The soldier, in white sulu and red tunic standing guard outside the President’s residence formerly Government House, is a reflection of Fiji’s complex history of British rule and Republicanism.
Fiji became a Crown colony in 1874 when its chiefs ceded sovereignty to Britain but gained its independence in 1974.
But since then, its relationship with the Commonwealth has been up and down and at times turbulent.
A pivotal point for Fiji was two political coups in 1987, led by Sitiveni Rabuka a colonel in the Fijian military, which resulted the country becoming a Republic.
Only six years earlier Rabuka had been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth. Ten years later as an elected Prime Minister of Fiji he apologised to the Queen for breaking his oath of allegiance to her and presented her a tabua or whales tooth.
Fiji had been suspended from the Commonwealth in 1987 and then was again in 2009 after then military commander Voreqe Bainimarama who’d overthrown the Government three years earlier, failed to return Fiji to democracy.
However, like Sitiveni Rabuka, Voreqe Bainimarama became an elected Prime Minister and his relationship with the British monarchy has been warm.
In the last few days he has paid tribute to the Queen including “we will always treasure the joy of her visits to Fiji along with every moment that her grace, courage and wisdom were a comfort and inspiration to our people even a world away”.
There are 11 Commonwealth member states across the region, and during her reign Queen Elizabeth visited many of them. (Source: 1News)
Yesterday on his formal Facebook page he posted a video of himself kneeling to the Queen expressing “my respect for her remarkable reign with a traditional lolou gesture” at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.
The public too has shown genuine sadness – hardly surprising given the country’s history and also that Queen Elizabeth had visited Fiji six times during her reign.
“For me as an individual I feel a great loss over the Queen’s death,” one person told 1News.
“We’ll really miss the Queen a lot because she was a lovely person."
READ MORE: Queen Elizabeth warmly remembered in the Pacific
A group of children said they were thinking about the new King and also they were proud their school had lowered their flag to remember the late Queen.
The Fiji flag is seen as a reflection of 150 or so years of history. In 2013 the Government announced it would be replacing the Noble Banner Blue complete with Union Jack with a new flag.
But that idea was firmly rejected by the people and after the Rio Olympics in 2016 when Fiji won it’s first ever gold medal and the blue was very much a part of the joyful national celebrations.
Remnants of nearly a hundred years of being a Crown colony don’t disappear overnight but neither does Fiji marking its own path in its own way.
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