George Romero may be the King of Horror, Curzon notes, but one of his actors is the Prince of Ghor:
In today’s completely random note of trivia, it turns out that Scott Reiniger, a minor horror film actor best known for his role as the ill-fated police officer in the 1978 zombie cult film Dawn of the Dead (and who played a minor cameo role in the 2004 remake of the same name) is actually Afghan royalty!Reiniger’s great, great, great grandfather, Josiah Harlan, was an American assisting several independent rulers of South Asia, and became the first American to set foot in Afghanistan on a punitive expedition against an Uzbek warlord. He set off with a completely modern army, and came into contact with Mohammad Reffee Beg, an ambitious prince of Ghor, located in the western part of today’s Afganistan. He and his retinue feasted for ten days with Harlan’s force, during which time they observed the remarkable discipline and organization of the modern army, while Harlan was amazed by the working feudal system and the gender equality.
At the end of Harlan’s visit, the two agreed that Harlan and his heirs would be the Prince of Ghor in perpetuity, in exchange for raising and training an army with the ultimate goal of solidifying and expanding Ghor’s power. (Harlan ended up leaving Afghanistan, enjoying a brief period of fame in the U.S., but then failed at several unique ventures and ended up working in San Francisco as a doctor, dying a forgotten man.)
Scott Reiniger is the current descendant of Harlan with claim to the title, but has stated that he considers the title a historical anecdote with no real world importance (and it seems unlikely that anyone in Kabul, or Ghor, would be ready to accept him as their sovereign).