Reuters
Kim Jong Un's wife, Ri Sol Ju, is known as the "Kate Middleton of North Korea."
Behind every great man is a great woman, as they say. But who stands behind the world's biggest despots?
In good times and in bad, the ladies of the Dictators' Wives Club put up with a lot: corruption, political uprisings, and often other wives.
Some, like Rwandan first lady Jeannette Kagame, use their position to advocate for charitable causes. Others, like the president of Syria's wife, Asma al-Assad, are pros at looking the other way and smiling for official Instagram photos.
For this list, we defined a dictator as a near-absolute ruler known for human-rights abuses, restrictions on freedom of the press, and oppression of opposition.
Melissa Stanger contributed reporting to a previous version of this article.