Puppet monarch

"Puppet king" redirects here. For the fictional marionette, see Puppet King (Teen Titans).

A puppet monarch is a majority figurehead who is installed or patronized by an imperial power in order to provide the appearance of local authority, while allowing political and economic control to remain among the dominating nation.

Figurehead monarch, as source of legitimacy and possibly divine reign, has been the used form of government in several situations and places of history.

There are two basic forms of using puppets as monarchs (rulers, kings, emperors):

• figurehead: the monarch is a puppet of another person or a group in the country, who are ruling instead of the nominal ruler.
• puppet government under a foreign power.

Examples of the first type are the Emperors who were the puppets of the shōguns of Japan and the kings who were the puppets of the Mayor of Palace in the Frankish kingdom. The British Empire's colonial relationship with King Farouk of Egypt, in the 1950s, is an example of the second type.

List of puppet kings

• Aimone of Savoy, King of Croatia
• Aisin-Gioro Puyi, Emperor of Manchukuo
• Bảo Đại, Emperor of Vietnam
• Louis Bonaparte of the Kingdom of Holland
• Manco Inca, Emperor of Tawantinsuyu
• Romulus Augustulus, Emperor of the Western Roman Empire
• Sisowath Monivong, of Cambodia
• Joseph Bonaparte of Spain
• John Balliol of Scotland
• Emperor Xian of Han of China
• Simeon Bekbulatovich Russian Tsar for one year as Puppet monarch of Ivan the Terrible