Hirohito, the Showa Emperor, reigned over Japan from 1926 to 1989. He was known in the West by his given name Hirohito (he had no surname). He was the 124th Emperor of Japan. His reign was the longest of all Japanese emperors, and oversaw t...

Nicholas II or Nikolai II was the last Emperor of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw the fall of the Russian Empire from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to eco...

George V, king of Great Britain and Ireland (1910–36), second son and successor of Edward VII. At the age of 12 he commenced a naval career, but this ended with the death (1892) of his elder brother, the duke of Clarence, which made him the...

Franz Ferdinand was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia and, from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Aust...

Emperor Meiji or Meiji the Great was the 122nd Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, reigning from February 3, 1867 until his death on July 30, 1912. He presided over a time of rapid change in the Empire of Japa...

Elisabeth of Austria was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, and thus Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. Born into Bavarian royalty, Elisabeth (Sisi) enjoyed an informal upbringing, before marrying Franz Joseph at 16. She was sudde...

Victoria was the daughter of Edward, the Duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. She was born in Kensington Palace in London on May 24th, 1819. In 1837 Queen Victoria took the throne after the death of her uncle William IV. Due t...

Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, was one of the most prominent European aristocrats and statesmen of the nineteenth century. As Prime Minister of Prussia from 1862 to 1890, he engineered the unification of the num...

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the first President of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. He was the first President of France to be elected by a...

Dom Pedro I, nicknamed "the Liberator", was the founder and first ruler of the Empire of Brazil. As King Dom Pedro IV, he reigned briefly over Portugal, where he also became known as "the Liberator" as well as "the Soldier King". Born in Li...

Leopold I was a German prince who became the first King of the Belgians following the country's independence in 1830. He reigned between July 1831 and December 1865. Born into the ruling family of the small German duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Sa...

Bahadur Shah II, also known as Zafar (his name as an Urdu poet), last Mughal emperor of India (1837–57). A political figurehead, he was completely controlled by the British East India Company, who found it convenient to maintain the fiction...

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the latter stages of the French Revolution and its associated wars in Europe. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1814 and a...

Count Josef von Radetz was a Czech nobleman and field marshal, a member of House of Radetzky in the Kingdom of Bohemia. He served as chief of the general staff in the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy during the later period of the Napoleonic Wars...

Marie Antoinette was Queen Consort of France. Daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria of the Habsburg dynasty and her consort, the Emperor Francis I, she was married to the heir to the French throne (later Louis XVI of France) in order...