How many world rulers could say: in my empire the sun never sets?

Answer

The statement ‘in my empire the sun never sets’ comes from Emperor Charles V of Spain and the Netherlands, who acquired the first great ‘colonial’ empire on both sides of the Atlantic in the first half of the 16th century. The statement also applies to his son Philip II, who ruled the same empire.

The same statement therefore applies to all colonial empires of the following centuries with possessions in the Far East or in Latin America (UK, Netherlands, France, Portugal, …). How many of those princes can be called ‘world rulers’ is a subjective matter, however, but in any case there have been dozens, if not hundreds of princes to whom the statement applied.

Willy Clarysse and Herbert Verreth
Research Unit History of Antiquity