The Last Emperors Trivia Quiz

Answer: Napoleon III, Emperor of the French

Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (1808-1873) was a nephew of the first (and most famous) Napoleon, the son of his brother Louis Bonaparte and his wife, Hortense Beauharnais, the only daughter of Napoleon's first wife, Joséphine. A revolutionary in his youth, Louis-Napoléon was involved in two failed coups against King Louis-Philippe, and spent a few years in exile in England. He returned to France to take part in the 1848 revolution, which saw the birth of the Second Republic. At the end of the year, he was elected President by popular vote, garnering the support of large segments of the population.

Unfortunately, it did not take long for power to go to Louis-Napoléon's head: first he took the title of "prince-president"; then, as the end of his presidential term was drawing near, in December 1851 he organized a military coup, followed by a period of repression of his opponents. Less that a year later, in October 1852, he proclaimed himself Emperor, taking the name of Napoleon III and establishing the Second French Empire. The twelve years of his reign were marked by a flurry of projects to modernize the country - including Prefect Haussmann's ambitious plan for the renovation of Paris - and by the expansion and consolidation of France's colonial empire.

In spite of his successes on the domestic and international front, Napoleon III - whose health had been steadily declining - became embroiled in a conflict with Prussia, the rising military power in Central Europe. The French army's disastrous defeat at the battle of Sedan (1-2 September, 1870), in which the emperor himself was taken prisoner, marked the end of the Second Empire. Released from captivity in 1871, Napoleon III went back to England to spend the final two years of his life. He is buried in St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough (Hampshire), alongside his wife, Empress Eugénie, and their son, also named Louis-Napoléon.

Answer: Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil

Nicknamed "the Magnanimous", Dom Pedro II (1825-1891) was the seventh child of Pedro I, the first Emperor of Brazil, a member of the Brazilian branch of the Portuguese royal house of Braganza. When his father, who had founded the Empire of Brazil in 1822, following the country's independence from Portugal, abdicated and left Brazil in 1831, the five-year-old Pedro was forced into the role of Emperor, and had to leave childhood behind.

In spite of these negative circumstances, Pedro grew into a remarkable man, both for his strong moral fiber and his intellectual pursuits, who turned his country into an emerging power during the 58 years of his reign. Under his rule, slavery was finally abolished in Brazil (1888), and his reforms brought increasing prosperity to the country. Though in 1889 he was overthrown by a military coup engineered by a small clique of dictatorship-loving military leaders, he was very popular in life and he is still held in high regard.

After being deposed, Pedro II spent the last two years of his life in loneliness and near-poverty, longing for his country though not for the position he had lost. He died of pneumonia in Paris at the age of 66. His remains were brought back to Brazil in 1921, and the last emperor now rests in the cathedral of Petrópolis, the city in the State of Rio de Janeiro that was named after him.

Answer: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran

The heir of a 2,500-year-old empire, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980) was Iran's last monarch. The eldest son of Reza Khan, who in 1925 had become the first Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty , Mohammad Reza ascended to the throne in September 1941, shortly after his father had been forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran during WWII. Educated in France, fluent in several languages and cosmopolitan in outlook - the almost polar opposite of his coarse, unsophisticated father - the Shah was often the subject of gossip because of his many affairs with famous actresses and socialites.

On the domestic front, things were far from peaceful, as the Shah was targeted by several assassination attempts, as well as a coup instigated by the CIA. These trials strengthened the Shah's character, who - in order to be seen as a real monarch and not just a pleasure-loving figurehead - embarked on a series of reforms, alienating Iran's religious leaders. The last 20 years of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's reign were marked by the repression of opponents and the amassing of a staggering amount of wealth. In 1967, he was crowned Shahanshah ("King of Kings"), the ancient title that designated the emperors of Persia.

Though the economy had been steadily improving, and some important reforms had been implemented to modernize the country (the "White Revolution"), growing unrest on the domestic front and the Shah's increasing delusions of grandeur led to the spark that fired the Islamic Revolution. After the massacre known as "Black Friday" in 1978 - in which over 80 people were killed - the regime quickly fell apart. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, seriously ill with cancer, left Iran in January 1979, leaving the country in the hands of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers. He died in Cairo (Egypt) in 1980, and is buried in the Egyptian capital.

Answer: Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico

Maximilian I of the House of Habsburg (1832-1867) was a younger brother of Franz Joseph I, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. A lively, intelligent young man with a keen interest in science and culture, he entered the Austrian Navy as a teenager, and rose to the rank of lieutenant by the age of 18. When, in 1857, he was appointed Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, his liberal policies angered his brother the emperor, who removed him from office after only two years.

Maximilian, who had retired to his beautiful seafront castle of Miramare in Trieste (Italy), was approached by a group of Mexican monarchists who offered him the imperial crown of Mexico - a country that had already been an empire for a brief time, in the years 1822-1823, just following its independence from Spain. Though tempted, Maximilian did not accept until 1863, and his reign began the following year.

Unfortunately, things did not start out well for Maximilian and his wife, Charlotte of Belgium, in spite of their attempts to pass some progressive reforms to improve the lot of the common people. Abandoned by his allies and harried by the republican forces led by President Benito Juárez, in May 1867 Maximilian was captured during the siege of Querétaro, and executed by firing squad on 19 June of the same year. His execution was depicted by French painter Edouard Manet in three canvases painted in 1868-1869. An even more tragic figure than her busband, Empress Charlotte fell into a deep depression and paranoia, from which she never completely recovered - though she survived Maximilian by 50 years.

Answer: Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia

Though the stories of most of the former emperors featured in this quiz do not make for exactly cheerful reading, very few of them can compare with the tragic downfall of Nicholas II of the House of Romanov, Russia's last tsar. Born in 1868, he was the eldest son of Alexander III, a ruler who distinguished himself for his conservative, nationalistic tendencies. Nicholas ascended to the throne in 1894; almost as a bad omen, his coronation was marked by a terrible tragedy, a stampede during an open-air celebration outside Moscow in which almost 1,400 people died.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which ended with the annihilation of the Russian fleet in the battle of Tsushima, as well as a spate of anti-Jewish pogroms, undermined his rule, and the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1905, which left 92 people dead, sparked a revolution that is viewed as the first step before the October Revolution of 1917. For all these domestic and international disasters, the fate of the Russian imperial family was sealed by the growing influence of the sinister Grigori Rasputin, a self-styled "holy man". Alexandra, Nicholas' wife and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, had grown dependent on Rasputin as a healer for their only son and heir, Alexei, who was suffering from haemophilia.

Nicholas' indecisiveness during WWI, exacerbated by severe food shortages, fueled the political unrest that led to the monarchy's collapse. The tsar abdicated in early 1917, leaving the country in the hands of a provisional government. However, the imperial family (Nicholas, Alexandra, their four daughters and only son) did not manage to go into exile in England as they had been planning: imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, they were transferred to the town of Yekaterinenburg in the Urals, where they were mercilessly executed on 17 July, 1918. The tsar was 50 years old. In 1981 Nicholas II and his family members were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as "passion bearers".

Answer: Charles I, Emperor of Austria

Charles (Karl) I of the House of Habsburg (1887-1922) was a great-nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph I, whose heir presumptive he became after the assassination of his uncle, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914. A devout Catholic since his childhood, Charles fought in WWI, and earned the affection and respect of his soldiers because of his friendly, down-to-earth character. He ascended to the throne of Austria-Hungary at the end of 1916, after Franz Joseph's death, and tried to keep the empire together just as the fortunes of war were turning against it. In fact, in October 1918 he was forced to accede to the demands of the Allies regarding the independence of the Slavic-speaking regions of the empire (modern-day Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia and Czech Republic). When Hungary also ended its personal union with Austria, almost nothing was left of the mighty empire.

On November 11, 1918 - the day of the Armistice - Charles renounced his right to exercise his sovereign powers, though he did not officially abdicate in the hope of being recalled by the people. This, however, did not happen, and on April 3, 1919, the Austrian Parliament deposed and banished him and his family. After an unsuccessful and humiliating attempt to retake the throne of Hungary, in 1921 Charles was forced into exile on the Portuguese island of Madeira - where he died of pneumonia the following year, at the age of 34. In 2004, Pope John Paul II declared him "Blessed" on account of his deep Christian faith and his role as a peacemaker during the war.

Answer: Mehmed VI, 36th Ottoman Sultan

Though the last nominal head of the Ottoman Caliphate was his cousin, Abdulmecid II, the Ottoman Empire ended with Mehmed VI Vahideddin (1861-1926), whose reign lasted a mere four years, from 1918 to 1922. Mehmed VI followed his brother, Mehmed V, on the throne as the eldest member of the House of Osman (the official name of the Ottoman dynasty), after the heir apparent's suicide.

Turkey's disastrous participation in WWI led to the loss of most of of the empire to the European allies - which strengthened the Turkish nationalists, led by field marshal Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk. Mehmed tried to impose his rule and suspended Parliament, but this only threw fuel on the fire of the nationalist cause. Incensed by the punishing conditions of the treaties signed by the sultan with their former enemies (especially the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which sanctioned the disintegration of the empire), the nationalists took things into their own hands. In 1922 the Sultanate was abolished, and Mehmed VI expelled from Turkey. The Sultan fled to Malta, and later settled on the Italian Riviera, where he died in 1926. He is buried in Damascus (Syria).

The Ottoman dynasty had lasted for 641 years, but the inevitable decline started in the mid-19th century earned it the name of "sick man of Europe" - a definition that has since been applied to other countries.

Answer: Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia

Born Lij Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie I (1892-1975) came from a noble Ethiopian family that traced its lineage to Menelik I, the first emperor of Ethiopia, believed to be the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. When he was appointed governor of Harar in 1910, he took the title of "Ras" (head), a rank of nobility equivalent to Duke. In 1916, Empress Zewditu I appointed him Regent Plenipotentiary, and then made him her heir. In the years before his ascent to the imperial throne, Tafari travelled extensively, which convinced him of the need to modernize his country. Upon Zewditu's death in 1930, Tafari was crowned Emperor with the name of Haile Selassie ("Power of the Trinity").

When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the emperor choose to go into exile in England, where he tried to garner international support for the Ethiopian resistance. He returned to Ethiopia in 1941, and enacted a number of important reforms, such as the abolition of slavery; at the end of WW2, Ethiopia became a charter member of the United Nations. Haile Selassie was highly regarded abroad, which contrasted with the poor reputation he had in his home country because of his descent into authoritarianism.

In the early 1970s, a series of economic and humanitarian crises led to a military uprising that culminated with Haile Selassie's deposition and imprisonment. He died in 1975, a prisoner in the Grand Palace of Addis Ababa - strangled in his bed by a group of former military officers. Followers of Rastafarianism, the religion developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, believe him to be the incarnation of Jah (God) on Earth, or the messiah foretold in the Bible.

Answer: Wilhelm II, German Emperor

The first-born of Queen Victoria's many grandchildren, and first cousin to Alexandra the doomed Russian empress, Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern was born in 1859, the son of Princess Royal Victoria and Prince Frederick William (later Frederick III) of Prussia. Because of a traumatic birth, his left arm remained crippled throughout his life - an event that may have been a factor in his somewhat stunted emotional development. On the other hand, emotional instability was rife in Wilhelm's family, and his highly conflicted relationship with his liberal-minded English mother made matters worse.

Wilhelm's authoritarian tendencies manifested early on in his life. When he ascended to the throne in June 1888, he immediately tried to implement expansionist policies, including a war of aggression against Russia. His dismissal of the elderly but seasoned chancellor Otto von Bismarck was the beginning of the end for the Kaiser and his empire. Wilhelm's increasingly jingoistic rhetoric, often targeted towards the hated British, created a lot of friction in Europe.

When WWI broke out in 1914, Germany entered the conflict in support of Austria. At that point, Wilhelm was largely a shadow monarch, with command of military operations (and, to all intents and purposes, of the whole country) in the hands of generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. However, for a long time the Kaiser was held responsible for the war. In the autumn of 1918, uprisings in Berlin and other cities forced Wilhelm to abdicate. The Kaiser went into exile in the Netherlands, which refused to extradite him in spite of the pressure from the Allies - especially the British, who had no love for him, and would have liked to see him tried for war crimes. Wilhelm spent the rest of his life there, seemingly without having learned his lessons - as he continued to express rather objectionable views, such as strongly anti-Semitic statements. He died in 1941 at the age of 82, and is buried at Huis Doorn, his residence in the Dutch countryside.

Answer: Puyi, 12th Emperor of the Qing Dynasty

Many will be familiar with Puyi's sad tale as told in Bernardo Bertolucci's Academy Award-winning 1987 movie, "The Last Emperor" (also a major inspiration for this quiz's title). Born in 1906 as Aisin Gioro Puyi (the first two names denoting his clan), he became emperor at 2 years of age, inheriting the throne from notorious Dowager Empress Cixi and taking the title of Xuantong Emperor.

Forcibly separated from his parents and deprived of a normal childhood, Puyi grew into a rather twisted individual, who enjoyed wielding his power over other people. He was forced to abdicate in 1912 after a military uprising. The young Puyi remained in the Forbidden City, where he grew attached to his English tutor, Sir Reginald Johnston (whose memoir was used by Bertolucci as a source for his film). Expelled from the Imperial palace in 1924, Puyi became involved with the Japanese, who had invaded Manchuria, and was set up as the "emperor" of the puppet state of Manchukuo. There Puyi ruled until 1945, when Japan surrendered to the Allies and Manchuria was returned to China.

Captured by the Soviet Red Army, he was repatriated to China in 1949, where he was imprisoned as a war criminal for 10 years and forced to undergo "remodeling" - which turned him into a supporter of Communist rule. Upon his release in 1959, the former emperor returned to Beijing, where took up a series of jobs and got married to a nurse. Puyi chronicled his story in the aptly-titled (and highly successful) autobiography, "From Emperor to Citizen". He died in 1967, at the age of 61.