Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden

Born in 1710 to a minor German princely house, Adolf Frederick was plucked from obscurity in the 1740s after Sweden's failed war to reclaim the Baltic provinces left parliament hunting for a pliable successor. They found one. He took the throne in 1751, ending 220 years without an Oldenburg king, and settled into ceremonial irrelevance—his occasional attempts at reclaiming absolute power, backed by nostalgic nobles, went nowhere. His reign was peaceful, though the Hat party's mercantilist schemes bled the treasury dry until the Cap opposition won in 1765 and pivoted toward economic liberalism…