Umwami Kigeli V Ndahindurwa, who has died at the age of 80, was the last king of Rwanda. An impressive 2.2m tall, Kigeli V ascended to the throne in July 1959 after his half-brother, King Mutara III Rudahigwa (who was childless), died in mysterious circumstances.Rwanda was, at the time, part of a UN Trust territory ruled by Belgium. Before Kigeli took the throne, there had been growing tensions between the minority but dominant Tutsi (to which he belonged) and the majority Hutu.Kigeli's elevation, engineered by the Tutsi establishment, was a surprise to the now pro-Hutu Belgian administration, which was not involved in his selection and regarded it as a coup. Kigeli, however, embraced the role of "father of all Rwandan people", and his appointment was greeted favourably by Tutsi traditionalists and Hutu moderates.However, political instability and attacks by Hutu extremists, fomented by the Belgian military, became increasingly violent, and many Tutsis were forced into exile. The Belgians then replaced many Tutsi chiefs with Hutu, reducing Kigeli to figurehead status.Despite continued anti-Tutsi violence, Belgium organised elections in mid-1960. Hutu parties gained control of nearly all communes.In 1961 Hutu political leaders declared Rwanda an autonomous republic and, after Kigeli left the country to appeal to the UN secretary-general, the Belgian governor blocked his return. The Belgians then held a referendum in which the country voted overwhelmingly to abolish the monarchy. Rwanda gained independence in 1962.Kigeli lived in several central African nations before settling in Kenya during the 1980s. In 1992 he obtained political asylum in the US, where he founded the King Kigeli V Foundation, working with Rwandan refugees, and campaigned to be allowed to return to Rwanda as king.A profile in Washingtonian magazine in 2013 found him living off food stamps in subsidised housing, his income supplemented by the sale of Rwandan knighthoods as novelty status symbols.Kigeli was born on June 29 1936 in Kamembe, Rwanda, into a Tutsi dynasty that had ruled for more than nine centuries. He was the son of King Yuhi V Musinga and Queen Mukashema.Musinga had come to power in 1896 when Rwanda was part of German East Africa, and he collaborated with the Germans to strengthen his own kingship. In 1931, however, he was deposed by the Belgian administration (which had been granted the right to govern by the League of Nations in 1916) partly due to his refusal to become a Roman Catholic.He was succeeded by his eldest son, Mutara III, who converted and, after Musinga died in 1944, led the royal family back to Rwanda, where Kigeli was also baptised a Roman Catholic.On July 25 1959, however, Mutara died suddenly, shortly after a visit to a Belgian doctor. Rumours that he had been killed by the Belgians were rife, and tensions rose.The Abiru - traditional guardians of ritual - declared Kigeli to be the next king.After Kigeli was forced into exile and following independence, Rwanda endured three decades of ethnic violence, culminating in the mass slaughter of 1994, in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists.By this time Kigeli was in the US. He was childless, observing a royal custom forbidding marriage in exile, and held on to the hope that he might return to the throne.1936 -2016..