She was named for pain: born in 1838 and given a name commemorating the burning, sore eyes afflicting the kingdom's regent at that very moment. But the girl who would become Hawaii's last sovereign monarch grew up to be defined by clear vision instead. Raised through the hanai adoption tradition that wove rival noble families into one unbreakable alliance, then drilled in Calvinist morality at a missionary school alongside the very children who would one day conspire against her, Liliʻuokalani became a cultural translator long before she became a queen.

This episode follows her from a decisive regency, where she shut down Hawaii's ports against a smallpox epidemic over the fury of foreign merchants, to the day in 1893 when U.S. Marines landed in Honolulu and never fired a shot. Facing a rigged constitution, a sugar-money conspiracy, and an  ...