[custom_adv] Faisal II ( May 1935 – 14 July 1958) was the last King of Iraq. He reigned from 4 April 1939 until July 1958, when he was executed during the 14 July Revolution together with numerous members of his family. [custom_adv] This regicide marked the end of the thirty-seven-year-old Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, which then became a republic.Faisal was the only son of Iraq's second king, Ghazi, and his wife Queen Aliya, second daughter of 'Ali bin Hussein, King of the Hijaz and Grand Sharif of Mecca. [custom_adv] Faisal's father was killed in a mysterious car crash when he was three years old; his uncle 'Abd al-Ilah served as regent until Faisal came of age in 1953. [custom_adv] King Faisal was the model used by Belgian comic writer Hergé for his character Prince Abdullah of Khemed in The Adventures of Tintin. He suffered from asthma.Faisal's childhood coincided with World War II, in which Iraq was formally allied with the British Empire and the Allies. [custom_adv] In April 1941, his uncle 'Abd al-Ilah was briefly deposed as Regent by a military coup d'état which aimed to align Iraq with the Axis powers. The 1941 coup in Iraq soon led to the Anglo-Iraqi War. German aid that was promised however never materialised, and 'Abd al-Ilah was restored to power by a combined Allied force composed of the Jordanian Arab Legion, the Royal Air Force and other British units. [custom_adv] Iraq resumed its British alliance, and at the end of the war joined the United Nations.During his early years, Faisal was tutored at the royal palace with several other Iraqi boys. During World War II, he lived for a time with his mother at Grove Lodge at Winkfield Row in Berkshire in England. As a teenager, Faisal attended Harrow School with his second cousin Hussein, later to become King Hussein of Jordan. [custom_adv] The two boys were close friends, and reportedly planned early on to merge their two realms, to counter what they considered to be the threat of militant pan-Arab nationalism.In 1952, Faisal visited the United States, where he met President Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, the actor James Mason, and Jackie Robinson, among others. [custom_adv] Hastening Faisal's demise was the decision taken by his regent (later confirmed by him) to allow the United Kingdom to retain a continued role in Iraqi affairs, through the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1948, and later the Baghdad Pact, signed in 1955. [custom_adv] Massive protests greeted news of each of these alliances, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators and an increasing deterioration of loyalty to the Iraqi crown.Prince Abdullah (holding hat) at Mount Vernon USA. He was the regent for his nephew Faisal during his infancy. [custom_adv] Faisal attained his majority on 2 May 1953, commencing his active rule with little experience and during a changing Iraqi political and social climate, exacerbated by the rapid development of pan-Arab nationalism. [custom_adv] Faisal initially relied for political advice upon his uncle Prince 'Abd al-Ilah, and General Nuri al-Sa'id, a veteran politician and nationalist who had already served several terms as Prime Minister. As oil revenues increased during the 1950s, the king and his advisers chose to invest their wealth in development projects, which some claimed increasingly alienated the rapidly growing middle class and the peasantry.
