Pre-settlement "Kiss The Ring" immunity?

I'm a whiny little coward who avoids feeding the pig-King by buying European units whenever I have enough gold, even when its going to be some time before I get a ship back to Europe. Unfortunately, it has its costs, as I never have enough gold saved up to buy the more expensive units until I'm selling galleons of treasure or trade goods.

I've started to notice, however, especially playing on much larger AOD2 maps when I spend a lot of time exploring and hunting for the best spot to plop down my first settlement, meanwhile getting good amount of gold from ruins/grounds/native settlement first contacts, that the king never seems to ask for me to kiss his ring before I actually put down the first settlement. I've played dozens of games since I wondered about that, intentionally putting off making my first settlement until I had explored every land tile on the biggest landmass(es) and often after I had already bought Galleons using the insta-Gold and sold several of the Treasure units, and not once did the King ask for kiss-the-Ring until several turns after making my first settlement. In my current game, I didn't even settle until turn 200 (its on a huge AOD2/Faireweather map on Marathon which I think is 1000 turns, so yeah I've "wasted" a quarter of the game with no settlements, but I'm already kicking serious tail!).

Can anyone concretely confirm that the king never demands gold to kiss his ring before you let down your first settlement?

Concretely confirm? Probably not. However, I decided to test it out in vanilla/Normal Size/Conquistador and I found that yes, indeed, until you build a settlement the King doesn't make you kiss his ring.

I tried the following with each over several scores of turns:
1) Never get off ship and meet anyone but look at them (from a distance)
2) Never get off ship but meet people
3) Explore with people but don't take any goody huts or meet the chief
4) Explore with people but don't meet the chief (get goody huts - all results)
5) Explore with people/ship, talk to chief, but don't take goody huts
6) Don't build a settlement, but trade anyway (is this the Pirates I've heard a bit about - you know, don't found a town, keep trading until you get enough for Soldiers/Privateers, use them to attack other people?)

It wasn't until I built a settlement that the king wanted his ring kissed. Likewise, even when trading with no settlement, no tax increases occurred (except until, of course, a Privateer sank my Caravel and the King increased tax to pay for the new one).

oops, I forgot:
7) Built a settlement but never traded

Still got a kiss the ring.