I Just Can't Wait to be King Trivia Quiz

Answer: Edward VIII

The story of Edward and Mrs. Simpson is a well-documented one. Edward's reign began and ended in 1936, lasting just 325 days and ending without him ever being crowned.

What is possibly less known was the poor relationship that Edward had with his father, George V, and his father's prophetic view that, "After I am dead, the boy [Edward] will ruin himself within 12 months." His dismay about his son was borne of Edward's love of the high life and his seemingly constant womanising, particularly with married women.

His relationship with Wallis Simpson, whom he began seeing in 1934 when she was still married, proved his undoing as king. When he declared to UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that he intended to marry Simpson he was told that this would be unacceptable due to his position as Governor of the Church of England. Presented with the choice of ditching Simpson, marrying her and causing his government to resign or abdicating, he reluctantly chose the latter. In December 1936, he signed the forms of abdication, handing the throne to his younger brother Albert, who was to reign as George VI.

Answer: Wilhelm II

1888 became known in Germany as "the year of the three emperors". The death of the long-serving Kaiser Wilhelm I in March of that year brought his son, Frederick Wilhelm, to the throne as Frederick III. Frederick was much admired by the German people for his military role in guiding Germany towards unification during his father's reign, even though his hatred of war was well documented.

After Frederick's death in June of that year, the position of Emperor passed to his son, Wilhelm II. Wilhelm's views were far less liberal and he was far less war-averse than his father. He dismissed an edict that his father had put in place to limit the powers of the chancellor and the monarch. Unrestricted by statute, he embarked on an aggressive foreign policy and military expansionism that helped turn Europe into a diplomatic tinderbox. With the spark of Franz Ferdinand's assassination, the continent was set ablaze and war spread around the world at the cost of millions of lives.

Answer: Edgar the Aetheling

'Aetheling' means 'of royal blood' as compared to 'Aethelred' which means 'the royal counsel'. Aethelred's epithet, 'Unready' rather than meaning unprepared comes from the Old English word, 'Unraed', meaning 'poor counsel'.

The Witanagemot was a gathering of senior nobles that convened in Anglo-Saxon times to issue law and decrees on matters of importance in the kingdom. One of their roles was to decide upon the succession of kings and queens. In this regard they gave their blessing to the claim of King Harold II to succeed Edward the Confessor as King of the English, over that of William of Normandy. That dispute was to lead to the Battle of Hastings and Harold's early demise.

Following Harold's death, the Witanagemot refused William's claim for a second time, declaring Edgar king. On hearing of the Witanagemot's decision, William chose to march to London to take the throne by force. The Witanagemot accepted the inevitable and ordered Edgar to relinquish the crown at Berkhamsted, leaving William to be crowned king in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066. The Witanagemot was permanently disbanded by William and replaced by the Curia Regis.

Answer: Pope John Paul I

Albino Luciani became Pope John Paul I in 1978 at the age of 66. He took his regnal name from his two mentors, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. Though his election was deemed to be as a consequence of a split between two factions in the College of Cardinals, John Paul was a very popular choice with the wider church.

Just one month after his election, John Paul was found dead in his bed, or so the official story goes. He was found in the unusual position of sitting up; most uncommon for someone who suffered a sudden death. The supposition was that he had suffered a heart attack but no autopsy was performed and no death certificate issued. This provided plenty of room for conspiracy theorists to develop their thoughts.

Reasons suggested for the Pope's possible murder included his liberal views and, according to 'In God's Name' by David Yallop, corruption within the Vatican Bank and the connected Banco Ambrosiano. The same corruption would also lead, according to Yallop, to the death of Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano who was known as "God's banker", in London in 1982.

Answer: Italy

The Italian royal family had benefitted from popular support for many years by the time of Vittorio Emanuele's accession to the throne in 1900. He retained this popularity through the difficulties of World War I into the 1920s. However, the political landscape in Italy changed significantly at this time. The rise of Fascism and its charismatic leader, Benito Mussolini caused the king problems. His failure to stand up to Mussolini and stem the tide of violence and abuse of power that the Fascists wrought was seen as weakness and Vittorio Emanuele's popularity never recovered.

By the time of Mussolini's overthrow in 1943, the monarchy had been damaged almost beyond repair. Had Vittorio publicly handed his crown to Umberto at this time, many commentators have suggested that the monarchy might have been able to recover. However, the king clung on to power, only abdicating once a referendum had been arranged on the future of the monarchy. The abdication made no difference to the outcome. 54% of the Italian people voted for the country to become a republic and Umberto's newly acquired crown was lost.

Answer: Napoleon II

OK, so Napoleon didn't have to wait long to become emperor (allow me quizmakers' licence). He was just four years old when his father, who had not seen him in the two years since he was exiled on Elba, abdicated in his favour. At the time, young Napoleon was resident in Austria, his mother's home country.

He never visited France in his brief time as the country's emperor. The restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France was set in motion once Napoleon I's abdication had been confirmed. Louis XVIII was declared king on July 7th, 1815 without Napoleon II's position as emperor having ever been officially acknowledged.

Answer: Jane Grey

Lady Jane Grey is variously known to history as the nine-day, the ten-day or the thirteen-day queen depending on which days are counted. The most commonly accepted count is from the day of her proclamation as queen on July 10th, 1553, four days after the death of Edward VI until July 19th, when Mary, Edward's eldest sister, entered London and claimed the throne.

Jane's claim to the throne through primogeniture was tenuous. She was a direct descendant of King Henry VII and grand-daughter of Henry VIII's sister, Mary Tudor. As soon as Mary I had enough support to ride into London, Jane was never likely to be able to hold on to her throne for long. Mary's accession had been guaranteed by Act of Parliament from her father's time as king and was always going to be considered the strongest claim.

Jane's case had been promoted by her father-in-law, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Dudley had been the de facto ruler of England during Edward VI's reign, as Edward was under the age of 21. It is thought that Dudley saw Lady Jane as his means of maintaining his grip on power. For Edward, Jane was a way of maintaining a committed Protestant on the throne in preference to the equally fervently Catholic, Mary.

Dudley was executed for his role in the troubled succession in August 1553. Jane was spared until February 1554, shortly after Wyatt's rebellion against Mary's marriage to the Catholic, Prince Philip of Spain. Supporters of the rebellion called for Jane's restoration to the throne, leading Mary to deem her an active threat and necessitating her removal from the picture.

Answer: United Kingdom

As conflicts go, the Anglo-Zanzibar war was a very one-sided one: 500 killed or injured on the Zanzibar side with just one injury to a British seaman in return. The cause of the conflict was Khalid himself. His assumption of the Sultanate after the sudden and unexpected death of his cousin, Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini, was not welcomed by the British and went against a treaty that stated that any new Sultan must gain the approval of the British consul prior to taking office.

Khalid, who many suspected had murdered Thuwaini in order to take the throne, refused to back down in the wake of threats of force from the British and began to amass troops in the Sultan's palace. On August 26th, 1896, a final ultimatum was issued to Khalid, demanding that he lower his flag that was flying over the palace and leave by 9.00am on the following day. Khalid refused to leave, believing that the British would not fire upon him. At 9.00am precisely, the order was given to open fire and two minutes later, the first shells landed. Khalid was reported to have fled immediately but the bombardment continued for a further 38 minutes until the flag disappeared from over the palace.

Khalid fled into exile in German East Africa, never to return to Zanzibar. The British installed their preferred Sultan and effectively ran the country until it merged with Tanganyika to form Tanzania in 1964.

Answer: The Mongol Empire

The attack on the Jin Dynasty was led by Ogedei Khan, son of Genghis, leader of the Mongol Empire. The campaign began in 1230, shortly after Ogedei assumed leadership and at a time when the Mongols were in control of most of Manchuria, the area of China in which the Jin Dynasty resided.

The Mongols invaded Jin territory in 1232 and, a year later, the Dynasty's capital at Kaifeng was captured. Emperor Aizong committed suicide in 1234 in the city of Caizhou when he was in danger of capture by Ogedei's men. Modi, a leading warrior under Aizong's rule, was chosen as his successor and his coronation was hastily arranged. As the ceremony took place the next day, the Mongols had already breached Caizhou's walls. By the end of the day, they had breached the palace walls and Modi was slain.

Answer: His wife spent 20 minutes trying to persuade him to take the throne, before Louis decided to co-sign the abdication document

Most lists of the kings of France list Louis-Philippe I as the successor of Charles X. However, Louis Antoine did become Louis XIX for those 20 minutes in which he was deciding whether to sign the joint abdication document. The document read; "My cousin, I am too deeply pained by the evils which afflict or which could threaten my people not to have sought a means of preventing them. I thus took the resolution to abdicate the crown in favour of my grandson, the duke of Bordeaux. The dauphin, who shares my feelings, also gives up his rights in favour of his nephew."

Henri, duc de Bordeaux, was proposed as King Henry V but his claim was never accepted by the French state and therefore his place in the list of kings is discounted, even though he was nominally king until Louis-Phillippe's proclamation seven days later.

Louis-Phillippe, who was known by the epithet "The Citizen King", abdicated in 1848 as Revolution once again embraced France. His abdication led to the foundation of the Second French Republic and brought the monarchy to an end.