US man claims African kingdom for princess daughter

WASH NGT N — Jeremiah Heaton was playing with his daughter in their home last winter when she asked whether she could be a real princess.

Heaton, a father of three who works in the mining industry, didn’t want to make any false promises to mily, then si , who was “big on being a princess.” But he still said yes.

“As a parent, you sometimes go down paths you never thought you would,” Heaton said.

Within months, Heaton was ourneying through the desolate southern stretches of gypt and into an unclaimed 2000-squarekilometer patch of arid desert. There, on June 1 — mily’s seventh birthday — he planted a blue flag with four stars and a crown on a rocky hill. The area, a sandy e panse sitting along the Sudanese border, morphed from what locals call Bir Tawil into what Heaton and his family call the “Kingdom of North Sudan.”

There, Heaton is the self-proclaimed king and mily is his princess.

Heaton plans to reach out to the African nion for assistance in formally establishing the Kingdom of North Sudan and said that he is confident they will welcome him. Heaton said his claim over Bir Tawil is legitimate. He argues that planting the flag — which his children designed — is e actly how several other countries, including what became the nited States, were historically claimed.

jeremiah heaton and his daughter emily pose beside a flag of Bir Tawil, a land that heaton claims he ‘discovered.’