Vyner, Rajah of Sarawak, GCMG, full name Charles Vyner de Windt Brooke (26 September 1874 – 9 May 1963) was the third and last White Rajah of the Raj of Sarawak. Early life The son of Charles Brooke and his wife Margaret de Windt (Ranee Margaret of Sarawak), Vyner was born in London and spent his youth there, being educated at Clevedon, Winchester College, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He then entered the Sarawak public service. Vyner served as aide-de-camp to his father 1897–1898, district officer of Simanggang 1898–1901, Resident of Mukah and Oya, 1902–1903, Resident of the Third Division 1903–1904, President of the Law Courts 1904–1911, vice-president of the Supreme and General Councils 1904–1911. In his military career, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters) on 12 May 1911, but resigned from the (County of London) Battalion (Artist's Rifles) on 21 May 1913. During the First World War he served incognito as a rating in a naval anti-aircraft defence unit, and as a fitter in an aeroplane manufacturing works at Shoreditch, East London. He was granted the personal style of His Highness by command of King George V, 22 June 1911. It was in the United Kingdom he met and married The Hon. Sylvia Brett, daughter of Lord Esher, on 21 February 1911. They returned to Sarawak. Rajah of Sarawak Following the death of his father, Vyner succeeded on 17 May and was proclaimed Rajah on 24 May 1917 at Kuching. He took the oath before the Council Negri on 22 July 1918. Vyner's early years as Rajah (a role he performed in tandem with his younger brother, Bertram, in accord with their father's wish) saw a boom in the Sarawak rubber and oil industries and the subsequent rise in the Sarawak economy allowed him to modernise the country's institutions, including the public service, and introduce a penal code developed on British India lines in 1924. Granted a knighthood in 1927, Vyner continued to run a hands-off and relatively popular administration that banned Christian missionaries and fostered indigenous traditions (to an extent: headhunting was outlawed). Sarawak, however, was not immune to Japanese imperial ambition, which manifested itself in Sarawak on 25 December 1941. In that same year, he withdrew £200,000 from the Treasury for his personal expenses, in exchange for limiting his powers by a new constitution. Vyner and his family were