King of Albania

Who was King of Albania?

While the medieval Angevin Kingdom of Albania was a monarchy, it did not encompass the entirety of the modern state of Albania. The latter has been a kingdom on two occasions. The first time was after it was declared independent in 1912. Under the independence settlement imposed by the Great Powers, the country was styled a principality, and its ruler, William of Wied, was given the title of sovereign prince. However, these styles were only used outside the country. In Albanian, William was referred to by the title mbret, or king. This was because many local nobles already had the title of prince, and because domestically the Albanian sovereign could not be seen as holding a title inferior to that of the King of Montenegro. Prince William's full style was:

By the grace of the powers and the will of the people the Prince of Albania.

William was forced into exile by internal disorder just after the outbreak of World War I, and Albania was to be occupied by various foreign powers for most of the war. In the confusing aftermath of the war, some of the several regimes competing for power officially styled themselves as regencies for William. Albania's first monarchy ended definitively when the restored central government declared the country a republic in 1924.