Who Was The First King Of Rome?

I am not sure who could correctly be called the first king of Rome, if indeed anybody can really aspire to that title.

Originally Rome was a city state and according to legend was founded by two brothers, Romulus and Remus, who were raised by wolves.  Eventually Rome conquered and hence became the capital city of most of the Italian peninsula.  It does not to appear to have been ruled by a king up to this point, but by a committee of three men, each having the title of Consul, called the Triumvirate, who were elected by the citizens.

This continued up to the time of Julius Caesar, who gained so much power that he was virtually the ruler, but he never had any kind of royal title and was, in fact, murdered because it was feared he was likely to become an absolute ruler if allowed to continue.  Strangely enough, though he was not a king, a number of words for king are derived from "Caesar", for example "Kaiser" and possibly "Czar".

After Caesar's death, a new triumvirate consisting of his nephew, Octavius Caesar, his friend Mark Antony and a man called Lepidus, came to power and avenged his death.  Octavius Caesar eventually displaced the other two consuls, took the name "Augustus", and was declared "Imperator", or sole ruler.  During his rule the Roman empire expanded to almost its fullest extent and Augustus was far more than a king.  In fact, Imperator means Emperor, and it is from this title that we derive the word in the first place.

The Roman Empire was then ruled by a series of Emperors until they decided to move the capital of the Empire to Constantinople (now Istanbul).  The Roman Catholic Church was well established by then and the Popes were effectively the temporal rulers of varying parts of Italy, as well as the head of the Catholic church until the very end of the seventeenth century.  At this point Napoleon Bonaparte, a Corsican, succeeded in becoming the ruler of France, and swept across Europe, including Italy, in an attempt to unite it under himself as Emperor.  By 1815, Napoleon had been finally routed, and Italy had been carved up into states.  In the North was Piedmont, in the middle was a swathe of land, including Rome, which was ruled by the Pope, and to the south were Naples and Sicily.

Around the middle of the 19th century there were a lot of uprisings and Italy was eventually united under one rule.  The Pope was left with just the Vatican city in terms of temporal rule.

So I would say that Rome has never really had a king as such.  However, Napoleon Bonaparte, once he had conquered Italy along with most of the rest of Europe, gave his infant son the title "King of Rome".  He is, I believe, the only person ever to have held that title.  But since he was still very small indeed when his father was deposed, he lost his title long before he could have been a king in any meaningful sense.