Jeremiah Heaton, who works in the mining industry and is a father of three, promised his daughter that she would be a real princess while they were playing in their Abingdon, Virginia, home last winter. His daughter Emily, who was 6 years old at the time, really wanted to become a princess, and her father did not let her down.

According to the Independent, Heaton traveled to an unclaimed area of 800-square miles of desert between Sudan and Egypt, and on Emily's seventh birthday on June 16, he planted a blue flag on a rocky hill claiming the area and calling it the "Kingdom of North Sudan." Heaton and his family came up with the name, and the blue flag with four stars and a crown was designed by his children.

According to a professor of political science and international studies Sheila Carapico of the University of Richmond, Heaton would need the neighboring countries and the United Nations to politically recognize the kingdom he plans to build, she told the Bristol Herald Courier. He would also have to seek approval from other groups to have real political control over the land, which locals call "Bir Tawil."

Sudanese and Egyptian embassy representatives did not respond to requests for comments regarding the matter.

Heaton explained that his claim for authority over the land as its king was legitimate since it was exactly how several countries were historically claimed -- including the United States. However, instead of an act of imperialism, which was how other nations were founded according to him, his was an act of love.

Heaton, who ran for Congress in 2012, according to the Washington Post, albeit unsuccessfully, plans to establish positive relationships with the neighboring nations Sudan and Egypt before he builds his "kingdom," which he plans on developing into an agricultural production center. Despite being skeptical of his own plans earlier on, he is now confident that his plans will succeed.