An instantly recognisable figure wherever he went, owing to his immense size, King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV of Tonga will be remembered outside his country for his promotion of Tonga on the global scene and for the informal and yet majestic style in which he reigned.

Throughout his reign he had travelled widely throughout the world to promote Tonga’s tourism and trade, and his massive bulk — at his peak he weighed, according to the Guinness Book of Records, 209.5kg (33 stone) — made him his country’s most visible ambassador.

Though a constitutional monarch, he exercised great political authority in Tonga, through his family and through the country’s hereditary nobility, a situation which has for long ensured them an inbuilt majority in the 30-seat legislative assembly.

Over the last 15 years a campaign for political reform had sought to increase the degree of genuine democracy in Tonga’s political life, and pressed for a greater role in the assembly for those members elected by popular vote. This achieved modest success, in that for the first time two cabinet ministers were last year appointed from elected members, not the nobility.

But the king’s innate conservatism was resistant to change, in spite of the fact that his recent involvement in the loss of millions of dollars of Tongan money earned from the sale of passports had damaged his personal standing and led to calls for greater transparency in government. These were voiced most notably by Akilisi Pohiva, a journalist and member of the Legislative Assembly and leader of the Tonga Human Rights and Democracy Movement, which had a number of members in the assembly.

The monarch’s domain consists of 170 islands in the South Pacific, just west of the International Dateline, only 36 of which are inhabited. The population, more or less equally divided between men and women, is about 110,000, most of whom subsist on agriculture, fishing, tourism, and tapa making. Tongans traditionally have a reputation for friendliness, and Tonga was formerly dubbed "the Friendly Isles" by the British explorer James Cook.

There had been an hereditary ruler in Tonga since AD950. The foundations of the constitutional monarchy to which Taufa’ahau IV succeeded were laid when King George Tupou I, the "Grand Old Man of the Pacific", granted Tonga a constitution in 1875. Tonga became a British Protectorate in 1900.

It was the King of Tonga’s mother, Queen Salote, who put Tonga on the world map when she attended the Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation in London in 1953. On a wet day she refused to have her carriage covered, and to the ignored protests of her carriage companion, the Sultan of Kelantan (in Malaya), she got gloriously soaked, to the admiration of the crowd.

Taufa’ahau was born as Crown Prince in 1918. His father, Prince Tungi (Viliami Tupoulahi Tungi), was a direct descendant of the Tui Ha’atakalaua royal line. He was christened Siaosi Taufa’ahau Tupoumalohi in the Free Wesleyan Church, and educated first at a primary school operated by that church and then at the long established Tupou College. At the age of 14 he was a renowned athlete, able to pole vault over ten feet. He enjoyed tennis, cricket and rowing, but rugby was his favourite sport. His advance down the field was not a particularly welcome sight for the opposing team.

He was academically bright, passing his leaving certificate examination at 14. In 1933 he followed his father to Newington College, at Stanmore, New South Wales, by which time he already stood 6ft tall and weighed 15 stone. Then he entered Sydney University, studying arts and law, the first Tongan ever to attend a university.

While in Sydney he developed a particular interest in the drawings made on Captain Cook’s expeditions, especially of the head-dresses and other obsolete ornaments. In February 1938 he was declared to be of age in a ceremony in Nuku’alofa. In 1939 at the age of 21 he had graduated BA at Sydney University, and wanted to go to Oxford. But because of the war he stayed in Australia and took his LLB.

In 1941 the Crown Prince’s father died and he returned to Tonga, where his mother continued to rule as Queen. These were difficult days, with the Japanese on the rampage in the Pacific. Tonga was in danger of being invaded, but the Crown Prince reassured his mother that the Americans would protect them, as turned out to be the case.

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