Although commoners may marry willy nilly for romantic reasons, élite marriage is regulated. Partners marry class endogamously and by way of assuming public responsibilities. Among aristocrats there is a preference for aligning the two kinds of status. Through mother’s brother’s daughter marriage, a man could reinforce his title status with fahu status. From the fifteenth century on, the leader of the Kauhala‘uta side of the title system took the eldest sister of the chief directly inferior to him as his moheofo or principal wife, each Tu‘i Tonga being at once holder of an “older brother” or “father” title and fahu to the holder of a “younger brother” or “son” title (Biersack 1982 [1974]; Bott 1981:55-58, 1982:59, Fusitu‘a 1976:10; Lātūkefu 1974:3). Among high aristocrats who succeed to title, the preference for status congruity is clear. Heirs have occasionally declined a title because they believed themselves to be insufficiently aristocratic in blood to merit it. Agnatic heirs may step aside to enable sisters’ sons to succeed lest their inferior blood tarnish the title (“Discussions” 1:57). Conversely, if their personal rank was too high for the title, as already discussed, they might spurn it and remain untitled.

A well-known example of this preference for congruity across the two status fields concerns the Tuita title. Tuita Kahomovailahi had two wives. The ranking one, Tamahā Lātūfuipeka, gave her cousin Naukovi, of much lower blood, to Tuita Kahomovailahi as a secondary wife.^[8] Naukovi bore Po‘oi Niutupu‘ivaha, while the Tamahā bore Makahokovalu. As the first-born son of the principal wife, Makahokovalu was the clear heir to the Tuita title. Yet this title was relatively low — not even a chiefly title but a matāpule or ceremonial attendant title. Through his mother, Makahokovalu had access to the Tu‘i Lakepa title. The previous Tu‘i Lakepa had been the son of Lātūnipulu mentioned earlier (Bott 1982:73). This son had died without issue, placing the title at risk. Makahokovalu rescued the situation by assuming the Tu‘i Lakepa title as Lātūnipulu’s daughter’s son and fahu (“Discussions” 2:285; see also ibid. 1:175). “None of the patrilineal heirs [those who were from agnatic collateral branches] could compare to him in rank, and he just went and had himself appointed without even having a meeting of the male heirs” (Bott 1982:73) (see Figure 2).^[9]

Personal rank was among the criteria employed in making succession decisions. It came into play again in the next generation, with the appointment of a new Tuita. Makahokovalu’s failure to assume the Tuita title opened the door to Po‘oi, the son of the secondary wife, to succeed — which he did (Figure 2). Po‘oi’s son was then heir apparent. Yet it was not Kahomovailahi but Makahokovalu’s son who succeeded to the Tuita title. Makahokovalu had married the daughter of Laufilitonga, the last Tu‘i Tonga (“Discussions” 2:285; see also ibid. 1:175). In view of the exceptionally high rank of the resulting son, ‘Ulukivaiola, Po‘oi’s son stepped aside to let ‘Ulukivaiola succeed (Figure 2) (Tupou Posesi Fanua, pers.comm.; see also Fanua, n.d., and “Notes on the Pongipongi of Tu‘i Vakanō, 4th July 1958”, BSP 13/4/3).

It was in the interest of those at the margins of the political system to use marriage to elevate their status in a bid for public recognition and prestige. As Bott has observed, junior lines agitated against their seniors by marrying the women of the senior line (Bott 1982:62), appropriating for themselves, for example, the very sororal blood that the Tu‘i Tongas preferred to bestow upon foreign chiefs to avoid empowering rivals. Such practices are sometimes described in terms of theft or seizure, suggesting the agonistic character of the practice. “Wives of high rank were sometimes seized by other men who wanted suitable mothers for their children” (Spillius n.d.: ch.5, BSP 4/3/84).

Tāufa‘āhau, the usurper who dominated the nineteenth century, was himself “only a little tiny bit ‘ eiki [or chiefly]” (“Re Feudalism”, BSP 22/3). Laufilitonga, heir apparent to the Tu‘i Tonga title, though not by any means Tāufa‘āhau’s only adversary, was the most prestigious one. A woman could not be moheofo or principal wife of the Tu‘i Tonga unless she was a virgin (Ve‘ehala, pers.comm.). Wanting to deprive the Tu‘i Tonga of an heir, Tāufa‘āhau found a pretext for sending his sister, Halaevalu Mata‘aho, to another chief — the Tu‘i Ha‘ateiho of the Ha‘a Fale Fisi (“Discussions” 1:53), who, like the Tu‘i Tonga, was on the Kauhala‘uta side — to whom she bore a child. When she was finally sent to the Tu‘i Tonga, she was no longer suitable as moheofo and could not produce an heir.^[10]

* Compiled from Bott (1982:12) (Figure 1), ibid.:32 (Figure 4), ibid.:74 (Figure 9), and ibid.:154 (Figure 31(b); BSP 13/4/3; Fanua (n.d.).

** Bott (1982:74) (Figure 74) lists this woman as Fatafehi Fangaafa. However, she is listed as Fatafeni Fanga‘ofa in Bott, “Notes on the Pongipongi of Tu‘i Vakano, 4 July 1958, BSP 13/4/3.

The withholding of Halaevalu was part of a larger initiative that culminated in the Constitution of 1875, with its renovation of the title system and related developments. Though the Tu‘i Tonga title was never abrogated, after the death of Laufilitonga it was not reappointed and effectively lapsed (Lātūkefu 1974:90; Marcus 1980:38). When Halaevalu Mata‘aho was finally released to Laufilitonga, she bore him twins, the one Lavinia Veiongo, a woman who subsequently became an important source of Tu‘i Tonga blood for the Tupou Dynasty, and the other Kalaniuvalu. Kalaniuvalu was made a nōpele by the 1875 Constitution as a representative of the Tu‘i Tonga line (Ellem 1981:66; Marcus 1980:38-39). Since the Kalaniuvalu title was created by Tupou I and is appointed by the Tu‘i Kanokupolu cum King, it is ipso facto inferior to these two titles, as the Tu‘i Tonga title was not (“Discussions” 2:351). As a result, Kalaniuvalu cannot be buried in the special tombs or langi reserved to the Tu‘i Tonga (ibid.). The marriage between Halaevalu and Laufilitonga was therefore crucial to producing an heir for a title that could not be vested with authority in the old system but that took its place in a Tupou-dominated constitutional monarchy. It was also crucial for setting the stage for an appropriation of Kauhala‘uta blood by the Tupou Dynasty later, when Tupou II married, a chapter of Tongan history reviewed below.

Tāufa‘āhau made the complementary move of capturing as his own wife one of the Tu‘i Tonga’s wives, Lupepau‘u (Cummins 1980:41, 74; “Discussions” 1:61; Queen Sālote, “Ko e Ngaahi Ha‘a ‘o Tonga”, BSP 11/2/15; cf. Ellem 1981:66). Tāufa‘āhau was to have married Lupepau‘u’s younger sister; but when Lupepau‘u attended a wedding in Tāufa‘āhau’s area, he claimed her for himself (Collocott Papers, MS 1058:1, 19). There was no retaliation — either because Laufilitonga was no match for Tāufa‘āhau (he had already lost the decisive Battle of Velata to him) or because it was considered “beneath the dignity of a chief to quarrel over women” (Bott 1982:139).

Marriage was not just a status game. It could be and was used to develop political resources through the prerogatives of blood. A brother owes his sister and her children support.

The mother’s side consists of a set of brothers and brother’s children to whom she and her children are superior. This principle was of great importance in the traditional political system. It meant that a leader could always expect support from the groups of his mother and his wives, also from the group of his mother’s mother. It meant that he had to give support to the groups into which his sister, his sister’s daughter, and his father’s sister married, always assuming they had children (Bott 1981:19; see also Bott 1982:62-63).

Typically this support consisted in provisioning the sister and her husband with food, which meant that a leader could acquire the wherewithal to support a large retinue through his affinal and matrilateral ties. These ties, moreover, could be used to augment this retinue. Since “[t]raditionally the main basis of political power was the ability to build up and lead a local group” (Bott 1981:9), a polygamist could encourage his wives and relatives to live with him, thus expanding his group (Spillius, “Kinship and Ha‘a in Tonga”, BSP 5/6/17) and its labour resources. The kinspeople of a woman who married a chief were often committed supporters of the woman’s son by that chief (Bott 1982:132).

Then again, if the wife-giver were himself high in rank but bereft of resources, land, labour, and people could flow in the opposite direction, from wife-taker to wife-giver. For example, when Fusipala, the daughter of the fourth Tu‘i Kanokupolu Mataeleha‘amea, was given by her brother to an untitled Pelehake leader who controlled a lot of people and land in eastern Tongatapu and was thus powerful, “even though he was not of high rank” (Bott 1982:138), the sister’s husband shared his resources with his wife’s people and not vice versa. Queen Sālote elaborated upon the husband’s reasoning:

The brothers knew that the very fact he was not ‘ eiki would make him keen to marry a king’s daughter, and they wanted to get his support. Normally it is the woman’s people who feed and support the husband’s people. But in a case of this sort, where the man was powerful but had no title and was not ‘ eiki whereas the woman was the daughter of a king, the husband’s people would support the wife’s people and particularly the king (ibid.).

Land no less than labour could be acquired through marriage. As Spillius has written:

There were many cases of inheritance of land through women before the Constitution [1875], when the daughter of a title-holder married a king or some other important title-holder, her father gave her a piece of land to support her and her children. After her death it might be kept by her children or it might be returned, depending on circumstances. In other cases a prominent man, usually the brother or son of a king, married a woman whose father was rich in land but lower in rank. The children of such a marriage inherited the land of his mother’s father (Spillius, “Kinship and Ha‘a in Tonga”, BSP 5/6/8).

Since transfers of land implied transfers of people, titles could be inherited matrilaterally as well as patrilineally. For all “working chiefs” — and all chiefs except the Tu‘i Tonga of the diarchic era have been working chiefs (Biersack 1990b) — primogeniture has never been the only discriminator in matters of succession. Multiple criteria were employed in choosing a successor: not only birth order but the rank of the mother and the power of matrilateral support, age, experience, and ability — all were factors (Bott 1982:72, 123-124; “Discussions” 1:176). Under these circumstances, it was possible for sister’s sons to succeed, particularly if the mother was of very high rank (ibid. 1:177, 180). Sister’s son could also succeed if the male line lapsed — as, for example, in the case of Makaholovalu’s accession to the Tu‘i Lakepa title.

In the resulting shifts in effective control from senior to junior lines, affinity and fahu successions played an important role. In the case of both the Tu‘i Ha‘atakalaua and the Tu‘i Kanokupolu, younger brothers were sent, often without title, to outlying districts, where they married in. In a generation or two, these cadet lines would capture the land and titles of these districts, subordinating these to their senior, who now held the paramount title of a growing ha‘a or cluster of titles. In regard to the growth of the Ha‘atakalaua in the sixteenth century, Bott tells us that the titles thus accruing to that ha‘a were “often named after the original son or younger brother of the Tu‘i Ha‘atakalaua who was sent out in the first place” (Bott 1982:63), the land and the title being absorbed as subsidiary units within that ha‘a. “… local titles used to get swallowed up or forgotten” as new centres emerged, expanded, and were consolidated (Bott 1981:51).^[11] After these cadets had secured local support, land, and title, they intermarried with the national élite to upgrade the rank of their heir, providing a double anchorage for their dynasty, local and national (ibid.:48).

Marriage was also the key to upgrading the title that a line already controlled. Again, Tuita provides an example, for ‘Ulukivaiola reverted to the Tuita title to raise the rank of that title (“Discussions” 2:296; Figure 2). Traditionally the Tuita title was a “specialised matāpule” title (Marcus 1980:41, n.27) — a matāpule of the navigator kind; Gifford placed the title somewhere between matāpule and ‘ eiki in its rank (Gifford 1929:109).^[12] In 1880 Tuita was reclassified as a nōpele or “noble” title, the post-Constitutional equivalent of the chiefly titles of the past (ibid.). In recent years Tuita has held one of the more important ministries of the Tongan government and his son is the husband of the King’s only daughter, bestower of the highest ranking blood in contemporary Tonga.

The same is true of the Tu‘i Pelehake title. The title is related to a mythic one: the title Tu‘i Faleua or “King of the Second House”, which a sky god bestowed upon the older brother of the first Tu‘i Tonga, ‘Aho‘eitu (Figure 1). ‘Aho‘eitu ascended to the sky to find his father, this god ‘Eitumatupu‘a, whom he had never seen. For various reasons, his older brothers were jealous of him and killed him. ‘Eitumatupu‘a brought ‘Aho‘eitu back to life and punished the older brothers by sending them back to earth as ‘Aho‘eitu’s subordinates (Biersack 1991a; Bott 1972; Valeri 1989). Just when the Tu‘i Pelehake title originated is not clear; but its origin is related to the marriage between Fusipala, daughter and sister of a Tu‘i Kanokupolu and the powerful leader of the Pelehake district on Tongatapu mentioned before. Presumably from that time on, the Pelehake line became a close satellite of the Ha‘a Ngata Motu‘a, the Tu‘i Kanokupolu’s line; and the Tu‘i Pelehake title was “lifted up” (ibid.). Later a Tu‘i Pelehake married a daughter of a Tu‘i Tonga Fefine (“Discussions” 2:282; see Figure 3). This “lifting” through marriage was symbolically reinforced in the nineteenth century, when the Tu‘i Tonga’s kava privileges were transferred to the Tu‘i Pelehake and the Tu‘i Tonga title was allowed to lapse.^[13]

Politically crucial, women became the focus of a dynamic factional politics. If a woman married a chief and her brother or father was ambitious, her people would rally around her son as a pretender to the title, even without his being a clear heir apparent to the position (“Discussions” 1:46). The gift of a woman could seal a political and military alliance. For example, when Tākai, a famous warrior, decided to settle his differences with the seventeenth Tu‘i Kanokupolu, father of the man who would become King George Tupou I, he offered his daughter in marriage to him. He also supplied Tupouto’a with troops upon request and lobbied the chiefs of the Ha‘a Ngata Motu‘a and Ha‘a Havea (Figure 1) to elect him Tu‘i Kanokupolu (Gifford 1929:208; Lātūkefu 1974:21). Furthermore, as the episodes of Tongan history soon to be recounted illustrate, an enemy could be co-opted through marriage.