William of Albania

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William of Wied (26 March 1876–18 April 1945) reigned briefly as sovereign of Albania from February 21, 1914 to September 3, 1914. Outside the country and in diplomatic correspondence, he was styled sovereign prince, but in Albanian he was referred to as mbret, or king. (See King of Albania for more details.)

Born in Neuwied, he was the third son of William, 5th Fürst zu Wied and his wife Marie of the Netherlands, and became a German military officer. On 30 November 1906 he married Sophie von Schönburg-Waldenburg.

A coalition of Western powers (including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy) selected William, a member of the Prussian royal family, to rule over newly-independent Albania. A delegation of Albanian notables made a formal request in February 1914, which he accepted, and one month later, in March, he arrived in his provisional capital of Durrës and started to organise his government.

His brief reign proved a turbulent one, marred by opposition to his foreign origins. This quickly erupted into civil war, led from exile by his former Minister of Internal Affairs and War, Essad Pasha, who had been dismissed for a charge of treason. William finally left the country in September, 1914, and spent World War I in Germany. After the war, he attempted to regain his throne, but the participants at the Paris Peace Conference were hesitant to restore it to a German native as Germany had just fought against them. Although several of the factions competing for power in postwar Albania billed themselves as regencies for William, once central authority was definitively restored in 1924 the country was declared a republic.

William of Wied died in Predeal, near Sinaia, in Romania.

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