King Zog: Self-Made Monarch of Albania

King Zog was a curiosity, and so he has remained the most unusual European monarch of the 20th century, a man entirely without royal connections who created his own kingdom. By contemporaries, he was variously labeled "the last ruler of romance," "an appalling gangster," "the modern Napoleon," "the finest patriot," and "frankly a cad." Even today his reputation is disputed, but Zog was undeniably one of the foremost figures in Albanian history. Though notorious for cut-throat political intr...