Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Arabic: طلال بن عبد العزيز آل سعود Ṭalāl bin ʿAbdulʿazīz Āl Saʿūd; 15 August 1931 – 22 December 2018), formerly also called The Red Prince,[1] was a Saudi Arabian politician, dissident, businessman, and philanthropist.

Prince Talal was born in Shubra Palace, Taif,[2] on 15 August 1931[3] as the twentieth son of King Abdulaziz.

[4][5] His mother was an Armenian woman, Munaiyir, whose family escaped from the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923, a period of turmoil in Armenia.

[8] During the reign of King Saud, Talal and Nawwaf became bitter enemies, to the point of contesting their inheritances.

[14] After Prince Talal's palaces were searched by the Saudi Arabian National Guard while he was abroad, he held a press conference in Beirut on 15 August 1962.

Soon the North Yemen Civil War began, and one week later, four crews of Saudi Arabian Airlines employees defected to Egypt.

Later, he, his half-brothers Fawwaz and Badr,[19] and his cousin Fahd bin Saad began to make statements on behalf of the Saudi Liberation Front.

After four years, during which King Faisal offered tremendous financial inducements to the Free Princes, the latter were again reconciled with the royal family.

[17] In exile, his own family did not support him and even criticized him for his intensive sympathy with then Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saudi Arabia's foremost enemy.

On 8 September 1963, The Sunday Telegraph reported that Talal's mother, Munaiyir, advised her son that he was behaving foolishly while his younger sister Madawi kept asking him to return home.

King Faisal reportedly refused to forgive Prince Talal but privately assured his mother that his assets would be unfrozen and that he could safely return home.

[20] In September 1961 Prince Talal called for establishing a constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia[21][22] and for closing the Dhahran Air Base which had been constructed by the US.

"[9] After the September 11 attacks, he challenged the "potentially very confusing" claim that rulers and religious scholars should jointly decide affairs of state.

"[27] However, in March 2009, he called on King Abdullah to clarify the appointment of Prince Nayef as second deputy prime minister.

[38] He was also a prominent member of the League for Development of the Pasteur Institute[38] and the honorary president of Saudi Society of Family and Community Medicine.

[43] Prince Talal hired one professor from the University of Houston and an instructor to teach English, psychology and Western civilization to his daughter Reema, who was 18 years old, in Riyadh in 1976.

[45] In July 2012, their daughter Sara sought political asylum in the United Kingdom on the grounds that she was fearful for her safety in Saudi Arabia.

His sons are Faisal (died 1991), Al Waleed, Khalid, Turki, Abdulaziz, Abdul Rahman, Mansour, Mohammed and Mashour.

Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud died in Riyadh[citation needed] on 22 December 2018.