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If only the Roman people had but one throat, that I might slit it!
Madness reigns
In the hall of the Mountain King
— Hall of the Mountain King by Savatage
The downside of any hereditary monarchy is that every so often the throne is inherited by someone completely out of his gourd. It could be the lead plumbing (or complete lack thereof), the immortality elixirs (which all make use of mercury) or it's genetic ( In which case you're in some deep trouble). Yet, despite the sovereign's obvious insanity, he is still given the full power and support of the State, with inevitably disastrous consequences.
The Caligula will be wildly irrational, violently moody, very intolerant of being told anything he doesn't want to hear, and probably afflicted with a god complex. To do anything the Caligula finds displeasing is to inevitably be dragged off to a grisly death or worse. Of course, this could also happen to those who have not done anything at all. Due to their continuing close proximity to the Caligula, members of the Court will be the primary targets of his fits of rage. The Caligula is very definitely a Bad Boss. With any luck, thanks to The Starscream/Reliable Traitor/La Resistance, a conspiracy will eventually develop to remove the crazy sovereign from his post... permanently.
And while all of this is going on, the land over which the Caligula rules is rapidly going down the drain due to his neglect. At best. If he's a Glory Hound, he has an advantage over most: he can start wars.
This is not limited to sovereign heads of state. The Caligula can be anyone wielding great power within an organization while being completely nuts.
See Royally Screwed Up for when the this type of character becomes a recurring family problem. Also see President Evil for when you idiots actually vote this guy into office. (Well, usually.)
Named for what is probably history's best known whack-job, Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus , better known as Caligula ( Little Boots, his childhood nickname), a reference to his "caliga" sandals; remembered for talking to statues, making his horse a consul, and boning his sister.
Examples:
Anime
Comic Books
- Conan The Barbarian came up against mad and corrupt kings with some regularity, but the most notable of these was King Numedides, who Conan overthrew to become king of Aquilonia. Numedides regularly had men and women skinned for minor mistakes; indeed, when Conan was imprisoned in his tower, Numedides had a dancer who Conan liked skinned, and her flesh tossed in Conan's cell. Conan immediately recognized who it belonged to because of the dancer's many tattoos. As well, in order to become immortal, Numedides enlisted the services of the Evil Sorcerer Thulandra Thuu; together, they sacrificed young women in order for Numedides to bathe in their blood.
- In "The Hour of the Dragon," Valerius fits this trope perfectly: his drunken revelry, sexual violence and senseless slaughter was so extensive that his co-conspirators had to step in, to stop him from running the kingdom into the ground.
- Chief Judge Cal in the Judge Dredd story "The Day The Law Died" (collected as Judge Caligula) is, as the name suggests, closely based on the Emperor (even being drawn to resemble Hurt in I Claudius). Caligula (allegedly) made his horse a senator; Cal made his goldfish Deputy Chief Judge. Caligula demanded grandiose building projects; Cal expected the citizens to build a mile high wall around Mega-City One in a week. He also argued with deceased former Chief Judges, preserved his execution victims in vinegar, and sentenced the entire city to death twice.
- At least the mile-high wall actually helped protect the city later on.
- Vulcan (from the actual Summers Family Tree) becomes king of the Shi'ar empire, of all things, and essentially drives the entire people to hell, dividing them and thus starting the War Of Kings.
- Former Shi'ar king D'Ken, who is at least partially responsible for Vulcan being as screwed up as he is, was another fine example (until he was killed by, you guessed it, Vulcan).
- Like Conan, Red Sonja has come up against her fair share of mad kings. Unlike Conan, most of them attempted to imprison her in their harems. Bad move.
Film
- Of course, there is Caligula himself, who appears in the guise of Jay Robinson (pictured above) in The Robe (1953) and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) and of Malcolm McDowell in (what else?) Caligula (1979).
- The Roman emperor Commodus as depicted in Gladiator and The Fall Of The Roman Empire. Commodus wasn't nearly as bad in real life as he was in either film, but he still wasn't the sort of monarch you'd take home to mother - he thought he was the reincarnation of Hercules, fought as a gladiator in the arena (so the film got that bit right) and is best-known for ending the "Five Good Emperors".
- Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland exemplifies this trope almost perfectly. He begins as an Anti Hero and descents into complete madness and insanity.
- Harold Shand, anti-hero of the classic 1980 British gangster movie The Long Good Friday. He begins as a competent mob boss with grand ambitions, who nonetheless seems sane and grounded. After a series of mysterious and violent incidents chip away at his criminal empire, he gradually falls apart; by the end of the film he has slit the throat of his most trusted lieutenant, alienated his most valuable business partners, and had his fellow gang bosses strung up on meat hooks. It all ends badly.
- Roberto is depicted as one in Futurama: Bender's Game, having sent his entire army out to wage war on scallops.
- Swan, the villainous record producer of Phantom of the Paradise. Though he styles himself as an Affably Evil manipulator, almost every single decision he makes in the film is made on a whim: his employees are hired, fired or reassigned on the flimsiest of reasons, he imprisons his stars in torturously ironclad contracts, rewrites the Phantom's music to cater to his own eccentric tastes, and even orders his fiancée assassinated at his wedding for the sake of publicity. Worse still, not only is he in complete control of the music industry, he's also immortal.
- Then there's Quo Vadis, which gave us a delightfully mad Nero played by Peter Ustinov. Arguably one of the best things in the whole movie.
Literature
- The Prophet's House Quintology loves this trope, featuring the deranged twentysomething dictator Anora, as well as her nephew/husband Anaias (who's even worse).
- A Song Of Ice And Fire gives us both King Aerys II "The Mad" Targaryen and King Joffrey Baratheon (who knew a 13-year-old could be that psychotic?). The former was the worst king Westeros ever had, and a powerful 300-year old dynasty was overthrown because of his insane actions. The latter's reckless cruelty and love of ordering beheadings resulted in a civil war.
- Indeed, the whole Targaryen dynasty had this trope going on. Half of them were wise and benevolent rulers. The other half were Caligulas. The dynastic tradition of Brother Sister Incest might have had something to do with this.
- There is Cersei as the Queen Regent, as well. Not as bad as her son Joffrey, though.
- Not to mention Lysa Arryn. Her eight-year-old son Robert seems to be a Caligula in the making too, although at the moment he's mostly just a Royal Brat.
- Swemmel, king of Unkerlant, in Harry Turtledove's Darkness novels, who's really just a Fantasy Counterpart Culture equivalent of Joseph Stalin.
- The "Gentleman With the Thistle-down Hair" from Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell both in his dealings with humans and management of his kingdom in Faerie.
- That's quite normal for faeries in the Strange & Norrell books.
- It's normal for faeries everywhere, really.
- Discworld throws a few examples at us:
- There was King Gurnt the Stupid of Lancre, whose attempt at training an aerial attack force of armored ravens never got off the ground (literally).
- Duke Felmet, also of Lancre, might have been stable before he gained the throne through regicide, but afterwards he would regularly try to remove the blood from his hands via sandpaper or cheese grater and be surprised that this only generated more.
- His wife is even worse, being nothing more than a card carrying Social Darwinist sociopath.
- Ankh-Morpork has had its share of unbalanced rulers as well, like King Ludwig the Tree, who once issued a royal proclamation on the need to develop a new type of frog and thought up the city motto "Quanti Canicula Ille In Fenestra" (which is pseudo-Latin for "How much is that doggy in the window?"), and King Lorenzo the Kind, who was "very fond of children", If You Know What I Mean. King Lorenzo was the last straw; after his execution, Ankh-Morpork became a republic, led by the Patrician. Although actually it was more like the nobles appointed one of their number to wield power. By the time of the books the Council chooses the Patrician and includes nobles and Guild leaders. Safe to say there is no electing in the modern sense going on.
- Mind you, some of the Patricians weren't much better:
- The literal-minded Olaf Quimby II established a Bureau of Measurements to test various idioms, like exactly how bad a poke in the eye with a blunt stick was supposed to be.
- Homicidal Lord Winder turned Ankh-Morpork into a police state out of paranoia.
- Finally, there's the aptly-named Psychoneurotic (sometimes merely Mad) Lord Snapcase — who, in a Shout Out to Caligula, made his horse a councilor. (Although it apparently wasn't a bad one compared to the others: a vase, a heap of sand, and three people who had been beheaded.)
- All in all, when the tyrannical but entirely sane Vetinari takes over, Ankh-Morpork sees its first grea...first goo...first effective ruler in many centuries.
- Yet another example is the Agatean Emperor in Interesting Times, who is liable to order people tortured to death or rewarded based upon the slightest whim.
- His grand vizier isn't much better, but you saw that coming.
- Lois McMaster Bujold's Barayarran Empire had a Mad Emperor Yuri about a generation before the Vorkosigan series starts.
- They've also had Prince Serg, who would certainly have qualified, had he not... conveniently died... before succeeding to the throne.
- Also, there is a widely-mentioned historical case where a Count Vortala did appoint his horse, Midnight, as his heir.
- But there is no indication that Vortala was either crazy, or evil. He just did it as a Take That to his previous heir, whom he was having an argument with.
- Mad King Alan II in Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon is a good example of this, although his madness tended more towards harmless debauchery. It was only through the malevolent influence of the story's Big Bad that he inflicted genuine suffering on the populace.
- The Queen of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland, arguably. Adaptations have played it up even more.
- Several of the gods portrayed in the series Everworld fit this description perfectly. Almost every god that the main characters encounter, regardless of what mythology they originate from, has an utterly apathetic regard for life in general (being gods and all) and shows a certain degree of sadism, though some of them (especially Neptune) are simply bat-shit insane.
- The Harkonnens in Frank Herbert's Dune novels were pretty much an entire family of Caligulas. Gladiatorial death sports, hunting humans as game, perverse sexual lust, murdering random servants, obscenely expensive luxuries, drug addiction, torture as entertainment—they did it all.
- The ruling Urga line of Cthol Murgos in the Belgariad all reliably go insane before late middle age. Taur Urgas is said to execute people for stepping on his shadow and encourages his sons to kill each other so the strongest one could claim the throne; when the king of Algaria kills him, he turns completely animalistic in his death throes. Urgit, his successor in the Mallorean, survived to that point by stealing a key to the treasury and hiring assassins; he's actually sane, if a Deadpan Snarker, but that's because he's not Taur Urgas's son at all - his mother had an affair with Silk's father, and he was the result. Thankfully for Cthol Murgos, the Urga bloodline has died out.
- King Ademar of Gorhaut in Guy Gavriel Kay's A Song for Arbonne has rabid dogs tearing each other to pieces before the throne and maids give him blowjobs right in front of a very discomfitted court, among many other strange hobbies.
- At least as portrayed in the 1632 series, Charles I of England seems to qualify. This Troper isn't familiar enough with the real history to comment on the accuracy of the depiction, however.
- The Stuart monarchs in general were firm believers in the divine right of kings, they were also generally pretty feckless as rulers. 1632 Charles has heard what will happen to him and is lashing out at his future enemies. True to form, he's messing it up (he's driven his historical best supporter into working with Cromwell, who's still alive if on the run). Odds are the English Civil will come early in this world. This makes him a particularly incompetent Caligula.
- The 120 Days of Sodom centers around four French aristocrats who use their vast wealth and power to have sixteen young teenagers kidnapped. They lock themselves in a secluded castle with those teenagers, their own daughters, four old prostitutes, eight massively endowed men, and the four ugliest old women they can find. Over the next four months, they have the "ultimate in orgies" - they rape, torture, dismember, and murder all but a few of those guests.
Live Action TV
- The emperor Caligula himself, as magnificently depicted by John Hurt in I Claudius. (See also Brother Sister Incest.)
- The Centauri Republic's insane emperor Cartagia from Babylon 5. He even sets his planet on a path he knows will probably end with it blown into little pieces because he thinks it'll make a fitting ceremony for his ascension to godhood. In the end, soon-to-be Prime Minister Londo and his associates assassinate him.
- Wait, a republic with an emperor?
- It was sort of a ceremonial post, as I recall. Just how ceremonial depended on the Emperor in question, as some left much of the work of governance to the Centaurum. Similar to how Rome claimed to be a Republic.
- There's actually not much of a contradiction in classical philosophy; lots of ancient republics had kings (Sparta even had two). See this article. If you follow Dr. Johnson's definition of a republic as "a government of more than one person," it makes perfect sense.
- He also does delightful things like talking to the severed heads of his political rivals.
- The Emperor of the Daleks in the new series of Doctor Who maintains that he is a god, and responds to criticism with a resounding "THOSE WORDS ARE BLASPHEMY!" (Previous Emperors, as seen in the old series and in the Dalek Empire audios, tended to be saner.) It's understandable, though; seeing almost your entire race wiped out in a single stroke can't be good for your mental balance.
- Not to mention the necessity of working toward your goals in complete isolation for unknown millennia.
- The original series of Doctor Who portrayed Nero this way in the serial "The Romans".
- And don't forget the Master, who under the alias of Harold Saxon became Prime Minister, despite still being as mad as ever, if not more so.
Tabletop Games
- More than a few planetary lords in Warhammer 40000 probably fit into this category, but special mention must be made of High Lord Goge Vandire, who in the 36th millennium managed to take control of both the Imperium's Administratum and Ecclesiarchy, beginning the Age of Apostasy. Vandire was notoriously paranoid and ordered the deaths of millions and the destruction of entire worlds due to real or imagined plots against him. He eventually developed a phobia of light and took to wandering the darkened corridors of the Imperial Palace while muttering to himself, and was ultimately killed by his all-female cadre of bodyguards to end the devastating civil war. In the four thousand years since then, the Imperium has all but destroyed itself waging penitent crusades to atone.
- Ravenloft loves this trope. About half the domains are ruled by Caligulas (even if they're not the actual darklord). Some examples include Othmar Bolshnik, who's on the brink of declaring himself king of a nation that withholds the title of "king" for their mythical religious ruler; Ivan Dilisnya, a paranoid opera fanatic who sends suspected enemies, actors who displease him, and anyone else he has a problem with to his Play Room; and Vlad Drakov, who seems to be the creators' attempt to put Vlad the Impaler and Hitler in a blender and see what comes out.
- Paranoia is a Tabletop Game based solely on being controlled by a Caligula named "Friend Computer."
- Vampire The Requiem loves this trope, and the entire Ventrue clan more or less exemplifies this tendency. While it's possible for other clans to go Caligula, 9 times out of 10 it's a Ventrue.
- Yes, but just one flavor of Caligula? The Ventrue have dozens of bloodlines, all based on this concept. Just want to be a crazy? Try the Malkovians. Creepy obsessive shut-ins? Malocusians. Sadistic gluttons? Macellarius. Ventrue supremacist with overhanging racist/nativist tendencies? Deucalion. Crazed worshippers of divine architecture? The Architects of the Monolith.
- In fact, in a possible creation myth explained in Mythologies, Caligula was, in fact, the first Gangrel. Julius Caesar was the first Ventrue. Bullshit, yes, but a very clever Lampshade Hanging about the Julii clan.
- Werewolf The Apocalypse had the Silver Fangs, the "ruling tribe" of werewolves, who, thanks to inbreeding with the royal houses of Europe, had an increasing tendency to be off their rockers.
Video Games
- " I am Truth! Voice of the Covenant!!!!"
- Lord Dimwit Flathead, first ruler of the Great Underground Empire in the Zork series, was particularly known for his excess - a coronation ceremony that took thirteen years to organize and carry out, the 3000-gated Flood Control Dam #3 (which served absolutely no purpose whatsoever), the creation of a subterranean desert mountain in a cave below his castle, and a 100% tax rate (previously 98%; he adopted all his subjects and cut off their allowance to raise taxes to 100%) instituted to pay for such grand civic works. His last work was to be the creation of a new continent shaped in his likeness. Fortunately for mapmakers, he died before the project could be started.
- King Bowser from Super Mario comes off this way in the RPGs. Also King Croacus in Super Paper Mario. The latter is justified in that he's driven insane by poisoning.
- Actually, this troper always found him to be simply more like a glorified organized crime Don.
- King K.Rool from Donkey Kong Country. It got so bad that apparently his minions deposed him and replaced him with a robot. Of course, then you find out later that he was controlling the robot anyway....
- Anybody who has ever played Suikoden II for more than five minutes knows that Prince Luca Blight may even dwarf Caligula in the Axe Crazy psycho department. This is a man who had his country's equivalent of the Boy Scouts murdered to restart a pointless war, and when burning entire towns to the ground for the hell of it, would round up, torture, and slaughter every single villager one by one (including women and children) personally while laughing merrily with a smile on his face. Ironically however, he never got around to the murdering his father and taking the throne part of this trope before the heroes did away with him. Then a former protagonist fills in that blank by marrying the princess, killing the king, and taking over the country himself in a misguided attempt to stop the war.
Luca: I want you... to act like a pig. Hahahahahah!!!!! (Two minutes later) DIE, PIG!!!!!! (stabs woman)
- Mad King Ashnard, Darwinist villain of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. In order to be crowned king, he orchestrated a plague that wiped out a large amount of his country's population to get rid of the many nobles who were ahead of him in the line of succession. Notable for attempting to start a worldwide conflict and release a dark god on the world just because he felt like it. After touching an amulet that was established to drive most humans into a mindless killing rage, his personality remained unchanged, the implication being that he couldn't possibly become any worse than he already was. Interestingly enough, he wasn't considered to be a bad ruler by the common people of Daein, largely due to his policy of awarding high-level positions to anyone of sufficient skill.
- Dwarf Fortress gives you plenty of opportunities to be this in great fashion. For example, you can drop your dwarves in lava for the hell of it.
- In-game, dwarf nobles have a tendency to sentence dwarves to "hammerings" (usually fatal, but not always) when their mandates are not met.
- In the legendary Let's Play Boatmurdered, the one who'd best qualify for this would be "Emperor" Sankis, Mad Artist who was known to etch various illustrations upon the wall of grotesque imagery and whose Ax Crazy Rampage (while on FIRE) was the beginning of the end of the Wretched Hive that is Boatmurdered.
- A somewhat more humorous example of the trope is referenced in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's backstory, detailed in the in-game book The Madness of Pelagius. Pelagius was given an amulet that drained his sanity over the years. Early on, his weight would shift alarmingly from overweight to anorexic. He was known to have locked foreign princes and princesses in his room with him until their countries threatened to wage war, but his madness became much more noticeable when he stripped naked during a speech. This was before being crowned emperor. When an Argonian diplomat came to Tamriel, Pelagius insisted on speaking in what he believed to be its "natural language:" Grunts and squeaks. The book mentions him ordering his servants to clean the palace early in the morning; he is said to have defecated upon the floor to give them something to do, but this is described as "probably apocryphal." After he began to bite and attack visitors to the palace, he was moved to an asylum. This is a borderline example, since he didn't actually rule the empire.
- The Elder Scrolls also has Sheogorath, appropriately the god of madness. He features heavily in Oblivion's Expansion Pack, where the player can visit his realm. Though not nearly as dangerous or unpredictable as other Caligulas, Sheogorath does has his eccentrices, including going into a rant about cheese while briefing his champion on a mission, making burning dogs fall from the sky, alternating randomly between happy and violently threatening, and having a Split Personality: the expansion pack's Big Bad.
- In Clive Barker's Jericho, the hedonistic Governor Cassus Vicus was banished to the very edges of the Roman Empire by Caligula himself.
- King Bohan in Heavenly Sword is a particularly Hammy example.
- Gilgamesh in Fate Stay Night. So damn bad. The prequel reveals that he's so batshit crazy irresponsible that he might as well be a starfish alien as far as Saber is concerned. At least with Rider (Alexander the Great), a self admittedly horrible tyrant, she could debate the policy a king should have as at least he thought a king should have one.
- Viva Caligula from the Adult Swim web site is built around this.
- In the backstory to the Homeworld series of RTS games, the Taiidani Empire fell under the control of a particularly... 'unstable' ruler, who then proceeded to compound the problem by massacring all his rivals and decreeing that all future Emperors would be clones of him. The insane policies 'he' carries out during the course of the game lead to the empire being overthrown after the insanely efficient Hiigaran fleet kills 'him'.
- Kefka, of course! When bored, he razes entire cities.
Webcomics
- King Steve from 8-Bit Theater is a Dead Baby Comedy Cloud Cuckoo Lander. One of the least dangerous things he has done was holding an election for the office of King. He lost the election to a piece of string..."whom" he then assassinated by cutting it in two with scissors when no one else was near.
- Very literally Dead Baby Comedy as that's what his shoes are made of. They tend to rot, however, so he has to get new ones "Fresh daily."
- Another election simply gave the population the choice of either King Steve as supreme ruler, or to get a sword in the head. 52% of the survey population died.
- He also thinks that he invented inventing, started a war to force pacifism on the elves, and was once told he had news and enthusiastically asked "does it involve cupcakes?" and decided he didn't care when the answer was no, thinks he designed his castle to be four hundred years old, and apparently knew what a robot version of himself was saying even after the robot exploded. If he isn't a Ralph Wiggum then nobody is. Did we mention that was unable to tell the difference between his daughter and his Beleaguered Assistant Left-Hand-Man Gary? (In case you were wondering, his right-hand-man is a coffee stain called Rodney.)
- Stephen in Terror Island, who somehow managed to be elected Czar of Geography City, largely wields his power to sentence innocent people to indentured labor at Jame's restaurant and to attempt to force Sid to buy groceries. His successor Blueteen isn't much better, sending people to prison (including himself) for attending parades.
- Not only that, but the parade was actually only supposed to be for stuntmen. Why? Because he had just solved the problem of Jame's stuntman no longer being bound by law to him for jaywalking by telling Jame to just hire him.
- Makes them still pretty harmless villains, if villains at all.
- The Baron in Spiky-Haired Dragon, Worthless Knight is as much of a Caligula as he can be without pissing off higher-level nobles and fellow barons, which is still a lot, especially to the title character (the knight, not the dragon).
- Chancellor Valorum in Darths And Droids. The annotation explains that they wanted to make him more interesting than in the movie version, who was bland and boring. Consequently, he becomes a maniac who praises the droid army for overthrowing their human oppressors, urges people to replace their bodies with cyborgs, and demands that all shall "Kneel Before Valorum!". His getting voted out of office makes a lot more sense now.
Western Animation
- Kuzco from The Emperors New Groove is one example where The Caligula in question is the Main Character, although he's spoiled, feckless and self-absorbed rather than outright insane. He gets better.
- Avatar The Last Airbender: Already unstable following the Heel Face Turns of Mai and Ty Lee at the Boiling Rock, Princess Azula falls quickly into paranoia and fits of rage after Ozai promotes her to Fire Lord, banishing servants and guardsmen from the country in droves and hallucinating about her Missing Mom, Princess Ursa.
- The Almighty Tallest of Invader Zim have tendencies as such, being perfectly happy to put their subjects under such events as Probing Day, where they make Invaders do ridiculous things to entertain them or else suffer a pummeling (pushing some buttons that lead to said Invaders getting beat up by their own technology).
- Not to mention the entire principle of destroying a planet to build a parking garage or food court.
- Galvatron from Transformers Generation 1. Spending the time between the movie and season three in a lava pit turned him from the Megatron-but-competent of the movie to... uh... the way we all remember him being. He blasted more of his own troops in his rages than Autobots in battle, and at one point, some other Decepticons told his right hand bot Cyclonus that if something didn't change, they were going to deal with both of them. too bad no Decepticon civil war ever materialized.
Web Original
Real Life ( depressingly long)
- Again, Caligula. The imperial guards finally snapped and killed not only him, but his entire family just in case it was In The Blood. The only survivor? His uncle Claudius, who became the next emperor (and managed to survive for quite a while by using Obfuscating Stupidity).
- He wasn't as nutty as to think that a horse would make a good chancellor, though. He just wanted to show utter contempt towards the Senate.
- From The Other Wiki:
Caligula planned a campaign against the British in 40, but its execution was bizarre: according to Suetonius, he drew up his troops in battle formation facing the English Channel and ordered them to attack the standing water. Afterwards, he had the troops gather sea shells, referring to them as "plunder from the ocean, due to the Capitol and the Palace". Modern historians are unsure if that was meant to be an ironic punishment for the soldiers' mutiny or due to Caligula's derangement.
- Caligula's nephew Nero wasn't exactly a bastion of sanity, either.
- Sure he was. He had a very important fiddle lesson that day.
- It was
a lyre bagpipes, and he sang a lovely song about the fall of Troy. Hey, when inspiration strikes...
- The story about Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned down has been disproved. Not only was the fiddle not yet invented, but most modern historians agree that Nero was not even in Rome. Not only that — Nero tried to stop the flames and ordered huge relief efforts.
- Even in the original sources for the story, it is reported, and discounted, only as a rumour that was running around the City.
- Reportedly Nero once said that he wanted to burn down Rome and rebuild it in his image. He probably didn't mean that, but either way, he was widely hated after the fire.
- It didn't really help that he did rebuild the burned portions of Rome in his image. Namely, he had built a gigantic and magnificent marble and gold palace with working fountains and vast gardens. There wasn't much effort to build new housing for the displaced people who'd escaped the fire and had no home to return to, however.
- He did plenty of other fucked up stuff, including sexual torture for entertainment, illuminating his gardens with burning Christians, and kicking his pregnant wife to death. There is some truth in the stories of Nero as an insane monster — Diocletian, for example, persecuted the Christians more than Nero did, but he is not remembered like this. Nero wasn't called "the Anti-Christ" for nothing...
- Your Mileage May Vary on the human torches (heh, heh, I made a pun). I feel it was an inventive way to execute prisoners and, at the same time, give light to his gardens.
- That's because, if you bar the Christian prosecution, Diocletian was actually a Magnificent Bastard.
- And Domitian. He would sit in a room and stab flies with a pen, among other...eccentricities. Again, if you believe what ancient historians wrote about him. Which, given his relationship with the senatorial class, the most likely audience and source or authors in those days, was unflattering.
- General rule among historians of the Roman Empire: those who were Christians (like Lactatius and Eusebius) adored pissing on the Pagan emperors who persecuted Christanity and describing them as huge Caligulas, specially Diocletian and Galerius. OTOH, their Pagan counterparts (like Zosimus) did their best to bash Constantine. Then Christian hagiography took the first phenomenon and ran with it. You Should Know This Already.
- Well, Diocletian is not remembered as a Caligula, if at all. Julius Caesar's dynasty (which ended with Nero) has been proven to be inbred and insane.
- Continuing with the theme of crazy Roman emperors, we have the much later Commodus, who believed himself to be Hercules reborn and insisted upon being depicted wearing Hercules' trademark lion-skin at all times. Commodus also liked to pretend to be a gladiator and fight in the arena, completely ignoring the fact that his poor opponents couldn't exactly fight back — particularly since they were often not simply bound not to hit the emperor, but wounded soldiers who were veterans of Rome's wars. He also renamed pretty much everything (the city of Rome, the Senate, the Legions, the months, even the Roman people) after himself. Aside from ending the Five Good Emperors as mentioned above, there are historians who think that the Empire never recovered from his rule and that no one after him ever measured up to their forebears.
- Then there's Elagabalus, a sex-crazed transvestite (and possibly transsexual) who became emperor at fourteen and was reported to have prostituted himself. He also allegedly held parties where guests were showered in rose petals until they suffocated, and was looking for a surgeon who could create a vagina somewhere on him. Then again, like with Caligula, these may have been rumors blown out of proportion by later historians.
- Though certainly not the ruler for whom this trope was named, Ivan Vasilyevich — also known as "Ivan the Terrible" — epitomizes this trope. Although he started off as a benevolent ruler, a near fatal illness and the death of his wife plunged him into madness. Thousands died from starvation and plague during his reign, and he ordered the massacre of the entire city of Novgorod, nearly 60,000 people. He was eventually assassinated by those who feared they would be next. Not only that, he also murdered his favorite son and heir to the throne after his son tried to protect his wife from his father's abuse.
- He was also in the habit of marrying women, murdering them, and executing whoever he wished on charges of murder. He had a much dreaded private army, whose members were rewarded with the property of the victims of their atrocities.
- Interestingly, his bad rap came mostly due to his acknowledgements of his bad deeds. A deeply religious man, he had seen himself as a terrible sinner, so he vexed and vaned about his sins all over the realm as a penance. His enemies took it, and ran with it — as many sources say, compared to other XVI century monarchs Ivan The Terrible was much better than most.
- Although his prayer sessions usually excited his desire to torture people in various horrible ways (including alternating between pouring freezing and pouring boiling water on them until their skin peeled off), meaning he wasn't that much better.
- These were par for the course for these times, which were pretty rough indeed — a common execution for counterfeiting money throughout much of the Europe was to pour molten lead down convicts’ throats, for example. It certainly was that overall number of people executed on his orders during his whole reign was just about the number of people killed in St. Bartholomew Day's Massacre alone. So, while he was certainly pretty much apeshit during his late years, he was hardly worse than, say, Henry VIII.
- Nah, he died from some unidentified illness. There are a lot of speculations that he was poisoned, but there wasn't any proof (his remains did contain high doses of mercury, but it was a common medicine at the time), he wasn't really young then (54, actually), and lived a life of excess (mercury was used as a cure for syphilis), so it's more probable that his death was natural.
- King Xerxes of Persia literally thought he was a god. During his empire-expansion (prior to his defeat at Salamis) he ordered a bridge over the sea be constructed by tying boats together. When a storm destroyed this bridge, Xerxes executed the bridge designer, then ordered his men to whip the ocean into submission. Achashverosh of the Purim story, who is sometimes identified with Xerxes, is mentioned as doing something identical to Caligula- inviting people to lavish parties and then killing them if they don't seem to be having a good enough time. In I Claudius, Claudius notes that Caligula's guests would say goodbye to their wives and children before attending these fetes. Also, within the Purim story he has his wife executed for refusing to strip naked for his guests, yet another thing Caligula was fond of doing. (Having her strip, not killing her.)
- Xerxes is hardly the worst of the lot though. Megalomania apparently came naturally when you lived in ancient times and ruled a world empire. As bad of a rep Xerxes gets for leading the Persian invasion of Greece, he looks positively tame compared to, say, Alexander the Great.
- It's difficult to tell anything definitive about Xerxes, since most of the information we have comes from his enemies. Considering yourself a god was quite common among even the sanest kings of the time; having the highest religious authority aside from the secular side made ruling considerably easier.
- Ludwig II of Bavaria. His most famous exploit is commissioning the building of expensive "fairy-tale" castles, including the famous Neuschwanstein Castle. After he couldn't leech any more money from the government, he tried to organize bank robberies for funding, though modern Bavarians are likely thankful for the tourist revenue. Later in his life he was officially declared insane and he drowned himself along with his psychiatrist. Did I mention his special friendship with Richard Wagner?
- He wasn't half as insane as his reputation, mostly spread by his enemies. Nor did his castles bankrupt the country, as people like to claim; he built them with his own funds, not the state's and even during his lifetime they brought considerable profits thanks to tourism. He was mentally troubled, but not the crackpot people remember him as.
- Uganda's Idi Amin Dada, whose megalomania extended to bestowing upon himself such titles as "master of all the beasts of the earth and fishes of the sea".
- And let's not forget the rumored meeting he had with the decapitated heads of his former political enemies, where he talked to them and occasionally took bites out of their face.
- The full title he preferred was, according to The Other Wiki, "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular". The man was totally crazypants, but he knew how come up with a good title.
- Another of his self-bestowed titles was "The Last King of Scotland". Yes, Scotland. As before, crazypants.
- See The Last King Of Scotland for a fictional depiction.
- Vlad III of Walachia, better known as Dracula, was alleged to have committed many shocking crimes, such as impaling his enemies and forcing women to eat their roasted children. However, the most notorious crimes were attributed to him by his enemies, who had every reason to want his memory slandered. It does sound like he was somewhat unhinged, probably due to an abusive childhood as a hostage to the Turkish sultan, and he had a twisted sense of justice. After a guard caught a thief inside his home, Vlad had the guard killed — because the thief was a common scoundrel, but the guard should've known better than to storm into his home without permission.
- In addition, Dracula was doing his level best to keep the Turks from invading his country, and thus had an interest in looking as terrifying as possible. Supposedly, Mehmet the Conqueror, a man known for conquering the Byzantine Empire, turned back after encountering a huge forest of stakes with impaled bodies on Wallachia's border.
- Oh yeah, did we mention that everyone in his country today thinks he was an excellent ruler and war hero? Guess being a nutcase doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad king.
- But a tyrant who pretty much created something close to a fascist state in Wallachia. However, all that bad press about him was generated by other countries over his treatment of his own nobles, most of whom he killed off first to ensure his absolute rule over his country, he also loathed the nobility because a) he (arguably justifiably) blamed them for Wallachia's division and inability to be able to defend itself from the Ottomans and b) they were the likely culprits of his father's murder and probably sold him out to the Ottoman emperor as a child.
- Early in his reign he invited a good portion of his nobles to his castle for a feast, he asked them all "how many rulers did you serve under?". Most of them answered around dozens. He then rhetorically asked them why such high numbers, then blamed them for all of Wallachia's problems and had them rounded up and put into a death march and forced labor into building his new fortress. The idea of treating nobles so horribly shocked and terrified most of Europe
- What really scared Europe was that he put COMMONERS into positions of power over his country after he effectively caused a power vacuum by killing off the previous generation of nobles.
- Ironically, the last people you would hear complaining about Vlad's reign were his own subjects, sure most of them believed him to be the anti-Christ, but he did bring peace and order. In fact, he put out an early system of "drinking fountains" in his country by setting up a table of gold cups with water in it, and not once has a gold cup been stolen.
- The reason no one dared to steal those cups was because they would have been impaled on a stake if they did.
- Well, he did create an effective and efficient state whose political system worked
- This quote says everything about Vlad Dracula and his method of scaring his enemies:
"When the vast Ottoman army finally approached Tirgoviste, they came across a field with thousands of stakes with impaled bodies of Romanian men, women and children. An endless forest of rotting flesh where dead babies still clung to their mothers on the stakes".
- This Troper's Mother (we're both Americans) considers Prince Vlad to be a great hero, because he was Catholic and he kept the Muslim Turks from taking over Europe. This troper respects that, but is still highly amused by the notion of a Catholic vampire; it must've been hard to attend mass with all those crucifixes around!
- He wouldn’t have been attending Mass as a corpse anyway.
- Wait, you consider him a hero because he was a Catholic and killed Muslims?
- Wait, you think he's a great hero for being a Christian ruler fighting against Muslims during the Middle Ages? So what, the crusaders are heroes, too? This American troper finds it hard to understand the logic.
- Technically, the only reason he converted from Orthodox to Catholicism was because he lost his country to the Turks and needed aid from Hungary, who would only give it to him if and only if he agreed to convert and marry the Hungarian King's cousin.
- ...I think I prefer the vampire now. Sure, he might wanna eat you, but he will be a perfect gentleman before that.
- Note that the main difference between Vlad Tepes and the most other Caligulas are that while a regular Caligula would kill you because he felt like it, Vlad would kill you because you commited a crime.
- "Mad" King George III of England had a tendency to speak nonsense. Luckily he didn't cause much harm; a regent (his son) ruled in his place, and the king didn't have that much power at this point anyway, with most power being held by Parliament.
- You won't hear that if you ask the United States of America, though. There's a reason that his rule happened to contain the Revolution.
- Well, (a) He wasn't insane at that point, and (b) it was really more Lord North's fault than poor old Farmer George's.
- Don't forget that for the most of his reign George was perfectly sane. His reign was in fact very successful aside from losing the American colonies, with growing prosperity at home and territorial gains elsewhere in the world. It was only after he fell ill with porphyria that he turned into a Cloud Cuckoolander and his son took over his duties as king.
- Then there was George III's brother-in-law, Christian VII of Denmark. He was about as close as you could get to Caligula in the 18th Century. He started showing signs of insanity when he was ten. He was an alcoholic before he hit puberty. He regarded a fun time as going through the streets of Copenhagen with his buddies beating up passers-by, then retiring to a nearby brothel for a nice, quiet orgy. It was said that the only person he wouldn't have sex with was his wife (although they did manage to have a son). He did manage to find a doctor who could help him, a German named Johann Struensee. He ended up making Struensee Prime Minister, after his wife started sleeping with Struensee (something Christian didn't mind because that meant that he could sleep with whoever he wanted to, although he did end up claiming the couple's daughter as his). He ended up falling under the influence of his Wicked Stepmother, who had Struensee executed and the queen exiled. He spent the rest of his life certifiably insane, only trotted out in public for ceremonial occasions and purposely left out of government, despite the fact that Denmark was still an absolute monarchy at the time.
- It would be easier to list the monarchs of Spain who weren't insane (between the early 16th Century and the elimination of the monarchy in the 1930s). That's what you get when you mix Hapsburg and Bourbon blood and start in-breeding it to ridiculous levels (there were at least two occasions when a king of Spain married his own niece and had children by her). You want a good reason why Spain ceased to be a world power? This is it.
- Charles II of Spain is the poster child of why incest is not a good idea. He had the "Hapsburg Lip" to such an extent that he couldn't chew, and was retarded as well. Oh, and he was also infertile, setting off the War of the Spanish Succession.
- Some historians state that in 1801, every single monarch of a major country in Europe was insane. Those historians are right.
- Sweden's own Caligula was Erik XIV. He earned the nobility's resentment by marrying a common girl for love, and thereafter descended into a spiral of increasing paranoia and delusion, culminating in the slaughter of the influential Sture family, after which Erik panicked completely. He was deposed and imprisoned by one of his brothers who, supposedly, later had him killed with a bowl of poisoned pea soup. Much of his ill-advised actions toward the nobility was later blamed on his Evil Chancellor, Jöran Persson (who incidentally has the same name as the former prime minister of Sweden :D). And boy does he look evil◊.
- Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noblewoman whose activities earned her the title "Countess Dracula," reportedly murdered hundreds of young peasant women. While fanciful accounts pin the reasons for her doing so on her wanting to bathe in their blood and remain young, the truth may be that she just did it out of sheer cruelty. Thus, she earns a place as one of the rare female Caligulas. There is a possibility that the accusation may have been false, though.
- Saddam Hussein was a megalomaniac. Uday, his son, was worse. House Of Saddam, a 2008 Mini Series, actually had to tone him down.
- New Testament example: King Herod the Great, ruler of Judea. Known in the Christian tradition for The Massacre of the Innocents, an attempt on the life of the newly born Jesus (although most historians regard that account as a piece of symbolic storytelling). Much of Herod's bad reputation amongst the Jews (and consequently, amongst Christians) can be chalked up to his being all buddy-buddy with the Romans, who installed him as a puppet ruler. His attempts to bring Roman and Hellenistic culture to Jerusalem probably weren't very much appreciated by those who lived there (remember the Books of Machabees), so his evilness was probably played up a bit. Still, he was extremely paranoid about being overthrown — meaning that he killed so many of his family members that Emperor Tiberius quipped that he would rather be Herod's pig than his son.
- Jean-Bédel Bokassa, self-proclaimed Emperor of the Central African Empire during the late 1970s. He adored Napoleon and tried to fashion himself after him as much as possible. His coronation ceremony cost a third of the country's entire budget for the year, and to this day rumors linger that at the ceremony, he served human flesh as the main course. He killed 100 schoolchildren at once after they didn't wear the government-mandated, expensive school uniforms. Embarrassed and outraged, France ended up overthrowing him.
- Giles de Rais, a personal confidant of Joan of Arc. Upon his departing her service, he indulged in some of the more extravagant public festivals in France's history to that date, bankrupting his family and feudal territories in the process. Oh yes, he also did unspeakable horrific things to several hundred little boys, none of whom survived the experience.
- Alexandru Lăpuşneanu, prince of Moldavia, was overthrown at one point. He then returned several years later, intending to exact revenge on the noblemen who betrayed him. He did so by inviting them all to dinner, killing all 49 of them, and making a pyramid out of their severed heads.
- AWESOME.
- Well, as a Romanian troper, I'd like to point out one problem with this: Lăpuşneanu is present in the old chronicles of Moldavia, but the main source Romanians have for his life is the highly-fictionalised and exaggerated account from the novel with the same name by Costache Negruzzi, so it's really hard to tell which bits were true and which were just exaggerated by Negruzzi. And in the novel, he does that in order to "rid" his wife of her "fears" (read: terrify her into not objecting to his authoritarian rule any further).
- Both Charles VI of France and his grandson Henry VI of England were quite mad for some time. It was an episodic thing, but still difficult to deal with. Most famously, Charles believed himself to be made of glass at times, while Henry completely lost the ability to know what was going on. They didn't quite play the trope straight, though, since relatives and powerful noblemen kindly stepped in to take the reins of government. Which led to the whole Wars of the Roses thing in England. And Charles's feeble condition did France no good in the more or less on-going Hundred Years War.
- Mansa Khalifa of Mali is best remembered for insanely firing arrows at random people from his palace rooftop.
- Joseph Stalin, brutal sociopath and paranoiac who amassed more power than any of the Tsars who had ruled Russia before him and used it to cause the deaths of 20-odd million Soviet citizens and generally set the bar for twentieth century tyrants, and whose sheer death toll alone would put him on this list even if nothing else would. A massive cult of personality developed around him as a Godlike figure of benevolence and superhuman strength, he accepted titles such as "Coryphaeus of Science," "Father of Nations," "Brilliant Genius of Humanity," "Great Architect of Communism," "Gardener of Human Happiness" and more, simultaneously saying to his underlings that he desired to be remembered for "the extraordinary modesty characteristic of truly great people". At the same time, however, he appears to have been more than a bit cynical about it, suggesting that he didn't really buy into his own cult but just used it as a tool to maintain power; he was even known to joke about it:
Stalin: Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days] – Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening.
- Of course, anyone who didn't laugh probably found themselves getting a bullet in the back of the head before too long, so that's not exactly definitive evidence.
- There are some old Soviet jokes about Stalin...
Stalin is addressing a crowd when, during a pause in his speech, someone sneezes. He yells out, "who sneezed?" No one will admit to it. "First row, stand," Stalin orders. They do. "Shoot them." The first row of the crowd is led out by the guards and executed. "Who sneezed?" Stalin asks again. Still nobody says anything. "Second row, stand." They stand. "Shoot them." The second row of people is led out and executed. "Who sneezed?" Now one man comes forward, grovelling, and, in the miserable voice imaginable, confesses: "it was I who sneezed, Great Comrade Stalin." There is silence. Stalin leans forward. "Bless you, comrade."
- - -
One day, Stalin arrives at his office ready to work (probably mid-afternoon, and maybe still hung-over). He checks the drawers for his favourite pen, but can't find it. He calls Beria in.
Stalin: Comrade Beria, someone has stolen my pen! I will not stand for this! Find them and punish them!
Beria leaves, and Stalin finds another pen and gets to work signing death warrants or some such. Much later, as he is preparing to leave, he finds his pen on the shelf behind him. A little embarrassed, he calls Beria back in and asks him how the investigation is going.
Beria: Good news, comrade Stalin! Three men have confessed to stealing your pen, and they have all been executed. All of them acted independently!
- Shaka Zulu. You know you're crazy when you have hundreds of wives and kill any child they give birth to.
- Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe seems to verge on this every so often - although he may be toning down a bit in his old age and with being forced to work with the parliament these days. Still, single-handedly turning Zimbabwe from Africa's "bread basket" to a starving, destitute nation. May well go as evidence that good revolutionaries don't necessarily make good politicians.
- Compared to some of those he shares this list with, Adolf Hitler was almost mundane; he was known to shun and disdain the more grandiose affectations that many tyrants took upon themselves. Yet he belongs here too; even if not initially (and there are certain persistent rumours about his private life and sexual predilections that make this questionable), then certainly by 1945. Even leaving aside fact that the Holocaust alone could never have been ordered by an entirely sane man, by the end of the war he so self-identified with Germany and the German people that one of his final orders before his death demanded the complete annihilation of Germany's entire industrial, agrarian and urban capabilities, because he genuinely believed that Germany could not survive his passing and that the German people deserved to be punished for failing to meet his standards. Fortunately for Germany, saner heads prevailed and the orders were ignored.
- Unfortunately for Germany, Germany was half occupied by the Soviets...see above.
- "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il
- His father, Kim Il-Sung, was known as "Great Leader", and started the whole personality cult thing in N. Korea. He is remembered today as the "Eternal President" of North Korea, outranking his son even in death. No less crazy, certainly (but then, he did start the Korean War).
- Cracked has a list of these. Caligula is in it.
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