Sometimes one encounters a person or situation that simply due to its absurdity creates a level of interest far in excess of what is actually reasonable. With that as an introduction, Happy birthday to Heinrich XXVII Prince Reuss Younger Line. Heinrich was the son of Heinrich XIV and the father of Heinrich XLV (they were princes not mathematicians). He was the last man to rule Reuss Younger Line before the German monarchy was placed into receivership at the end of the First World War. He was also regent of the Principality of Reuss Elder Line due to the mental incapacity of its ruler Prince Heinrich XXIV of Reuss Elder Line.
At this point you may have worked your way through all the Roman numerals and all of the Heinrichs and arrived at a very pertinent question; "What the hell?"
When you encounter something this bizarre in Europe the Holy Roman Empire has pretty much got to be involved somewhere. It all began back in the dim distant days of the eleventh century when the eastern border of the empire was also the dividing line between the largely Christian Germans and the largely pagan Slavs. To protect the empire from the depredations of these Slavs (and to facilitate a fair amount of depradation on their own account) the emperors set up what were essentially marcher territories along the border but rather than hand them over to the nobility to rule they appointed their own officials to rule them. Human nature being what it is it wasn't very long before these jobs became hereditary and hey presto the officials were nobility after all. The Reuss house (house is a fancy word for family once you've got a title under your belt) were descendants of one of these border guards. They ruled an area populated largely by Slavs who had converted to Christianity ("converted to Christianity" was eleventh century code for "we killed all the ones who weren't Christian").
Some time later Emperor Henry (or Heinrich) VI did the family a solid and in return the family decided to name every male child in the family Heinrich, forever. Subsequently the Reuss house (or family) split into two lines; Reuss Elder and Reuss Younger but all the men were still named Heinrich. German inheritance practices meant that every surviving son got a title and an increasingly small patch of land to rule over as their very own. The only thing stopping the collective Reusses from having more descendants than territory was the odd burst of dynastic exhaustion which meant that the area they ruled merged, separated, merged again and generally twisted itself in knots as various Heinrichs died without issue or produced a dozen more Heinrichs for the future.
By the time the Holy Roman Empire was wound up in 1806 the Reuss had resolved themselves into two main groups Reuss Elder Line (descendants of Heinrich XIV the Elder) and Reuss Younger Line (descendants of the previous Heinrich's brother Heinrich XVI the Younger). By this time the descendants of the middle brother (Heinrich XV the Middle) had died out so we don't need to worry about Reuss Middle Line. The Elder Line subdivided several times but was eventually reunited in the person of Heinrich XI in the eighteenth century. The family tree of the Reuss (and indeed most German nobility) looks likes the labyrinth of Crete with names and dates attached. I'm amazed the producers of the Almanach de Gotha didn't go insane.
When Bismark united Germany in the 1870s the two Reuss lines became part of the German empire (although Heinrich XXII of Reuss Elder Line wasn't particularly happy about it, he had backed Austria-Hungary in the preceding war). So, how much territory was our boy Prince Heinrich XXVII of Reuss Younger Line actually in control of? Well, you could have held a football match there but if the spectators had wanted parking they would have had to invade a neighbouring state.
Coming as he did at the tail end of empire there wasn't much opportunity for our birthday boy to distinguish himself. He joined the army, as one did if one was a German prince, and served in the XI Corps during the First World War although how much he actually did is a little harder to determine. In 1918 when he was sixty years old the German empire came to an end and, taking the hint, he abdicated himself. Sometime thereafter he became simply Prince Reuss of no particular line when Heinrich XXIV of Reuss Elder Line (remember him) died without issue. Heinrich XXVII's son Heinrich XLV took over as head of the house, joined the Nazi party and disappeared without trace once the NKVD got their hands on him in 1945.
This might have left the world Reuss bereft but fortunately there was an obscure branch of Reuss Younger Line (may I be the first to suggest it be called Reuss Branch Line) called Reuss Kostritz and the descendants of that line carry the Reuss name (and of course the Heinrich name) into the twenty first century. The current head of house is Heinrich XIV of Reuss Kostritz.
For those who may be wondering about the somewhat bizarre numbering system its actually very simple. Every male child of the house is named Heinrich. Reuss Younger Line numbers its Heinrichs (whether they became rulers or not) starting from one at the beginning of the century. When a new century turns over they start back again at one. Reuss Elder Line numbered its Heinrichs from one to one hundred and when they got to a hundred went back to one again. This is laid down in the House Law of 1688 and so far they have seen no need to revise it.
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