Deserving world leader and king in hot mess (5)
I believe the answer is:
worth
'deserving' is the definition.
(I know that deserving can be written as worth)
'world leader and king in hot mess' is the wordplay.
'leader' says to take the initial letters.
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'king' becomes 'R' (abbreviation for rex, king in Latin).
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'mess' is an anagram indicator.
The first letter of 'world' is 'w'.
'hot' anagrammed gives 'oth'.
'r' placed inside 'oth' is 'orth'.
'w'+'orth'='WORTH'
(Other definitions for worth that I've seen before include "Throw (anag.)" , "Value (of something)" , "Merit - value" .)