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I'm sure there's a fair bit of them, it's just unlikely that we at large are likely to have heard about them. Rulers who just tried to keep the peace and improve the lives of their subjects tend not to get involved in wars, which is mainly why we hear about rulers. Given the sheer number of semi-independent states in the Holy Roman Empire, I'm sure lots of their rulers were pretty OK.
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Aug 2, 2015 19:02
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Robo Reagan posted:I'm sure the answer is yes, but googling "greatest rulers" likes to list Hitler who wasn't really the type of great I'm looking for. Marcus Aurelius was a cool guy but I may be biased. In general the Five Good Emperors are called that for a reason, you could check them out.
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Aug 2, 2015 19:07
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PittTheElder posted:Given the sheer number of semi-independent states in the Holy Roman Empire, I'm sure lots of their rulers were pretty OK.
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Aug 2, 2015 19:16
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Jamwad Hilder posted:I'm sure someone can do a better job of this, but here's what the names you mentioned mean: This post. Holy loving poo poo this post. 
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Aug 2, 2015 19:19
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As someone said, Augustus was honestly an amazing ruler. Once he had power. A looot of blood led up to that point, but hey. Take what you can get.
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Aug 2, 2015 19:32
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While there are plenty of rulers who never did much of anything, it's hard for them to be loved. First, everybody wants your job. Real life isn't CK 2 or Game of Thrones, but usually there's some rough stuff to stay in power. Second, when you're powerful everybody wants something from you. And if they don't get it, you're the most terrible, terrible person who ever terribled. (This often ends up tying back to the first problem) Think of the way everybody tries to latch on to lottery winners or celebrities. Every broke aristocrat or power hungry minister wants money and authority from you.
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Aug 2, 2015 21:08
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MrYenko posted:This post. Just needs a couple of corrections. First, Caesar is a family name until it becomes associated with being Emperor - yeah, there was originally a guy who acquired it by being hairy as gently caress but the Gaius Julius Caesar we care about inherited it. Clodia isn't exactly the feminine form of Claudius, which would be Claudia. It's the feminine form of Clodius, the overtly lower class version of Claudius. This is part of why the famous Clodius and Clodia were seen as classless weirdos - they consciously switched from the "au" form to the "o" form. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 2, 2015 21:34
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Doesn't Cicero mean "big nose"?
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Aug 2, 2015 22:12
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Star Man posted:Doesn't Cicero mean "big nose"? No, chickpea. Seriously.
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Aug 3, 2015 00:13
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BurningStone posted:No, chickpea. Seriously. Reminds me of Boris
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Aug 3, 2015 01:54
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There are a number of Chinese emperors who seem like okay dudes. Qianlong for an example.
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Aug 3, 2015 02:04
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King Sejong of Korea seemed okay -- spread literacy, founded a national institute to promote learning, didn't seem to need to kill that many people (possibly because his father had done all of the necessary murdering).
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Aug 3, 2015 02:13
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Fun thing about Sejong, they're obsessed with portraying him as the greatest of all rulers in modern Korea but the temple names were assigned in various types to indicate how good a king was. The -jo ending meant a good king (like Taejo), but the -jong ending meant he was considered a bad king. The whole Sejong THE GREAT thing is a modern nationalist phenomenon.
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Aug 3, 2015 02:17
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Lord Protector Jörgen Jörgensen of Iceland was the greatest king of them all.
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Aug 3, 2015 02:59
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Robo Reagan posted:I'm sure the answer is yes, but googling "greatest rulers" likes to list Hitler who wasn't really the type of great I'm looking for. Claudius was a good ruler and the prototype for the unlikely dweeb who becomes a great emperor. Also one of the few rulers to have been a well-regarded academic before he ruled so academics like him for that. The aristocracy were mad at him for freeing too many slaves and letting low people rise to high positions so you know he must have been an okay dude. Also he added Britain to the empire and his ascension ended the bad rule and purges under Tiberius and Caligula. Hadrian spent most of his rule touring the Empire (with his boy toy) fixing things. Diocletian did such a good job his greatest failure was measuring others by himself, so the system he set up exploded when other less virtuous people took over. The late Western Han dynasty definitely had some emperors who just chilled and let the country run itself while being unremarkable but okay people. In general I think many rulers who did nasty or questionable things were really normal people in circumstances where fear or ambition and/or necessities of state drove them to do terrible things. Like there are a ton of regents in history who have murdered children to get onto the throne of a country that was collapsing without an effective ruler. Killing children is bad, but imagine if you're at the head of the ship of state and things are going badly wrong and your idiotic hereditary monarchical system has put an infant on the throne. There's barbarians on the borders and floods in the east and grain and troops need to get moved around and the queen mother is some pretty moron from the sticks. You gotta kill that baby. There's also the odd interesting person who moves up the ladder by being a colossal douche but ends up being a really good (and morally good) ruler. Wu Zetian murdered her way to the top and then had a peaceful and prosperous reign. Emperor Taizong was twice a rebel and traitor, overthrew his Emperor, shot his brother, forced his father to abdicate, and is widely considered the most tolerant, rational, and all-around greatest Chinese emperor of all time.
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Aug 3, 2015 03:18
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Grand Fromage posted:Fun thing about Sejong, they're obsessed with portraying him as the greatest of all rulers in modern Korea but the temple names were assigned in various types to indicate how good a king was. The -jo ending meant a good king (like Taejo), but the -jong ending meant he was considered a bad king. The whole Sejong THE GREAT thing is a modern nationalist phenomenon. probably pissed off all the aristocrats and historians by trying to give the masses a way to become literate
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Aug 3, 2015 03:19
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Koramei posted:probably pissed off all the aristocrats and historians by trying to give the masses a way to become literate Entirely possible. They got rid of hangeul quite fast. Arglebargle III posted:You gotta kill that baby. Roman example, the empire would've been much better off if Marcus Aurelius had drowned the poo poo outta that kid.
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Aug 3, 2015 03:26
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Taizong is such a fascinating guy I have to find a biography of him. He did pretty much everything you're not supposed to do according to Confucian ideals and ended up being the paragon of Chinese statesmanship. He blew up his state and his family and left a hundred years of peace and prosperity behind with a reign that everybody thereafter had to study. He's one of these whirlwind people who managed to completely reorganize the domestic political system while dealing with complex foreign pressures and military campaigns. He's endearing to the modern reader for being a rationalist and a skeptic who demanded that his advisors stand up to him. Just reading his wiki articles there are a lot of instances when he reverses his own unpopular decisions or shelves plans that his advisors didn't like. And he generates all these great anecdotes, like when he ambushed his brothers outside the palace or when he exiled a son to check his loyalty and rewarded him with a ministry when he obeyed. Oh also he wrote two books on statecraft so that probably helped his image.
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 03:43
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I remember hearing a lot of good things about the reign of Gustavus Adolphus. I think I read about one of the Swedish kings having the rare distinction of being known as "The Great" for nonmilitary reasons, but I can't put a finger on which one.Arglebargle III posted:There's also the odd interesting person who moves up the ladder by being a colossal douche but ends up being a really good (and morally good) ruler. Wu Zetian murdered her way to the top and then had a peaceful and prosperous reign. Emperor Taizong was twice a rebel and traitor, overthrew his Emperor, shot his brother, forced his father to abdicate, and is widely considered the most tolerant, rational, and all-around greatest Chinese emperor of all time. It seems like there's a weird meritocratic nature to rulers being overthrown. Great leaders don't lose their thrones easily, and it's unlikely that a drooling idiot could pull off a successful coup.
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Aug 3, 2015 04:18
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SlothfulCobra posted:It seems like there's a weird meritocratic nature to rulers being overthrown. Great leaders don't lose their thrones easily, and it's unlikely that a drooling idiot could pull off a successful coup. On the other hand, Rome had some real beauts.
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Aug 3, 2015 04:35
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Grand Fromage posted:There are a number of Chinese emperors who seem like okay dudes. Qianlong for an example. Except for the odd genocide...
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Aug 3, 2015 04:47
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Welp. I thought that was his father.
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Aug 3, 2015 05:08
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There's Akbar the Great of the Mughal Empire. (Yes, his name is literally Great the Great.) Pretty tolerant guy, made efforts to treat his Hindu vassals equally with his Muslim ones, arranging marriage alliances with them and treating them with respect, even celebrating Diwali alongside them, renouncing beef, and naming a Hindu princess as his chief wife. He even set up a sort of debating house and invited representatives of different religions to try and resolve their differences - he managed to get representatives of Sunni and Shia Islam along with various Sufis, along with Hindus, Jains, Portuguese Catholic missionaries, and Zoroastrians to participate. Unfortunately, the debates somehow failed to resolve all religious differences once and for all, so Akbar decided screw it, I'll start my own religion! It, ah, didn't really take off. At its height, it had probably eighteen followers. Still, points for trying, right? He also cracked down pretty hard on generals he thought were unnecessarily cruel in looting conquered cities. Though, his crackdown did consist of throwing said generals from the top of his fortress over and over until they were dead, so maybe a bit of a dick sometimes…
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Aug 3, 2015 05:45
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 We're all rulers here, what's a little genocide between friends?
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Aug 3, 2015 09:04
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Angry Salami posted:There's Akbar the Great of the Mughal Empire. (Yes, his name is literally Great the Great.) Pretty tolerant guy, made efforts to treat his Hindu vassals equally with his Muslim ones, arranging marriage alliances with them and treating them with respect, even celebrating Diwali alongside them, renouncing beef, and naming a Hindu princess as his chief wife. He even set up a sort of debating house and invited representatives of different religions to try and resolve their differences - he managed to get representatives of Sunni and Shia Islam along with various Sufis, along with Hindus, Jains, Portuguese Catholic missionaries, and Zoroastrians to participate. Unfortunately, the debates somehow failed to resolve all religious differences once and for all, so Akbar decided screw it, I'll start my own religion! Dara Shikoh is another Mughal that was pretty cool, he was very philosophically inclined and tried to find a way to bridge the gap between Islam and Hinduism, as well as being a patron of the arts. His brother Aurangzeb was a much more conservative man who was more popular among Mughal soldiers. You can imagine who won the resulting struggle for the throne. Kassad fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 09:37
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SlothfulCobra posted:I remember hearing a lot of good things about the reign of Gustavus Adolphus. I think I read about one of the Swedish kings having the rare distinction of being known as "The Great" for nonmilitary reasons, but I can't put a finger on which one. No other Swede other than Gustavus Adolphus shows up on the list on Wikipedia. That said that list is self admitedly not complete. That did lead me to this list on Wikipedia again which I am rather fond of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_by_nickname
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Aug 3, 2015 10:02
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BurningStone posted:No, chickpea. Seriously. when i was a child my mother tried to get me to eat them by saying that cicero liked them, as you could plainly see from the name. it didn't work.
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Aug 3, 2015 10:09
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HEY GAL posted:their name in the english that italian-americans speak is still cici beans She should have figured out a way to tie them to Wallenstein somehow.
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Aug 3, 2015 10:17
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SlothfulCobra posted:I remember hearing a lot of good things about the reign of Gustavus Adolphus. I think I read about one of the Swedish kings having the rare distinction of being known as "The Great" for nonmilitary reasons, but I can't put a finger on which one. Well, there's a lot less Swedes thanks to him, so that's a plus. 
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Aug 3, 2015 10:28
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As a Catholic of Polish-German ancestry Christina was clearly a better ruler than Gustavus. 
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Aug 3, 2015 14:42
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Robo Reagan posted:I'm sure the answer is yes, but googling "greatest rulers" likes to list Hitler who wasn't really the type of great I'm looking for. saladin was really a Cool Dude by the standards of his time and his task sure he took the population of jerusalem as slaves to relieve his huge debts, but he let as many people free as he reasonably could
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Aug 3, 2015 14:49
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HEY GAL posted:their name in the english that italian-americans speak is still cici beans
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Aug 3, 2015 15:21
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edit: beaten
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Aug 3, 2015 18:52
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HEY GAL posted:their name in the english that italian-americans speak is still cici beans Chickpeas are awesome, though?
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Aug 3, 2015 19:01
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I read, in my big book of Chinese History, that Yongzheng and Qianlong had very different approaches to how things should work in the Empire. I wonder if it would have been better had Yongzheng lived a bit longer and gotten a really good set of ideas down.
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Aug 3, 2015 22:32
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Grand Fromage posted:Roman example, the empire would've been much better off if Marcus Aurelius had drowned the poo poo outta that kid. Just out of interest, the position of "Emperor" (which didn't really exist?) wasn't hereditary by default, right? The Emperor still chose their heir (or a new Emperor was chosen by others after his death) and it could have been anyone he chose it to be? If Marcus had just patted Commodus on the head and told him,"Somebody else is gonna be emperor, you can go live on a giant estate and stomp around dwarves pretending to be a giant all you want for the rest of your life," maybe history would have been very different.
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Aug 3, 2015 23:26
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Jerusalem posted:Just out of interest, the position of "Emperor" (which didn't really exist?) wasn't hereditary by default, right? The Emperor still chose their heir (or a new Emperor was chosen by others after his death) and it could have been anyone he chose it to be? Yes and no. It wasn't hereditary by law, but it was hereditary by practice. And Commodus, by virtue of his father, would have always been seen as having a legitimate claim to the purple. As such, not choosing his son - but keeping him alive - risks a future civil war. Even if a non-ruling Commodus was happy living on his estate, there would be an extant threat that some third party might see him as more malleable and conduct a coup in his name. Hereditary rule makes a lot of sense when the alternatives always seem to end in devastating civil wars. Marcus Aurelius, to the extent that he understood the problem, was left with an impossible decision: He could try to guide Commodus into being the best ruler he could be (knowing that he would never be a great leader), or he could kill him and then nominate another heir (knowing that their claim would be weak). Kaal fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 23:35
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There weren't laws for it or anything, but family was just the simplest way to maintain continuity of power and to confer legitimacy. The eldest son inherits the family business, just like that. If anyone can be Emperor, not just the Emperor's son (adopted or otherwise) or maybe nephew, well, that's how we get the Years of the Multiple Emperors, and an endless succession of usurpers. There's a reason why the first of the Five Good Emperors still adopted their heirs.
BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 23:35
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Even into literally like the 1200s there still was not actually any law about Roman succession. I don't know if there ever was one.
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Aug 4, 2015 01:16
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Why wouldn't Marcus Aurelius be able to adopt a guy to be emperor? It seems like there's plenty of precedent, what with it being the way things were done for nearly 100 years and Commodus being the sort of guy you could believe died in a tragic forgetting to breathe accident.
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Aug 4, 2015 04:00
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