Who Would Be Emperor If the Roman Empire Still Existed Today?

Dur­ing Wim­ble­don a few years ago, a thread about King Felipe VI of Spain went viral. It was post­ed to the social media plat­form for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter by Derek Guy, author of the menswear blog Die, Work­wear! “Very rare to see this lev­el of tai­lor­ing nowa­days, even on the wealthy,” he com­ment­ed on a pho­to of Felipe in the stands on the tour­na­men­t’s last day. Even when not attend­ing major sport­ing events, the king’s col­lars always hug his neck, his lapels are always well-pro­por­tioned, the lines of his coat always flow into his trousers, and his four-in-hand always has just the right asym­me­try. For my mon­ey, such self-pre­sen­ta­tion befits not just a monarch, but indeed an emper­or.

It so hap­pens that Felipe is one of the most plau­si­ble can­di­dates for that job, at least in the hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nario that the Roman Empire nev­er declined and fell. He’s also the only actu­al sit­ting monarch among them, though each of the oth­ers can also make his own cred­i­ble claim to the impe­r­i­al throne.

So who would right­ful­ly rule over a still-extant Roman Empire? Under­stand­ing that his­to­ry buffs enjoy noth­ing more than a spec­u­la­tive but knowl­edge- and judg­ment-inten­sive debate of that kind, Use­fulCharts cre­ator Matt Bak­er (whose online store hap­pens to offer a Roman emper­ors fam­i­ly tree poster) once invit­ed thir­teen his­to­ry YouTu­bers to cast their votes — and, of course, explain their answers.

In addi­tion to Felipe, the ros­ter of poten­tial mod­ern-day Roman emper­ors includes Dün­dar Ali Osman, heir to the Ottoman dynasty, and Andrew Romanov, heir to the Russ­ian throne (a choice for those who accept the one­time descrip­tion of Moscow as the “third Rome”). Alas, both have died since the mak­ing of this video, but the claimants who could draw their legit­i­ma­cy from the lega­cy of the Holy Roman Empire live on: the still rel­a­tive­ly young Jean-Christophe Napoléon, a descen­dant of Bona­parte’s broth­er, and Karl von Hab­s­burg, the undis­put­ed cur­rent head of the epony­mous house. In favor of each can­di­date, one can make a vari­ety of argu­ments polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and geo­graph­i­cal. Nor, as some of us would insist, can we rea­son­ably ignore the sar­to­r­i­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Roman Emper­or: A Video Time­line Mov­ing from Augus­tus to the Byzan­tine Empire’s Last Ruler, Con­stan­tine XI

What Did the Roman Emper­ors Look Like?: See Pho­to­re­al­is­tic Por­traits Cre­at­ed with Machine Learn­ing

Ancient Roman Coins Reveal the Exis­tence of a For­got­ten Roman Emper­or

Five Hard­core Deaths Suf­fered By Roman Emper­ors

All of the Rulers of Europe Over the Past 2,400 Years Pre­sent­ed in a Time­lapse Map (400 B.C. to 2017 A.D.)

The His­to­ry of Europe from 400 BC to the Present, Ani­mat­ed in 12 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.