Line #20 YMMV/ICLAUDIUS


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2	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Claudius' behavior in the last act of the books. Was he only feigning indifference, as the StoppedCaring entry suggests, or was he passive-aggressively grooming Nero as revenge for his generally miserable life?
3	** Did Antonia have her slave carry out her instructions to cut off her hand for separate burial instead of Claudius because she really thought he'd forget, or did she want to spare him the pain of mutilating his own mother after seeing how grief-stricken he was when she told him she was going to take her own life?
4	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKwaCTfa1EE The main theme]].
5	* CompleteMonster: "Reign of Terror" & "Zeus, by Jove!": [[AmbitionIsEvil Quintus Naevius Cordus Sutorius Macro]] is a thuggish [[PraetorianGuard Praetorian]] who assists the rise of UsefulNotes/{{Caligula}}, helping to depose his former superior Sejanus and executing a bloody purge of Sejanus's allies and their families, [[WouldHurtAChild having Sejanus's young children killed]] and having the daughter raped so she will not die a virgin as to satisfy one soldier's superstition. Macro later murders the elderly Emperor Tiberius and the child co-emperor of Caligula Gemellus before serving as [[TheDragon the chief enforcer]] to Caligula's regime, overseeing purges, executions and forced suicides as long as he is able to profit.
6	* FanNickname: ''I, Clavdivs'' (achieved by pronouncing the Roman U's as V's; later home-video reissues do away with the Roman styling).
7	* SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct: The series is proof that Creator/BrianBlessed is occasionally capable of understated acting. Between this and not having a beard, he's almost unrecognizable to people who know his later work.
8	* HilariousInHindsight:
9	** The joke Tiberius and his brother make about Livia, "They say a snake bit her once and died." Commonly known nowadays as one of the most well-known Website/ChuckNorrisFacts.
10	** Much is made of Caligula thinking he is the Messiah of the Jews. His actor, Creator/JohnHurt, would go on to have a cameo as UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} in Creator/MelBrooks' 1981 comedy ''Film/HistoryOfTheWorldPartI''.
11	** For ''Series/DoctorWho'' fans, the fact that [[Creator/JohnHurt Caligula]] would [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E13TheNameOfTheDoctor later]] become the Doctor and [[Creator/DerekJacobi Claudius]] would [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E11Utopia later]] become a [[TheCaligula particularly unstable]] version of the Master [[note]]And while not as unstable as [[Creator/JohnSimm his own successor]], it was this storyline that introduced the notion of him being driven mad by [[TerribleTicking the drums in his head]], just like Caligula[[/note]]. Especially since, despite appearing years apart from each other and never meeting onscreen (or on audio), the two are both connected with the Time War to the point of being called the War Doctor and the War Master.
12	** When Jacobi was offered the role of Claudius, he assumed that he would playing the character from ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}''. He would later play the role in the 1996 film version.
13	** The Celts are all presented as having bleached-blond, spiky hair, which strongly resembles a hair styling fad that peaked in the 1990s before becoming CondemnedByHistory. The Celtic king looks more than a little like Guy Fieri.
14	** The bald busts being sold of Sejanus’ head in “Queen of Heaven”. Keep in mind, not only was Creator/PatrickStewart ''not'' as internationally known back in 1976, but both Sejanus and Stewart in RealLife at the time weren’t completely bald. Thanks to RetroactiveRecognition and the ''serious'' [[TheMerch merchandising]] of some of Stewart’s [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration subsequent]] [[Film/XMenFilmSeries projects]], to modern viewers, it instead looks like busts of Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier were apparently quite popular during the early Roman Empire.
15	** Exile to places like Pandateria and Rhodes are treated as almost a FateWorseThanDeath (not without justification, as the people sent there are held in isolation and were sometimes deliberately starved) when today these places are considered beautiful tourist destinations that people dream of visiting.[[note]]Frankly, even back then, neither place was a particularly bad destination if you weren't an Imperial family member being kept away from the limelight -- Pandateria was the site of one of Augustus's many palatial summer homes, and Rhodes was an important center of learning and commerce for the Eastern Mediterranean.[[/note]]
16	* HollywoodPudgy: Julia is frequently accused of overeating and being fat, and complains that her doctor told her to stop eating so much. The extent of her actual rotundity was that Frances White had a fuller face than the other actresses she was shown alongside, and was frequently shot lying down with her robes bunched up around her stomach.
17	* JerkassWoobie:
18	** Livia, in her final moments, becomes a figure of pity when Caligula tells her he will not redeem her of all the blood on her hands by making her a goddess as he promised.
19	** As much as an asshole as Tiberius is, it's kind of hard not to pity him when he learns that his son had been murdered by his allegedly "trustworthy" advisor. Also he never really wanted to be emperor in the first place and was pushed into it by his mother... whose plans necessitated forcing him to divorce the woman he was deeply in love with.
20	** Caligula, murderous bastard that he is, is clearly suffering and terrified when he suffers his mental breakdown. Even later, he tells Claudius about how he barely sleeps at night, and seems almost aware that something about him is terribly wrong.
21	* MagnificentBastard: [[EvilMatriarch Livia Drusilla]], wife of UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}}, is a ruthless schemer set to put her son Tiberius on the throne. Poisoning her daughter-in-law Julia's husband to free her for marriage and later poisoning her second husband after biding her time, Livia arranges for the deaths and ruination of multiple impediments and rivals: revealing the affairs of Julia to ruin her, arranging an affair between Julia's son Postumus and her own granddaughter before framing Postumus of assaulting her and later having him disposed of. Livia even kills Augustus himself with poison she smears on his personal figs even as she mourns him. Upon finding Tiberius a revolting disappointment, she assists in UsefulNotes/{{Caligula}}'s rise, though conceals the prophecy that UsefulNotes/{{Claudius}} will succeed Caligula as Emperor from the former, telling Claudius the truth of all that has transpired before her death with his vow that he will elevate her to a goddess when he is Emperor to save her from hell's torments.
22	* MoralEventHorizon:
23	** This is a series populated by devious conniving bastards who get away with some pretty horrible acts, but one of the worst examples is provided by PraetorianGuard captain [[BastardUnderstudy Macro]] when his predecessor Sejanus falls out of favor with the Emperor. Macro kicks off a bloody purge of everyone even remotely connected with Sejanus. Rome's streets run red, but the icing on the cake is when he orders the death of Sejanus's (very) young daughter. An officer reminds him that it's unlawful to execute a virgin. His response? "Then make sure she's not a virgin when you kill her, now GET ON WITH IT!"
24	** [[TheCaligula Caligula]] wasn't a great guy to begin with. He had already killed a lot of people, [[SelfMadeOrphan including Germanicus]], before becoming Emperor and deciding he was [[AGodAmI a god.]] But he didn't go fully [[AxCrazy off the deep end]] until he cut his [[BrotherSisterIncest wife]] open and [[EatsBabies ate]] their unborn child.
25	** Messalina might have cheated on her husband and become the biggest whore in Rome. And yeah, wanting to sleep with her stepfather, and then accusing him of trying to rape her when he rejected her, sure was bad. But she didn't reach the Moral Event Horizon until she threatened her own mother!
26	** Livilla was always a detestable person, but she truly crosses the line when she murders Castor and attempts to poison her own daughter.
27	* RetroactiveRecognition:
28	** Macro's voice sounds awfully familiar... Hey, that's Creator/JohnRhysDavies! But he's completely clean-shaven here, so that's why we can't recognize him for quite a while.
29	** Creator/PatrickStewart as Sejanus, more than a decade before he became [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Jean-Luc Picard]].
30	** Creator/BernardHill plays Gratus, a member of Praetorian Guard who helps elevate Claudius to Emperor decades before playing Captain Edward J. Smith in Film/Titanic1997 and King Théoden in Film/TheLordOfTheRings.
31	* SpecialEffectFailure: A few examples, this being a lower budget television production from 1976. However, the writing and acting are so magnificent that this sort of thing doesn't matter.
32	** The assassination of Caligula shows how theatre actors stab someone and make it look real. Unfortunately, this is television, so their methods (squeezing a sponge soaked in red dye, sliding a sword down someone's back instead of into their chest, etc) are a bit too obvious. For that matter, this applies to most of the murders.
33	** As Marcellus prepares to address the (unseen) crowd at the games in the first episode, they fall silent to listen to him. When he says, "Let the games begin!" the applause begins - instantly at full volume, with not even the briefest crescendo. It's very clear that someone has pressed "play" on a tape left in the middle of an applause track.
34	* {{Squick}}:
35	** Drusus's horse fell on him and trapped his leg against a sharp rock tearing it. We see the hideous open gangrenous gash on his leg and the make-up team did a great job at making it as disgusting as possible.
36	** Caligula. Incest. Eating babies. Groping his great-grandmother. As she herself puts it: ''"Little Monster."''
37	** Agrippinilla addressing Claudius as "Uncle" in the middle of an attempt to seduce him with a passionate speech. Possibly intentional on her part, as she and Pallas have been musing that Claudius might be attracted to her precisely because of the incest factor.
38	* ValuesDissonance: The books' treatment of women veers very closely to MadonnaWhoreComplex; Claudius outright saying that he's met about five or so "good" women in his life and that the rest are all irredeemably awful doesn't help matters. This is due in part to the Roman primary sources, since they themselves adhered to the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. You were either virtuous, dedicated to your husband and children and most importantly, to Rome, as Aggripina the Elder, Antonia or Octavia Minor were considered during and after their lifetimes; or you were a self-serving shrew who aimed to use your children to achieve power, that sometimes veering into also being slut-shamed, which is the point of view historians such as Tacitus or Cassius Dio have attributed to Messalina, Aggripina the Younger, Julia, UsefulNotes/CleopatraVII, and also sometimes Livia. Graves, writing in the 1930s, would have used the histories of Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius. It wasn't until later that more skeptical and revisionist views which attempted to read between the lines became more prominent and accessible.
39	* ValuesResonance: Divorce was a commonplace thing in AncientRome, but was still a bit taboo in TheThirties, when the book was written, and still not as common in 1976, when the TV show ran, as it is today.
40	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The makeup used to age Derek Jacobi, which is even more impressive now that we know he aged to look ''exactly'' like it. In general, the age makeups are very well done, Sian Phillips' being another standout example.
41	* TheWoobie: Creator/DerekJacobi's portrayal of Claudius clinches it. While he's certainly not a saint, the amount of suffering he experiences over his lifetime makes it impossible not to feel sorry for him, especially since his only major character flaw is cowardice, which could easily also be interpreted as a sensible regard for his own skin. Even becoming Emperor, and then a God during his lifetime (which was not unprecedented but still unusual), isn't enough to turn his fortunes around. Indeed the scene in which he finds out he has become a God is also the scene in which he founds out that, [[DrowningMySorrows while drunk the night before]], he had signed the order to execute his (beloved, but also seriously treacherous and ''epically'' unfaithful) wife, and that she had just been killed. The fact that there is a historical basis to believe that the majority of the things that happen to him during the show actually happened puts the icing on the cake OF SUFFERING.

Context YMMV / ICLAUDIUS