Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies

Ferdinand I, born in 1751, was a king defined by survival in an age of revolutions. He became King of Naples and Sicily as a child in 1759, his early reign dominated by regents. His rule was conservative, marked by a deep suspicion of the Enlightenment ideas sweeping Europe. This put him on a collision course with history. In 1799, a republican uprising inspired by the French Revolution briefly drove him from Naples, an exile that ended with a bloody counter-revolution. A far greater threat came from Napoleon Bonaparte, whose forces invaded in 1806, forcing Ferdinand to flee to Sicily, where he ruled under the protection of the British navy for nearly a decade. These years in Palermo were fractious, with his powerful wife, Maria Carolina, wielding significant influence. His restoration in 1815, after Napoleon's defeat, saw the two kingdoms formally united as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His final decade was spent suppressing liberal dissent, cementing his reputation as a reactionary but resilient figure who preserved his crown against seemingly insurmountable odds.