Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

Born in 1924, the tenth son of the kingdom's founder, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz came from a mother whose family had once been the Al Saud's fiercest rivals. He rose through posts that mattered: mayor of Mecca in 1961, commander of the National Guard the next year, a position he never relinquished. Named crown prince in 1982 when his half-brother Fahd became king, Abdullah waited thirteen years before Fahd's stroke made him de facto ruler in 1995. He formally took the throne in 2005 and steered Saudi Arabia through the Arab Spring without yielding ground, kept close ties with Washington and London, and spent billions on arms. He held four of his daughters captive. He married as many as thirty women, fathered more than thirty-five children, and left behind one of the world's great fortunes when he died in January 2015 at ninety, succeeded by yet another half-brother.