Queen of Libya

The Times of London has a first-rate obit today clearly written by a Libyan expert who could make sense of the tangle of tribe loyalties and royal intrigue surrounding the life and death of Fatima al-Sanussi, the last queen of the North African country.

After they were ousted and Gaddafi took over in a military coup, the royals were "denounced in Tripoli as profligate tyrants [when] they were in fact almost penniless."

They spent the rest of their life in Cairo, initially taking up residence in a home given to them by the charismatic nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. According to the obit, the queen left the residence for another property when she found that Nasser had seized it from a political opponent.