Curated playlist
Exiled royalty
- NapoleonNapoleon crowned himself emperor with a replica of Charlemagne's crown. The pope had just anointed him.
- Mohammad Reza PahlaviOn his first day at a Swiss boarding school, Iran's crown prince got beaten up.
- Wilhelm IIWilhelm II, the last German Emperor, spent much of his adult life holding a pair of white gloves in his left hand. The gloves made that arm look longer than it was. He reigned from 1888 to 1918 over a country that had become Europe's…
- Prince Philip, Duke of EdinburghPrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born on a dining room table. The date was the 10th of June 1921, and the place was Mon Repos, a villa on the Greek island of Corfu. Before he turned two, he was carried out of Greece in a fruit box. He…
- Napoleon IIINapoleon III escaped a life sentence by walking out of prison dressed as a laborer.
- Louis BonaparteNapoleon made his brother Louis king of Holland, and Louis refused to send troops for the Russia invasion.
- Alfonso XIIIAlfonso XIII was carried on a silver tray to Spain's prime minister, already a king.
- Otto von HabsburgOtto von Habsburg, born to be emperor, spent nearly half a century in exile from Austria.
- Reza PahlaviReza Pahlavi declared himself king of Iran on the 31st of October 1980, his twentieth birthday, taking the title Reza Shah II from exile. The monarchy he claimed had been abolished the year before. Almost at once, John Trattner, a…
- Vlad the ImpalerIn the last days of June 1462, the army of Sultan Mehmed II reached the Wallachian town of Târgoviște and found it deserted. Its ruler, Vlad the Impaler, was gone. What he had left behind was a field of stakes. The chronicler Laonikos…