For two decades, rumors have swirled around the royal succession from Jordan’s King Hussein to his son, King Abdullah II. Hussein reinstated Abdullah as crown prince just days before Hussein died, a move that struck many at the time as sudden, controversial, even capricious.

But in a private conversation years earlier, King Hussein told Robert Satloff in confidence of his plans to return Abdullah to the line of succession, and the deeply personal reasons why. Long sworn to secrecy, Satloff can now tell the story of how a royal father’s heartache changed the course of a kingdom.

Middle East PolicyCast: Conversations on Middle East issues from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.