But few residents in one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities are even aware of this lineage, a sore point with Tengku, or Prince, Shawal, acclaimed by some members of his family as ‘head of the house of Singapore’.
“They still exist?” is a response the 51-year-old says he often receives when he tells people he is one of the descendants of Sultan Hussein Shah – whose treaties with the British led to colonial rule and the founding of the modern country.
Shawal is one of several Singaporeans who bear the honorific name Tengku, meaning prince or princess in Malay, and claim links to the…
