These Are The Craziest Rulers That Ever Lived

hey 42 here you think with a reality TV star as president a playboy as Prime Minister an ex-kgb agent as czar and a man addicted to Emmental cheese as supreme leader we were entering the peak of bizarre rulers returns a strange rulers have been a fixture for about as long as we've had one in charge of all the bizarre and deranged monarchs in history Vlad the Impaler is perhaps unique amongst them all for the staggering absurdity of his sadism and lust for murder so absurd that he was the direct influence for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula when your legacy is being the basis for one of the most evil characters in fiction you know you're a dick Vlad had an interesting life he was 15th century voivode ruler of villagio modern-day sovereign Romania three times and maybe the most brutal man who ever lived he was a member of the order of the Dragon a group of multicultural noblemen who banded together to repel the Ottomans and fight for Christianity the order gave him the sobriquet drakul or dracula in this endeavor he fared poorly because early on in his life he was captured by the Ottomans and kept prisoner in an attempt to blackmail his father below capture sounds bad he was relatively well treated being given training in horseback riding fighting science and the arts as to why you take someone hostage and train them how to kill you is beyond me but that's quite literally what happened eventually Vlad's brother who had also been captured changed allegiance to the Turkish side but not flat Vlad had a big impaling based future awaiting him he hung on to his anger and being captured and never lost his animosity towards the Turks soon Vlad was released and he almost immediately set about attempting to he gained his father's fro he was murdered during Vlad's absence Vlad succeeded then lost it again then regained it once more cutting ties with the Ottomans at the process but as he would have mentioned acquiring the frame requires one to silence critics and consolidate power and Vlad as destiny would have it at the perfect technique to do just that he would impale as many people as humanly possible impaling if you don't know is where a giant spike is rammed so far up your ass that it comes out of your mouth sometimes you are only partially impaled at the start letting gravity slowly move to spike upwards and through you as you move downwards it's a technique that truly brings new meaning to the phrase a pain in the ass I'll let you try and think of a worse death Vlad bloody loved impaling people he must have after all he did it so much he was named after it he murdered all those who challenged his authority and had their still twitching bodies impaled on spikes he was said to have impaled two monks and when their morning donkey refused to stop braying had the poor thing impaled as well a group of Turkish and Voice refused to remove their turbans due to religious custom so Vlad nailed their turbans to their skulls and you guessed it impaled them as he did with many of our dignitaries and prisoners under his command just what was his problem exactly nobody really knows he was said to have impaled 20 3844 turkish corpses during the invasion of bulgaria creating a veritable forest of impaled bodies think about that over 20,000 corpses with spikes up their backsides if he were around today romanian defense minister Ione husky said he would have been condemned for crimes against humanity if he were tried at Nuremberg but I think that's rather self-evident to be fair history is littered with bizarre rulers it doesn't matter which part of the world you go to it seems that strange people have a knack for acquiring power as to whether it's the power that makes them strange or the fact that strange people are drawn towards power isn't clear but what is clear is that the list of them is practically endless Charles's 6/4 he was made out of glass and would have seizures so violence he killed his companions and with EF had people kiss his bed linen to make sure it wasn't poisoned the Spanish royal family shared their beds of the body parts of st. George the fourth residents who kill himself if women didn't sleep with him Nebuchadnezzar had a biblical descent into madness Peter the Great was obsessed with holding enormous weddings for Dwarfs kin chuang who drank mercury in the pursuit of immortality spoiler it didn't work now as far as Roman emperors go you know you're a madman when you exceed the lunacy of Nero who famously played the fiddle whilst watching Rome burn and there was only one Emperor who managed that impressive feat Caligula a man so not there was even an erotic historical movie made about him in 1979 that had completely unstimulated sex scenes which is a highbrow way of saying porn Caligula ruled the Roman Empire during the years 37 to 41 ad a short reign but one that left an indelible impression on the son of a great military leader Caligula wound up under the wing of none other than Roman emperor Tiberius who was a psychopathic child molester who enjoyed watching his enemies being thrown off cliffs when that's your role model how can you not grow up mentally deranged sure enough a young Caligula was already an adept manipulated with a punch on four maliciousness and getting his way one overseer said of him never was there a better servant of a worse master but this isn't to say Caligula was in complete mastery of himself in fact he was often at the mercy of his own passions colliculus lames who have planned to kill the Emperor even venturing into his bedroom with a dagger to kill him before changing his mind this was in revenge for the way Tiberius had treated his mother Agra Pina the elder but perhaps it was the Emperor himself who had his own plans for young Caligula Suetonius the Roman historian who penned the vita Caesar the twelve Caesars from whom we know most of what we know about Caligula's history postulated that Tiberius looked after Caligula with the sole desire of as he set himself rearing a viper for the Roman people and taking someone who was already cruel and vicious and turning him into something far worse in Suetonius his words the ruin of himself and of all men in this he certainly succeeded Caligula was to put it politely a madman Nero was an evil man sure but he knew he was evil he was sane and very self-aware Caligula however was evil and mentally unhinged which is arguably more dangerous although adored by the Roman people when he first inherited the title of Emperor from Tiberius it wasn't long before this changed after a period of sickness the power of the title went swiftly to Caligula's head and soon his insatiable appetite for eccentric cruelty became apparent to all amongst his many actions he ordered his army to plunder the sea by collecting shells in their helmets requisitioned countless Roman ships so that he could have them fashioned into a two-mile long bridge for his horse rides the resulting shortage of ships caused a Roman people to staff falsely accused killed and imprisoned people in order to steal their estates bans the mention of goats in his presence as he was insecure about his tall hairy appearance auctioned the Liars of gladiators it shows spent 2.7 billion sesterces in his first year in office a huge sum even by modern standards tormented senators by making them run for miles in front of his speeding chariot drank pearls dissolved in vinegar dressed in wicks shoes and women's clothes in attempts to appear like anyone other than himself gave his horse an entire house of its own and even attempted to give it a role in government though the historicity of this one has been argued against had countless affairs with his allied wives had possible incestuous affairs with his sister loved to use the phrase remember that I have the right to do anything to any body and to cap it off he pretended he was a gut his excesses became so great that the praetorian guard the Senate and the Equestrian Order got together and decided to ambush and kill him he is now remembered in history as the first Roman Emperor to be assassinated but not the last Caligula wasn't the only ruler to get lost in his own childish and insane in horses if we leave ancient Rome fast-forward 1750 years and take ourselves into the sprawling expanse of Russia we find another rule a unique in his weirdness czar Paula first 1796 - 1801 little explanation at Zappos insanity is needed as much as a glance at his portrait will suffice just look at that forehead no seriously look at it but for the sake of this video I'll do my best in order to understand Paul you have to understand that he really really really loved his chivalric stories those being stories about Knights honor saving maidens quests and all the nonsense so famously lampooned by Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote Paul loved these stories so much they consumed his life he was obsessed with the exact details of his soldiers uniforms taking loans to ensure that they were excruciating ly elaborate and in perfect order like a perfect night around anyone who didn't meet saw Paul's fantastical standards would find themselves on the wrong end of a flogging which Paul sometimes carried out himself savagely whipping his victims for failing to appear in tidy jackets Paul was no stranger to ordering full dress parades right in front of his palace even if it was knee-deep finger freezing Russian winter he had erratic changes of minds which unsettles the various foreign powers around the world one example of this was when he decided that a full regiment of soldiers should march on foot all the way to Siberia a casual couple of thousand mile warned luckily for them he suddenly changed his mind and told them to turn back as part of his love of chivalry czar Paul became completely enchanted by the order of st. John a real-life religious order of chivalric Knights he eventually gains their attention became a grandmaster which irritated the Pope and almost went to war with France and England when he felt the order's dignity had been besmirched he considered the Russian nobility around him to be a pack of untrustworthy scoundrels unworthy of his chivalry ambitions as a result he attempted to groom them into the fine respectable honourable members of a modern-day chivalric order to those who listened he gave lumps and titles to those who did not he took them away needless to say if you are even remotely familiar of Russian history you can probably guess how this turned out Paul became unbelievably paranoid that everyone was sick of him and planning to kill him and it turns out they were upon hearing men sneaking towards his bedroom at night he attempted to hide behind the drapes unfortunately his curtains were not a portal to another dimension and they found him he was brutally garroted to death with a silk scarf which is a totally embarrassing way to go for a guy obsessed with heroism but you needn't look even that far into the past you find complete lunatics at the Helms of Nations in fact you only have to look back as far as 1936 when King Farouk the first world Egypt let's run through a quick checklist owned thousands of bespoke suits check hoarded cars jewels and watches check was obsessed with women and sex check [ __ ] check owned an autographed photo avid of Hitler as you do check bloated and overweight check cartoon villain mustache check rocked a cracking fairs check as you can see King Farouk had it all and buy it all I mean all the ingredients necessary to make for a very strange reign on top of all this King Farouk had one defining characteristic he was a complete and otter man child he would hurl food at dignitaries and cheer when he hit them even during formal state-sponsored meals he gave a man the position Minister of Justice because he had a great mustache a wise decision if you ask me he slid ice cubes down woman's exposed cleavages and told them to cool off he collected everything from medieval suits of armor to Faberge eggs to ancient Tibetan coins because why the hell not he even drove around honking his special custom-made car horn that he purpose-built to sound like a dog being killed but it doesn't stop there he once had a nightmare involving lions and upon waking promptly went to Cairo Zoo and blew two of them away in revenge when he began to dislike a train station he used a few times per year he helped the whole thing torn down and then rebuilt it as an absurd cost he even most bizarrely was an adept pickpocket having being trained by a professional thief he was so adept that he managed to deprive Juan Winston Churchill of his watch when the theft was discovered for root threw up his hands smiled and declared that he'd found it right where he was sitting what a coincidence widely condemned to be corrupt and ineffectual Farouk behavior led him to be overthrown forced into exile and his possessions which included one of the largest collections of pornography in the world became this subject of national ridicule now Trump's tweets maybe a tad bizarre at times but at least he doesn't walk around in affairs shooting Lions thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video then please consider supporting me on patreon which really helps me to continue to make them you can find a link in a description below also you can get your hands on a first edition signed copy of my new book stick a flag in it by heading on over to unbound publishing the links in the description and pre-ordering your copy today thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,244,741

Rating: 4.9078736 out of 5

Keywords: history, ruler, rulers, vlad the impaler, list, top 10, trump, vlad, roman empire, romans, caligula, nero, history channel, history shows, rome, most amazing top 10, ancient rome, top 10 list, roman history, documentary history, ancient history, empire

Id: m8HMfFBgYxo

Length: 16min 8sec (968 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020