Kings & Royalty Quiz
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175 free Kings & Royalty trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Kings & Royalty trivia questions with answers. Test your knowledge of the world's most famous kings, queens, and dynasties with our comprehensive Kings & Royalty Quiz. From ancient pharaohs to modern monarchs, explore 50 engaging questions about coronations, royal traditions, and palace intrigue. Discover how much you really know about royalty across history and cultures!
30 of 175 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which English king was forced to seal the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?
King John
King John sealed Magna Carta to buy peace with rebel barons who had taken London; within three months the Pope had annulled it, and the civil war it was meant to prevent broke out anyway.
Q 02What famous nickname was given to Louis XIV of France?
The Sun King
The Sun King took the sun, symbol of Apollo, as his personal emblem; at 14 he had danced as Apollo, the rising sun, in the Ballet de la Nuit of 1653.
Q 03Which wife bore Henry VIII his long-awaited son?
Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour died in October 1537, less than two weeks after giving birth to the future Edward VI; Henry later asked to be buried beside her.
Q 04Which king did William the Conqueror defeat at Hastings?
Harold Godwinson
Harold Godwinson had marched north and crushed a Norwegian invasion at Stamford Bridge less than three weeks earlier, then hurried his army south to face William; he was killed on the field.
Q 05Which ancient Egyptian pharaoh's tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922?
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun's tomb still held most of its treasures after more than 3,000 years; when Carter's patron Lord Carnarvon died months later of an infected mosquito bite, newspapers spun the tale of a pharaoh's curse.
Q 06After a 72-year reign, Louis XIV was succeeded in 1715 by which relative?
His great-grandson
His great-grandson, aged five, became Louis XV: the old king had outlived both his son, who died in 1711, and his eldest grandson, who died a year later.
Q 07Which language was the mother tongue of Cleopatra, the first ruler of her dynasty to learn Egyptian?
Greek
Greek: her forebears had held Egypt for nearly three centuries without troubling to learn the local tongue, and Plutarch says Cleopatra spoke it along with several other languages.
Q 08What is the name of the palace built by Louis XIV outside Paris?
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles grew out of his father's hunting lodge; Louis XIV moved the court and government there in 1682, and a Paris crowd forced the royal family to leave it for good in October 1789.
Q 09Which country has the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world?
Japan
Japan's imperial house is the world's oldest continuous hereditary monarchy; tradition dates it to Emperor Jimmu in 660 BC, though historians regard the first several emperors as legendary.
Q 10In which ancient city did Alexander the Great die in June 323 BC?
Babylon
Babylon was to be the capital of his new empire; he fell ill there with a fever after a long drinking bout and died some days later, and his generals were soon at war over the conquests.
Q 11Which cleric crowned Charles III in May 2023?
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury, then Justin Welby, crowned the King and first anointed him with holy oil behind an embroidered screen that hid the moment from the cameras.
Q 12Which Russian tsar traveled incognito across Europe on the "Grand Embassy" of 1697?
Peter the Great
Peter the Great joined his own Grand Embassy of 1697-98 in disguise, travelling under an assumed name behind his ambassadors so that he could study shipbuilding at first hand in Dutch and English yards.
Q 13Which English king spent only about six months of his ten-year reign in England?
Richard I (the Lionheart)
Q 21Which of Henry VIII's wives was beheaded in 1536 after being accused of adultery and treason?
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife, was convicted of adultery and treason and beheaded on 19 May 1536; the daughter she left behind, then aged two, would one day take the throne herself.
Q 22Why did Peter I of Russia put a tax on beards?
To make his subjects look Western
To make his subjects look Western: police could forcibly shave any man who had not paid, and those who had carried a copper or silver 'beard token' as proof.
Q 23Where are the British Crown Jewels kept and displayed?
Tower of London
Richard I, the Lionheart, spent barely six months of his 1189-1199 reign in England; the rest went to crusading in the Holy Land, captivity in Germany, and defending his French lands.
Q 14Generations of cousin marriages gave which European dynasty a protruding lower jaw that now bears the family's name?
The Habsburgs
The Habsburgs kept marrying close relatives, and a 2019 study that had surgeons score the jaw in family portraits concluded that inbreeding was the likely cause.
Q 15Which queen of France was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution?
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette was sent from Austria at 14 to seal her country's new alliance with France; in October 1793 the Revolutionary Tribunal convicted her of treason and she went to the guillotine.
Q 16Who was the only woman in Chinese history to officially hold the title of Emperor?
Wu Zetian
Wu Zetian proclaimed her own Zhou dynasty in 690 in place of the Tang and ruled as emperor until a coup restored the Tang in 705.
Q 17Which conqueror founded the largest contiguous land empire in world history?
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan, born Temüjin, united the feuding Mongol tribes and was proclaimed their ruler in 1206; the empire kept growing under his sons and grandsons until it reached from the Pacific to eastern Europe.
Q 18Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation service was the first carried on which medium?
Television
Television took viewers inside the abbey for the first time: TV cameras had been kept out of her father's coronation service in 1937, and in 1953 more people watched than listened on the radio.
Q 19Which British monarch gave her name to an entire era spanning much of the 19th century?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria came to the throne at 18 in 1837 and reigned until 1901; after her husband Albert died in 1861 she wore mourning black for the remaining forty years of her life.
Q 20On which church festival was Charlemagne crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III?
Christmas Day
Christmas Day 800 was when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne in St Peter's; his biographer Einhard claimed the king would never have entered the church that day had he known what the pope intended.
The Tower of London nearly lost them in 1671, when Colonel Thomas Blood flattened a crown with a mallet and tried to make off with it; caught, he was pardoned by the king and even given land in Ireland.
Q 24According to the Bible, which king of Israel was renowned for his extraordinary wisdom?
Solomon
Solomon, son of David, asked God for wisdom rather than long life or riches (1 Kings 3); his judgment between two women claiming the same baby became the byword for royal wisdom.
Q 25From which capital city did Cleopatra and her dynasty rule Egypt?
Alexandria
Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, was the dynasty's capital for nearly three centuries; when Cleopatra died there in 30 BC, Egypt became a Roman province.
Q 26Which 'heretic' pharaoh swept aside Egypt's old gods for a single sun god?
Akhenaten
Akhenaten built a new capital at Amarna for his sun god; after his death a boy king moved the court away, restored the old temples and dropped the god from his own name.
Q 27Which king is the only native-born English monarch to carry the epithet 'the Great'?
Alfred
Alfred earned the epithet by saving Wessex: driven into the Somerset marshes by the Danes in 878, he rallied his men and beat them at Edington within months.
Q 28Which additional title did Parliament vote to give the British monarch in 1876?
Empress of India
Empress of India: Disraeli brought in the Royal Titles Act eighteen years after the Crown took over India from the East India Company, and George VI gave the imperial title up when India became independent.
Q 29Which king of Spain, the last of his line, suffered lifelong ill health often blamed on generations of royal inbreeding?
Charles II
Charles II of Spain came at the end of generations of marriages between close relatives; when he died childless in 1700, the rival claims to his throne set off the War of the Spanish Succession.
Q 30Which Russian city, founded in 1703 on newly conquered Baltic marshland, was the country's capital for two centuries?
St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg gave Russia the Baltic seaport its founder had long wanted, and the court and government moved there from Moscow within a decade; the Bolsheviks moved the capital back in 1918.