5. The King of Fruit
An envoy of Spain’s King Ferdinand had this to say about the exotic pineapple: “[it is] the most beautiful of fruits I have seen. I do not suppose there is in the whole world any other of so exquisite and lovely appearance“. Pineapples became prized status symbols, and were esteemed to an extent that might seem ridiculous and dumb today, but was anything but at the time. In an era when royalists advocated the divine right of kings, anything with a crown came to be associated with heavenly approval.
The pineapple fruit, whose spiny top resembled a crown, became a symbolic manifestation of monarchy. As a result, it soon became known as “The King of Fruit”. Between that, the vast distances that pineapples had to travel in order to reach Europe, their sheer exoticism, and the fact that most people had never set eye on one before, the possession of a pineapple became a status symbol. So much so that, as seen below, pineapples were used in international politics and diplomacy.
