Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not panel mentions the king of Thailand, born in Massachusetts, and notes that he is “one of the world’s few foreign-born monarchs.” That kind of claim is both vague and debatable; there aren’t a lot of monarchs left, and the European ones are historically as likely to be from Germany as their own country. IIRC, George I, Victoria and Catherine the Great were all German, Marie Antoinette was Austrian, Prince Philip (not technically a monarch, but…) is from Greece.
Is anyone here up on current monarchs, and are foreign-born ones all that unusual anymore?
By foreign-born, I’m assuming he means wasn’t born in his country of rule. Victoria was born in England; and Phillip wasn’t a monarch, nor was Marie Antoinette – she was the Queen Consort.
Catherine the Great was originally German, and only became the ruling monarch after murdering her husband – she was originally the Empress Consort of Russia.
Many examples would be countries that had achieved independence and instead of electing someone from their native land, asked a member of a royal family from another nation. Some examples:
Phillip’s great-grandfather, George I of Greece (originally Prince William of Denmark) and King Haakon VII of Norway (originally Prince Carl of Denmark).
Haakon became King after Norway acchieved independence from Sweden. Greece had already become independent from the Ottoman Empire, but she already had a King – Otto of Bavaria. He was overthrown, and eventually the throne was given to George. (It was offered at one point to Queen Victoria second son, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh)
There was also Carol I of Roumania (Prince Karl von Hohenzollern Sigmaringen), Ferdinand of Bulgaria (originally of Saxe-Coburg Gotha) and of course, Queen Victoria’s own uncle, the famous Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who became King of Belgium.
You could PROBABLY count William III, since he was a Prince of Orange, and maybe James I of England, as he was born and raised in Scotland. (Although since he was also King of Scotland, that might not count)
Juan Carlos I of Spain was born in Rome, while his parents were in exile. I don’t think Marie Antoinette counts, as she wasn’t a monarch but the spouse of one (same as Prince Phillip): a lot if not the majority of European consorts have been foreign-born.
Working from that list, Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein was born in Zurich.
As already noted, King Juan Carlos of Spain was born in Rome.
If you count Pope Benedict XVI as an elective monarch, he was born in Bavaria.
Queen Elizabeth II was born in London. Which means that she was not born in Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, or Tuvalu.
For Sweden, Karl XIV Johan was born in Pau, in Pyrenean France.
The presemt King of Norway is the first monarch of Norway to be born in that country since 1370, his father and grandfather having been born in Charlottenburg Castle, Denmark, and in the United Kingdom respectively. Interestingly, he is probably the only reigning monarch ever to be a legal resident of the White House (he and his mother were long-term house guests of the Roosevelts during the German occupation of Norway during World War II).
Don’t know of any other incumbent foreign-born monarchs nowadays, but historically it’s very common.
British monarchs from Victoria through George VI had the title Empress or Emperor of India, despite none having been born there. Many English monarchs claimed the title King of France before George III gave it up in 1801.
Emperor Napoleon I of France became King of Italy, and gave thrones to a number of brothers incl. those of Naples and Sicily, Spain, Holland and Westphalia, and also named his infant son King of Rome.
King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy was given the crowns of Ethiopia and Albania following Italian conquests there in the 1930s.
More recently, Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son, was semi-humorously offered offered the nonexistent throne of Estonia, but nothing ever came of it: Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh - Wikipedia
And of course, Maximillian, from somewhere in Europe, was emperor of Mexico until the locals rounded up enough gunpowder to shoot him.He was installed by Napoleon III who had delusions of expansionist grandeur. The USA was too busy with the civil war at the time to object to an overseas expedition…