Many crowned heads in Europe and all over the world have used ex-libris in their libraries, and on occasion also for their personal books. In Sweden, for example, Sjögren’s Svenska Kungliga och Furstliga Bokägeremärken, published in 1915, lists over 550 supralibros and ex-libris used by the Swedish Royal family since the early 16th century. Brian North Lee’s British Royal Bookplates and ex-libris of related families (Scolar Press, 1992), documents over 200 such ex-libris in Britain, and his collection of Imperial, Royal and Princely ex-libris, the most complete collection in this field, world-wide, numbers close to 1000 items. Ex-libris of popes, emperors, kings and princes hold a special fascination, for several reasons> their owners usually played a historical rôle and are often familiar figures even to non-historians< their position implied that they nearly always had important libraries and efficient librarians to keep them in order< when an ex-libris was commissioned by ‘the Crown’, usually money was no object- which ironically, does not imply that such ex-libris are always beautiful, nor by the best artists of the time. As collector’s items, such ex-libris tend to be scarce, for most Royal librarians rightly refuse to give away prints> if they made exceptions to this rule, such bookplates would be constantly requested, and would never be pasted into books.