[1] Prince William's aunt, Queen Elisabeth of Romania, on learning that the Great Powers were looking for an aristocrat to rule over Albania, asked Take Ionescu to attempt to persuade them to appoint her nephew to the post.

[1] Eventually the European Great Powers – Austria-Hungary, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the French Third Republic, the German Empire, the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy – selected William, a member of the German princely house of Wied, and related to the Queen of the Netherlands to rule over the newly independent Albania.

One month after accepting the throne on 7 March, he arrived in his provisional capital of Durrës and started to organise his government, appointing Turhan Pasha Përmeti to form the first Albanian cabinet.

Immediately following his arrival, revolts of Muslims broke out in central Albania against his Chief Minister, Essad Pasha, and against foreign domination that was not Turkish.

[1] The outbreak of World War I presented more problems for Prince William as Austria-Hungary demanded that he send Albanian soldiers to fight alongside them.

When the Austro-Hungarians forced the Serbian and Montenegrin armies out of Northern Albania in the early months of 1916, William's hopes of being restored were raised although ultimately they came to nothing.

[citation needed] Although several of the factions competing for power in post-war Albania billed themselves as regencies for William, once central authority was definitively restored in 1924, the country was declared a republic on 31 January 1925, officially ending his reign.

[10] They had two children: Prince Wilhelm is portrayed in the 2008 Albanian film Time of the Comet (based on Ismail Kadare's novel "The dark year" (Viti i mbrapshtë), which takes place during his reign.