Meet 13 women married to the world's biggest dictators

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.