In 1888, a 12-year-old girl threw the switch that brought electric light to the streets of Honolulu. Eleven years later, her body was carried through the dark under ancient royal protocol while the peacocks at her estate screamed into the night. Princess Kaiulani was born in 1875 to the Hawaiian princess Likelike and the Scottish businessman Archibald Cleghorn, christened at an Anglican cathedral, given a name meaning the royal sacred one, and named in part for Queen Victoria, who had helped Hawaii hold off other foreign powers. She was raised as living diplomacy. She could hold a room at high tea and she surfed Waikiki on a seven-foot-four koa board that sits in a museum today. The monarchy was building a human shield, an heir whose mixed heritage would make it impossible for any empire to write Hawaii off as territory ripe for the taking.