Faisal II
Faisal II was three when he became king and twenty-three when he was shot in the palace courtyard with most of his family. His father died in a car crash in 1939. The boy's uncle governed as regent for the next fourteen years, in partnership with a politician who was prime minister eight times and who tied Iraq firmly to Britain. That alignment was the regime's strength and its fatal weakness. Britain had created the monarchy, kept airbases in the country, and returned in 1941 to put down a nationalist government by force. Faisal came of age in 1953 into a country that had grown rich and angry at the same time. Oil revenue rose sharply after a fifty-fifty agreement in 1952, and much of it went into dams, roads and schools through a development board. Very little of it reached the countryside, where most Iraqis lived under landlords who owned holdings the size of provinces. The politics of the region moved faster than the palace did. Egypt's revolution, the Suez crisis and the union of Egypt and Syria in 1958 all made a pro-British monarchy look like an anachronism to the officer corps it depended on. On 14 July 1958 a brigade ordered to Jordan turned into Baghdad instead. The royal family were brought into the courtyard of the palace and machine-gunned. The prime minister was caught the next day and killed by a crowd. The monarchy had lasted thirty-seven years and ended in a morning, and every Iraqi government since has come to power by force or by foreign invasion.
- Lived: 1935 CE – 1958 CE
- Nationality: Iraqi
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
