10.King George III of England
George III is remembered mainly for being the king who lost to the United States in its War of Independence. But he left another legacy: numerous stories of erratism and madness. So much so that he was eventually deemed unfit to rule and his son George IV ruled as prince regent in his place. Jorge (who is now believed to be perhaps bipolar) is said to have oscillated between manic periods where he spoke too fast to understand and foaming at his mouth, and periods of such depression that he would cry and lament for hours or days at a time. He was reportedly suffering from increasing paranoia and hallucinations, at one point even trying to shake an oak tree’s hand. His urine was also described as blue, red, or purple, leading some experts to think that he suffered from acute porphyria.
9.Charles VI of France
Carlos VI had a lot in common with George III. His reign is also remembered for a landslide victory with far-reaching political ramifications, in this case, the Battle of Agincourt. And also like George, Charles gradually earned a growing reputation for being a bit out of place. There are two more notable manifestations of Chuck’s mental illness, and they are strangely at odds with each other. The first is his famous “glass hoax.” He had a fervent belief that his body was made of glass and therefore was fragile like glass. He refused to allow people to touch him, even sitting still for hours to avoid breaking. The second is his violent and murderous outbursts, which he directed at anyone close to him. Charles even went so far as to kill his own knights.
8.Nero
The legacy of the Roman Emperor Nero as ruler is complicated. Many reports claim that he was loved by common people, and some even refused to believe in his death and elevated him to the level of a folk hero. On the other hand, many historians and nobles (those who tend to write) saw Nero as a cruel and hedonistic tyrant who only cared about his own interests, not those of the Empire. It is clear that he was a bit insane, and many accounts quite support the hedonistic tyrant’s vision. For example, when Nero’s second wife, Poppaea, who according to various sources was Nero’s doing, died, she had a young commoner who resembled Poppaea neutered and dressed. Nero married the young man and referred to him only as Poppaea.
7.Elagabalus aka Antoninus
Elagabalus was a Roman emperor, but unlike the (in) famous Nero, Elagabalus’s reign was short and for the most part has faded into obscurity. However, the details that have survived paint the royal youth as savagely depraved. He depraved enough to be killed and replaced by the age of 18. Elagabalus reportedly had little or no interest in ruling. Instead, he preferred to have sex with anything and everything that moved. He had countless mistresses, some of all ages and genders, he appointed whoever he was at the time to high-ranking government positions and, according to some, even spent his spare time prostituting himself. Worse still for his fellow Roman noblemen, he was an absolute heretic and replaced the traditional Roman religion with fringe cult at his court, and so on: they cut off his head.
6.Mustafa I
Mustafa I was a sultan of the Ottoman Empire just after its heyday in the 16th century. He earned the title of “Mad Mustafa” and, from the way he grew up, it’s easy to see how. It was custom in the Empire at that time for a new sultan to execute his brothers. Easy transitions, you get it. But when Mustafa’s older brother, Ahmed I, came to the throne, the new sultan took pity on young Mustafa and locked him in a windowless room. For 14 years. He then took the throne for only one year and was sent back to his room for another four years. Then another year of government. This incarceration and the extreme yo-yo of fortunes took their toll on Mustafa. His social skills were non-existent and he would often tug at any beard within reach of him or toss his wealth to nearby animals.
5.Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg
As consort of the King of Sweden, Maria Eleanor of Brandenburg had many pressures on her. Nothing but to produce a male heir for the king, which she never quite achieved. She had a miscarriage, a daughter who died within a year, and a stillborn son. Although her fourth (at least) pregnancy for her ultimately resulted in a healthy baby, she was another daughter, whom she named Christina. Maria couldn’t bear it, she called Christina a monster and repeatedly tried to hurt her and even kill her when she was a baby, although luckily she was unsuccessful. When her husband, the king, died, Mary had completely lost him. She had the king’s heart placed in a golden coffin and hung over her bed. She then forced Christina to sleep with her in her bed, night after night, the two of them under the dead king’s heart. If Maria lived in today’s world, we could have recognized her suffering and given her the help she needed. However, she fell victim to the cruel beliefs of a time and was left alone to deal with the tragic results of her previous pregnancies.
4.Princess Alexandra of Bavaria
Princess Alexandra of Bavaria was extremely intelligent. Refusing to ever marry, she devoted herself to studying her. She became a novelist, essayist, and translator. But beneath her brilliance and accomplishments, she struggled. She was a notorious germ phobia and for some reason she refused to wear clothes of any color other than white. The strangest thing of all was that she became convinced that she had swallowed a glass grand piano whole when she was a child. It’s hard to make that up. This caused her to avoid touching people and objects and even to walk sideways through the doors to avoid the frames, so that they would not touch her and break her (curiously similar to Charles VI of France).
3.Vlad the Impaler
Vlad the Impaler is one of the most notorious figures in history. Although considered by some to be a Romanian national hero, his cruelty was almost inhuman, and his reign was marked by many large-scale acts of torture and genocide. The myths surrounding him even caused it to be confused with vampire mythology (for example, Bram Stoker borrowed his name Dracul for his main character). His insanity is less eccentric than others, more driven by sheer thirst for blood. Vlad would invite foreign envoys to his palace under the guise of peace talks, and then impale them, still alive, in bets to die slowly and painfully. He is also famous for nailing turbans to the heads of the Ottomans who took them off in order to take them off in his presence.
2.Nebuchadnezzar II
King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Babylonian Empire is the O.G. real crazy. His madness is attested in the Old Testament Book of Daniel. According to the book, he went crazy for seven years, choosing to live in the forest like a cow, even eating grass. The psychological term for this is boanthropy, the belief that one is actually a cow. Although generally considered a work of historical fiction, some believe that such events could have actually occurred, but perhaps they should be attributed to a different Babylonian king, Nabonidus. .
1.Gaius Caligula
Well then. How could the number one spot not go to Caligula? The Roman emperor (another ?!) has become the very embodiment of hedonism, decadence, perversion, masochism, and sadism (although the Marquis de Sade has something to do with the latter). Caligula took the cruelty of Nero and raised it to 11. He took the perversion of Elagabalus and raised it to 12. Although an accurate account of his misdeeds is impossible, just some of his greatest successes are: sleeping with his sisters and even prostituting them, naming riding his horse as a priest, turning his palace into a working brothel, and even having his guards throw innocent members of the audience into the arenas during intermissions so he wouldn’t get bored.
