Apart from Australia, has a serving head of government or state disappeared without trace?
Upvote:6
Edward V of England might qualify. He was never technically coronated but he was the recognized heir to his father, Edward IV. Edward V was only 12 at the time and his uncle, Richard III assumed the role of regent. Richard kept delaying the coronation while meanwhile word spread that Edward V was the result of a bigamous union thus making him and his younger brother illegitimate and conveniently leaving Richard III as the rightful heir.
Edward V and his brother Richard went in to the Tower of London and were never heard from after the summer of 1483. To this day, historians can only speculate as to their fate although the most common theory is that they were murdered.
Other cases of "recently deposed royal/inconvenient heir is imprisoned and never heard from again" exist such as Louis XVII of France (the "lost dauphin") who spawned dozens of pretenders.
If you mean "without a trace" to apply to the people the sovereign was governing (i.e. we today know what happened but the citizens then did not) and you stretch the "head of state" bit to mean "head of state until very recently prior to disappearance." I think Tsar Nicholas II's brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich might qualify. Nicholas abdicated the throne in February 1917 and then abdicated his son Alexei's claim to the throne (due to Alexei's haemophilia). Nicholas' brother was proclaimed Emperor. The provisional government at the time didn't actually agree to that, but as Wikipedia says "the legal position was complicated as the legitimacy of the government, whether Nicholas had the right to remove his son from the succession and whether Michael actually was Emperor were all open to question." His status as "head of state" was murky from the start, but I think it at least falls within the realm of what you were asking.
The provisional government fell to the Bolsheviks and Michael was imprisoned and sent east to Perm. By June 1918, the local head of the secret police decided Michael should "disappear." Michael was murdered and "the Perm authorities distributed a concocted cover story that Michael was abducted by unidentified men and had disappeared." The story was successful enough that "Soviet disinformation about Michael's disappearance led to unfounded rumours that he had escaped and was leading a successful counter-revolution."
More post
- 📝 What is the largest hoard of coins ever found?
- 📝 How common was it for Red Cross personnel to fight (in both World Wars)?
- 📝 Which Allied forces held the French-Italian border from Operation Dragoon to the end of WWII in Europe?
- 📝 "More Frenchmen bore arms for the Axis than for the Allies during the Second World War"?
- 📝 What was the primary method the Jews used to make a fire at the time of Jesus?
- 📝 Why doesn’t Cuba's flag have any communist symbolism?
- 📝 Did Emperor Pushyamitra Shunga persecute Buddhists?
- 📝 What did Murder, Inc call itself?
- 📝 Name of the ancient law that forbade naming/publicising the name of a criminal?
- 📝 Could equestrian prefects sit on sella curulis?
- 📝 Early counterparts of scholarly journals
- 📝 Why couldn't the UN lift the siege of Sarajevo?
- 📝 Did cavalry in China use spears instead of swords?
- 📝 Churchill's words about war escaping - any reference in his biography or memoir?
- 📝 Was the money requested by the French for the XYZ affair really a bribe?
- 📝 Have there been any efforts by the countries of Europe to restore their monarchies?
- 📝 Were there any high-ranking female soldiers during the Middle ages?
- 📝 To what extent were religious groups persecuted in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Did Robert Devereux's monopoly on sweet wine encroach upon Sir Christopher Hatton's monopoly on wine?
- 📝 Why is neither side of the warhammer blunt?
- 📝 What were the FBI's motives for wanting to discredit MLK?
- 📝 How many lives were estimated to have been saved by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?
- 📝 What is the science behind lead not contributing to the fall of Rome?
- 📝 Wales and Ireland in medieval times
- 📝 On 15 October 1810 the 92nd Regiment were billeted in ruined houses at Crozendera, Portugal. Can anyone pinpoint this location?
- 📝 Is there a factual basis for the character of Morgan le Faye from the King Arthur tale?
- 📝 Who was blamed for shell failures on the Western Front?
- 📝 Why did Napoleon divide his army during the retreat from Smolensk?
- 📝 Why was January put around 450 BC as the first month?
- 📝 What is the first documented eating disorder?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Apart from Australia, has a serving head of government or state disappeared without trace?
- 📝 Who had the shortest time in going from imprisonment to head of state within democratic processes?
- 📝 Has a head of state ever actually killed another in battle?
- 📝 Has a sovereign Communist government ever run, and conceded loss, on a fair election?
- 📝 When has a sovereign state last given territory to another as a gift?
- 📝 Has a state ever "attacked" another one by printing fake money?
- 📝 Has there ever been a major migration from the New World to the Old World? If not, why?
- 📝 Why did Meiji government consider switching from Japanese to English?
- 📝 Has there ever been a true kidnapped princess from anywhere in the world?
- 📝 What set Checkpoint Charlie apart from the other border checkpoints in Berlin during the Cold War?
- 📝 Why did Canada, Australia and New Zealand separate from the UK?
- 📝 Who was the first head of government to support same-sex marriage?
- 📝 Apart from the Inuit, and candlefish on the northwest coast, did pre-Columbian America have lamps or candles?
- 📝 Which state capital did the Apollo 11 command module NOT visit after it returned from the moon?
- 📝 In the United States government, has there been cases that electoral colleges don't vote for the candidate the majority of their state voted for?
- 📝 Has there ever been a US election that flipped as many state seats as the 2010 midterm elections?
- 📝 Can anyone explain why the Scottish flag on this map from 1504 has a red cross on a white background?
- 📝 Was Queen Elizabeth II ever the head of state of Namibia?
- 📝 Before Idriss Deby, who was the last head of state to be killed in combat?
- 📝 Has any US President served in a government position with a foreign nation before or after their presidency?
- 📝 How/when did the halo shift from being a solid disk behind the head to being a floating ring above the head?
- 📝 Did the British government oppose racial segregation in South Africa from 1815-1931?
- 📝 Why, apart from religious reasons, might someone in thirteenth century England give land to a Church?
- 📝 Apart from the White Ship in 1120, have there been any other maritime disasters in which an heir to a throne and/or many notable people died?
- 📝 Why might one think that Australia gained independence from the UK in December 1920?
- 📝 Has there ever been a significant security breach of information from someone with Alzheimer's or dementia divulging classified information?
- 📝 Why were penal colony members from Australia moved to San Francisco in 1840's?
- 📝 Which head of state had the most gaps in their rule?
- 📝 What has prevented the United Nations from failing the same way as the League of Nations?
- 📝 This is the second time Australia has had 6 PMs in 10 years. What caused it the first time?