows.

[9]The building was a ruin for many years and was closed to the public, although officially it remained one of the island's main seats of power.

The late Queen was head of Government and her successor did not receive a similar appointment, but was of equal status to all the other Arikis.