Anthony Brooke, who died on March 2 aged 98, was heir to the throne of Sarawak and briefly ruled the romantic jungle kingdom on Borneo:
Brooke's English family had been the absolute rulers of Sarawak for three generations. Popularly known as the White Rajahs, they had their own money, stamps, flag and constabulary, and the power of life and death over their various subjects – Malays, Chinese and Dyak tribesmen, a few of whom still indulged in the grisly custom of headhunting.
The Brooke family ruled Sarawak (which is the size of England) from 1841 until 1946 when they were forced to cede it to the British Empire. It was finally given independence in 1963 when it joined the new Federation of Malaysia. Read the whole thing if you can stomach the British
jingoism but I did enjoy how Anthony Brooke ended up after ceding Sarawak:
[He] embarked on a second career as a self-styled "travelling salesman" for world peace. In the late 1950s, he led a campaign to put morality back into British politics, and in the 1960s he toured the world on a "peace pilgrimage", meeting Nehru, Zhou En-lai and U Nu of Burma, and walking across the Punjab with the Indian saint Vinoba Bhave. He lived with the New Age commune at Findhorn, in the northeast of Scotland, adopting their belief that flying saucers would bring "peace on earth and the brotherhood of man".
I think I'd take the lunacy of the British Empire over flying saucers anyday.