Haile Selassie was the last emperor of a dynasty that claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He modernized Ethiopia, addressed the League of Nations in a speech that shamed the world for abandoning his country to Mussolini, and became a living god to the Rastafari movement — all while ruling as an autocrat whose failure to reform ultimately triggered the revolution that deposed and killed him.

This episode traces Selassie from his noble Ethiopian origins through the Italian invasion, the exile and restoration, the Rastafari deification, and the 1974 revolution that ended three thousand years of Ethiopian monarchy.

• Selassie's noble origins and his rise through Ethiopian court politics to the imperial throne
• The Italian invasion, the League of Nations speech, and the exile that shamed the Western democrac ...