Albanian independence was given international recognition at the so-called Conference of the Ambassadors, held in London in 1912-1913. This conference of the six Great Powers (Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Italy) began its work at the Foreign Office on 17 December 1912 under the direction of the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933). With regard to Albania, the ambassadors had initially decided that the country would be recognized as an autonomous state under the sovereignty of the sultan. After much discussion, however, they reached a formal decision on 29 July 1913 that Albania would be an autonomous, sovereign and hereditary principality by right of primogeniture, guaranteed by the six Powers. Albanian independence had thus been recognized, even though the authority of the new Albanian provisional government, formed on 5 July 1913, did not extend much beyond Vlora.
The new sovereign was to be designated by the six Great Powers upon the proposal of the two most-interested nations, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Their choice fell upon the German prince, Wilhelm zu Wied (1876-1945). Prince Wied was born of a noble protestant family in Neuwied on the Rhine, situated between Bonn and Koblenz. His mother was Marie, Princess of Holland. An officer in the Prussian army, Wied was a cousin of the German Emperor, and was the nephew of Queen Elizabeth of Romania. He was married to Princess Sophie (1885-1936) of Schönburg-Waldenburg in Saxony. In October 1913, the Great Powers offered him, as a compromise candidate, the throne of the newly independent country of Albania, a land about which he knew very little at the time. On 1 November 1913, after due reflection and imposing certain conditions of his own, Wied agreed to accept the Albanian throne, and arrived in Durrës on 7 March 1914 aboard the Austro-Hungarian naval vessel Taurus.