Does anyone have any historical stories of kings behaving silly, unchivalrous, or embarassing themselves...

Does anyone have any historical stories of kings behaving silly, unchivalrous, or embarassing themselves? Ive always been fascinated with the fact that 1 person made the decisions for countless people. Its funny to remember that absolutism is bullshit.

Pic not related

Other urls found in this thread:

china.org.cn/top10/2011-09/02/content_23343011_10.htm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Commodus was pretty wacky. He liked to dress up like Hercules (AKA naked except for a bearskin headdress) and kill animals in the Coloseum. His portrayal in the movie "gladiator" is actually extremely toned down compared to the real person. Or at least, what was written about him. There is always some ambiguity when dealing with ancient sources.

Ol Gus needed some help in the bedroom from a Chad-type noble

>kings behaving silly, unchivalrous, or embarassing themselves
Nicholas II's entire reign

Nicky was just REALLY indecisive.

Commodus was literally Chad

>Charlemagne was illiterate for much of his life. He hired learned men to read out loud to him at dinner, dispensing with the usual medieval floorshow of jester, bard, and musicians. He studied three of the classic seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, and mathematics. He learned to speak Latin and some Greek in addition to his native Frankish. By all accounts, Charlemagne’s efforts to learn to write were less successful. (According to his secretary and biographer, he practiced writing while in bed and hid his wax tablets under his pillows.)

The idea of Charlemagne trying his best to copy letters in his bed but failing because his rugged hands can't properly hold a pen after years of fighting and being embarrassed about it is pretty adorable desu

He did what he could to learn nonetheless. Very interesting. If I recall he also promoted education during his empire.

>absolutism
>bullshit
Name me one absolute monarch who was a loony moron
And when I say absolute I mean absolute


Moving on, there's Flavius Honorius
>"At that time they say that the Emperor Honorius in Ravenna received the message from one of the eunuchs, evidently a keeper of the poultry, that Rome had perished. And he cried out and said, 'And yet it has just eaten from my hands!' For he had a very large cock, Rome by name; and the eunuch comprehending his words said that it was the city of Rome which had perished at the hands of Alaric, and the emperor with a sigh of relief answered quickly: 'But I thought that my fowl Rome had perished.' So great, they say, was the folly with which this emperor was possessed."

Did you even bother googling?

I just typed in "crazy chinese emperors"

To be fair, I know the Chinese emperor did some fucked up things compared to the Euro kings, but still. They emperors were mostly absolutists save their advisors who often were batshit themselves. Don't get me started on enuchs.

Holy shit this is some good reads...

china.org.cn/top10/2011-09/02/content_23343011_10.htm

>Liu Zeye (449-465), the eldest son of Liu Jun, Emperor Xiaowu of Liu Song during the Southern and Northern Dynasties(420-589), took over the throne as Emperor Qianfei in 464 when he was 15 years old, and was assassinated one year later by his uncle Liu Yu, Prince of Xiangdong. He went down in history as one of the most notorious emperors for his absolute incompetence, murdering of many royal relatives and high-level officials, and especially his crazy and immoral sexual acts.

>When Liu was still the crown princess, Emperor Xiaowu didn't like him and often thought of replacing Liu with his younger brother Liu Ziluan. After coming to the throne, Liu, out of the deep resent towards Emperor Xiaowu, immediately forced Liu Ziluan to commit suicide and killed another two children of Liu Ziluan's mother Consort Yin. The suspicious emperor also slaughtered all of the officials once prized by Emperor Xiaowu, and put his uncles under house arrest for fear that they would revolt against him. Meanwhile, he insulted and maltreated them in various inhuman ways.

>Liu adored incest so much that he summoned his aunt Liu Yingmei into the palace to satisfy his sexual desires, and he then killed Yingmei's husband He Mai who couldn't stand the humiliation and conspired to overthrow him. Liu also kept overt incestuous relationship with his sister Liu Chuyu in the palace, When Chuyu complained it's unfair that Liu had so many concubines but she only had one husband, Liu selected several dozens of handsome men as her lovers.

>What was more despicable: Liu ordered the consorts and princesses to have group sex publicly with his attendants in the palace and even forced the concubines to have sexual intercourse with animals. Those that dared to disobey were killed on site.

Dat incest!

Not that guy, but I would suggest you look up the definition of absolutism. It's not just "getting away with crazy shit because I'm the king lol and no one can stop me," there are plenty examples of cruelty, embarrassment, incompetence, etc from rulers who were not absolutist. It's funny you mention China, as Chinese emperors for the most part were not absolutist, in that they could not mobilize the resources of the state to acxhieve a given whim over the entire political unit.

>Zhu Youxiao (1605-1627), Emperor Xizong, was the 15th emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). He took over the throne in 1620 at the age of 15 and was seduced by his nanny Madam Ke. Zhu, probably suffering from learning problems, was illiterate and could hardly understand basic affairs. Zhu was a good carpenter, but in no way a qualified or competent emperor.

Literally an autist fucking his nanny and only like to do carpentry stuff.

I think we are splitting hairs about absolutism.

You could argue King Henry the VIII or Louis XIV were absolutists, but they weren't really they still needed the support of the estates and parliament.

If we aren't speaking about royalty strictly, I guess Stalin is the best absolutist you can get if you put power into the hands of one man... Even Hitler had the need to make sure the SS didn't stab him in the back.

What I am saying. No matter how much power you have you could get put down if you are acting like Commodus.

It's not that we're splitting hairs, it's that absolutism has a reasonably precise definition yet it is misused colloquially, as you are doing in this thread. What makes Louis XIV an absolutist was that he was unreatrained in his capacity to direct state effort and resources to meet a need or achieve a goal. Sure, he relied on the estates, as you said, but e also relied on the people, the citizenry, and they hardly mitigated his power, similar to the estates. What separates an absolutist monarch from a regular monarch is the absence of checks on power, restraints if you like. Plenty of non-absolutist monarchs have done crazy shit and gotten away with it, just as absolutist monarchs have as well, a la Nicky 2, but to claim that absolutism itself, rather than simply a disproportionate distribution of power, is the cause of such excesses is incorrect.

Nah. I'm not saying the power structure causes people to be deviant. Its just that given human nature its dubious to give power all to one person especially with a legal structure that simply determines the next person in line based on whatever fuck trophy he made.

And to be fair, it is also bad to give power to groups of people, not just a single person. The Nazis had a really Byzantine power structure (though Hitler was absolute leader) his underlings did a lot of shit things too without his direction.

So if you put power into the hands of a single person (dictator, king, emperor) or a group of people (senate, generals, nobility, church) you are going to have a bad time when invariably some people are going to use their power to do shitty things.

So yes, abolustism is a bad idea because human nature dictates you will eventually end up with a shitty person in charge unless you figure out a meritocracy and field people for psychological behavior and intelligence before hand before hand. (Nicky would have never been allowed to be Tsar in that case)

But then its not absolutism.

>When Chuyu complained it's unfair that Liu had so many concubines but she only had one husband, Liu selected several dozens of handsome men as her lovers.
I kinda have to respect how few fucks this guy gave

This, an absolute ruler wields absolute judicial, executive and legislative power unrestrained by laws or a system of checks and balances. There might be a congress or parliament but it would be a weak one which the ruler has complete authority to disregard, ignore or whatever.
Louis XIV could condemn a man to death without an appeal, he could declare war on some random country, expel protestants, build extravagant palaces with state money. Any action he would have taken was completely within his rights. Yes, he had to balance it out with the nobility and the people could revolt, but legally and in practice, he held absolute authority over France.

I like Charles VI of France, he believed he was made out of glass, went on a rampage (killing one of his knights and several of his men) because someone accidentally dropped a lance. He also almost burnt to death after coming to a party disguised with friends as monsters. As the costumes were made of wax and linen, they soon turned to human torches after someone approached with a torch to them to see who were the disguised men.

I'm not arguing over the various merits of political systems kemosabe, I'm just saying you're wrong on your definitions. You described a system that was not absolutist, called it absolutist, and got corrected.

Also definitions change over time as well as the English and other languages, but that is for another topic.

By that I disagree with the text book definition of absolutism. The dictionaries of 1900 have many incorrect definitions for knowledge we know today.

If we said... Well kings between 1600-1790 that did not have parliments then yeah we could say that.

But absolutists have existed before and after then and even then there weren't really absolute as they needed support of nobles, advisors, wives etc.

lol really? Dude cmon you're better than that. Next time just know what you're talking about, and understand what terms you're using.

>uses a term incorrectly
>gets called out
>"I'm right, it's the textbooks, academia, and everybody else that's wrong!"
Lmao kid gtfo I'm done here

Support doesn't matter for absolutism though.
It's more about the rights and laws of a king, you could have a 7 year old king whose mother serves as regent with her lover and his 4 brothers, and there's no system of checking in their power.
That's an absolute monarchy.
It's not about ruling on your own, it's about holding all executive, legislative and judicial party without a constitution, a parliament, the nobility, or some other political entity checking your power, balancing things out.

Mexico for example, during most of the 20th century, the president had absolute party since his party held pretty much every political position and they did what he, or some party bigwig, wanted. There was no system of checks and balances.

>a fully vested Charlemagne sits in class struggling while kids laugh at him. He struggles with his homework, gets angry and puts it under his pillow. Falls asleep tearing up.

Lodewijk (Louis) Napoleon Bonaparte

>Napoleon had intended for his younger brother to be little more than a French prefect of Holland. However, Louis had his own mind, and tried to be a responsible and independent ruler. In an effort to endear himself to his adopted country, he tried to learn the Dutch language; he called himself Lodewijk I (adopting the Dutch form of his name) and declared himself Dutch rather than French. Allegedly, his Dutch was initially so poor that he told the people he was the "Konijn van 'Olland" ("Rabbit of 'Olland"), rather than "Koning van Holland" ("King of Holland"). However, his sincere effort to learn Dutch earned him some respect from his subjects.

>a fully vested Charlemagne sits in class struggling while kids laugh at him.

from what I recall, he made damn sure all Veeky Forums kids could read and write, and generally had classes with them.

So less 'kids laughing', more 'kids vaguely terrified cause ad is right there'.

Cnut the Great of Denmark/Norway/England mocked temporal government power by moving a throne near the beach and ordered the sea tides to stop. It may be apocryphal, but I want to believe.

Poor louie, just wanted people to like him, took bad advice from bourbon family members and cabinet advisors, and lost a head for his troubles. Still killed it in court though and left the stage like a boss.

I guess this would fall under silly, but not absolutism.
During the Anarchy King Stephen was laying siege to the castle of John Marshal and had his son, William Marshal (yes that William Marshal who will grow up to be the greatest knight who ever lived), as a hostage. John would not give up the castle so Stephen threatened to launch the young William out of a catapult at the walls. John yelled down from the battlements to go ahead "he still had the hammer and anvil to make more and better sons". Stephen though couldn't bring himself to actually do it though. Instead the king and the child went back to camp and played knights until the castle fell.

King Joseph I of Portugal developed PTSD from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and lived in a tent for the rest of his life.

>bearskin headdress
does that look like a bear to you?

Its the nemean lion, slaying it was Heracles' first labor.

according to Zhou accounts (so take it with a grain of salt) the last king of the Shang dynasty would entertain his guest by filling a pool with wine and setting on it with rafts. There was also an island in the middle they could paddle to which had trees on it where people had hung entire sides of meat on the branches for them to eat.

What I really love about Louis XIV, is how he centralized his power. He promoted massive gambling among the aristocracy and constantly held lavish festivities, where the aristocrats tried to out do themselves in fashion and extravagance. The nobles became impoverished and then Louis gave them trivial tasks at court(like the position of bringing him his slippers in the morning) with large salaries, thus binding the nobility to his person. He also indulged in the homosexual/cross-dressing antics of his younger brother, by giving him large sums of money and expensive dresses, perfumes, jewellery etc. Keeping him preoccupied with this, he insured there would be no dynastic ambition by his brother, and thus maintaining peace.

>He also indulged in the homosexual/cross-dressing antics of his younger brother, by giving him large sums of money and expensive dresses, perfumes, jewellery etc.
This is both super clever and also [spoiler]kinda hot