Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers

Khalid Elhassan - January 21, 2025

Bizarre rulers abounded in the ancient world, as the era’s Neros and Caligulas elevated the standards of weirdness to new heights. However, the modern era saw its fair share of strange people in power, who gave their ancient predecessors a run for their money when it comes to bizarre behavior. Below are some fascinating facts about some of the modern era’s odder rulers.

18. The Special Madness of Ludwig II

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Ludwig II. Schloss Neuschwanstein

“Mad King Ludwig” (1845 – 1886), or Ludwig II, reigned in Bavaria from 1864 until his death. His madness was not expressed in cruelty and viciousness, but in an obsession with art and architecture. A generous benefactor of the arts, Ludwig admired and patronized the composer Richard Wagner. He also devoted himself to artistic and architectural projects, such as opulent fairy tale castles whose construction he lavishly funded to the point of bankruptcy. Ludwig never married and had no mistresses. He had strong gay tendencies, which he struggled throughout his life to suppress. He was unsuccessful. It was an open secret in Bavaria that Ludwig had affairs with his bodyguards. Homosexuality had been decriminalized in Bavaria in 1813, but when Germany was unified under Prussian hegemony in 1871, Prussia’s criminal code, which criminalized gay sex, was instated.

17. The Fairy Tale Castle King

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Neuschwanstein. Kreativ Instinkt

When Bavaria joined the German Empire in 1871, Ludwig withdrew from governance. From then on, he rarely bothered with affairs of state, went into a morbid seclusion, and devoted himself to his true passion: the arts. Ludwig worshipped the theater and the opera, especially the works of Richard Wagner, whose lifelong patron he became. He also developed a mania for extravagant palaces in the Bavarian mountains. He started with the Linderhoff, patterned on the Trianon Palace and built between 1869 to 1878. Simultaneously, he started construction on his most famous project, Neuschwanstein, a fairy tale castle precariously situated on a crag and decorated with scenes from Wagner’s operas. Built from 1869 to 1886, it inspired Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle.

16. An Ending That Was Anything But Fairy Tale

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Singers’ Hall, in Neuschwanstein Castle. Wikimedia

As Neuschwanstein was being built, Ludwig started an even more ambitious project in 1878, the Herrenchiemsee, a copy of Versailles. It was never completed, because Ludwig went bankrupt. Between the abandonment of his official duties, profligate spending, and withdrawal into a recluse’s life among other bizarre behavior, the king’s ministers finally had enough. In 1886, Ludwig was declared insane by a panel of doctors and sent to a remote palace by a psychiatrist. Three days later, he drowned himself in a lake, and took his psychiatrist with him. Today, Ludwig’s architectural and artistic legacy includes many of Bavaria’s biggest tourist attractions.

15. A Royal “Stomach With a Head”

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
King Farouk in 1946. Wikimedia

Egypt’s King Farouk I (1920 – 1965) reigned from 1936 until he was overthrown in 1952. His years as Egypt’s last king were marked by widespread corruption, incompetence, and bizarre conduct. A kleptomaniac, Farouk could not resist stealing things, and often picked people’s pockets. He also was an avid pornography collector. Farouk was popular early in his reign, when he ascended the throne as a slim and handsome young man. He quickly squandered the goodwill with his incompetent governance, and his good looks were soon ruined by gluttony that saw him balloon to 300 pounds. Farouk became an object of derision, widely lampooned as a “stomach with a head”. His lavish lifestyle while his subjects endured World War II’s hardships further tanked his popularity.

14. The Pickpocket King

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
King Farouk and Winston Churchill. Pinterest

Farouk took pickpocketing lessons, and one of his victims was Winston Churchill. During a state dinner hosted by the Egyptian monarch during WWII, Churchill discovered that his pocket watch – a prized family heirloom – was missing. After an outcry and search, Farouk, who had been seated next to Churchill, sheepishly turned it in, claiming to have “found” it. It was just one example of the Egyptian king’s bizarre behavior. Another was how he handled repeated nightmares in which he was chased by a ravenous lion. Frazzled from loss of sleep, he consulted the rector of Cairo’s ancient Al Azhar University, who advised him “you will not rest until you have shot a lion“. So Farouk went to the zoo and shot two lions in their cage.

13. Owner of The World’s Biggest Porn Stash

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Farouk with his wife and son in exile, 1953. Wikimedia

By 1952, Farouk’s corruption and maladministration had completely eroded his standing, and he was overthrown in a coup. Hastily fleeing Egypt, he left most of his possessions behind. The new government auctioned his belongings, and in the process discovered his porn stash. This was in the days when all pornography was hardcopy. Farouk had entire rooms filled with the stuff, and it soon became clear that the Egyptian king had a serious porn habit. So serious that he had amassed the world’s biggest porn collection. Farouk settled first in Monaco, then in Rome. There, he literally ate himself to death, collapsing at a restaurant dinner table after a heavy meal in 1965.

12. Emperor of the Central African Empire

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Jean Bedel Bokassa. Google Arts & Culture

Jean-Bedel Bokassa, self-proclaimed Bokassa the First (1921 – 1996), was the military dictator of the Central African Republic from 1966 to 1979. He declared the small country an empire, and himself Bokassa I, Emperor of the Central African Empire. His rule was marked by terror, corruption, and bizarre behavior. Bokassa was a captain in the French colonial forces when Central Africa gained its independence from France. The country’s new president, a distant cousin, invited him to head its armed forces. Bokassa accepted, and a few years later, staged a coup, seized power, and declared himself president. A worshipper of Napoleon Bonaparte, he emulated his idol’s example and crowned himself emperor.

11. A Lavish Coronation Amidst Hunger

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Emperor Bokassa. Jeremy Hunter

Bokassa bankrupted his impoverished country with a lavish coronation that cost about eighty million dollars. It included a diamond-encrusted crown that cost twenty million. His governance was marked by a reign of terror in which Bokassa personally supervised the judicial beating of criminal suspects. He decreed that thieves were to lose an ear for the first two offenses, and a hand for the third. Emperor Bokassa the First, as he came to style himself, tortured suspected political opponents, then fed their corpses to crocodiles and lions kept in his private zoo. There were also accusations of cannibalism, triggered by photographs in Paris-Match magazine that showed a freezer containing children’s bodies. Among Bokassa’s many atrocities, the most infamous was the arrest of hundreds of schoolchildren in 1979 for refusal to buy school uniforms from a company owned by one of his wives.

10. A Bizarre Emperor’s Downfall

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Emperor Bokassa. Google Arts & Culture

Bokassa personally supervised his imperial guard’s murder of over 100 children. The torture and massacre of children was a final straw, and soon thereafter, French paratroopers deposed Bokassa. He went into exile in France, but within a few years of lavish spending, he wasted his embezzled millions. The former emperor was reduced to poverty – which hit the news when one of his children was arrested for shoplifting food. He returned to Central Africa in 1986, where he was tried and convicted of murder and treason, and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, however, and in 1993 Bokassa was released. He died three years later, in 1996.

9. The Bizarre Idi Amin

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Idi Amin and Gaddafi. PublisHistory

Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada (circa 1925 – 2003) was a military officer who seized power in a 1971 coup, and ruled until 1979. He had been commander of the Ugandan army when he got wind that he was about to be arrested for theft. So he overthrew the government and declared himself president. Amin’s regime was known for repression, ethnic persecutions, human rights abuses, economic mismanagement, corruption, and nepotism. But what sets him apart from other brutal and incompetent kleptocrats was his unpredictable and often macabre behavior, and sheer weirdness. Amin’s governance was bizarre from the start, and grew increasingly more erratic and unpredictable with time. He started off as a conservative, and was initially supported by the West and Israel. Then he turned around, and became an ardent supporter of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

8. The African “King of Scotland”

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
A blinged out Idi Amin. Pinterest

Idi Amin expelled Uganda’s ethnically Asian citizens and residents, and seized their and Europeans residents’ businesses and enterprises, which formed the economy’s backbone. He then handed them to relatives and supporters, who promptly drove them into the ground. When Amin’s antics led the UK to sever diplomatic relations, he declared that he had defeated Britain, and awarded himself a CBE (“Conqueror of the British Empire”) medal. He also conferred upon himself a VC, or Victorious Cross, a copy of the British medal. Other titles he bestowed upon himself include “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“. While at it, Amin also declared himself King of Scotland.

7. A Personal Life as Bizarre as the Public One

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Idi Amin. Wikimedia

Idi Amin’s personal life was no less bizarre, with plenty of macabre added in. A polygamist, Amin married at least six women, at least one of whom he murdered and dismembered. In 1975, a nineteen-year-old go-go dancer caught his eye. She had a boyfriend, however. Amin had him beheaded. He then married her in a lavish wedding that cost about ten million US dollars, at a time when many Ugandans were hungry and malnourished. Estimates of Amin’s victims range from 100,000 to half a million. A boneheaded attempt to seize a province of adjacent Tanzania led to a war, which Amin swiftly lost. He was forced to flee in 1979, first to Libya, and then to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royal family gave him asylum, refused to honor requests for his extradition, and generously subsidized him until his death in 2003.

6. “The Mad Dog of the Middle East

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
A young Colonel Gaddafi. Pinterest

Muammar al Gaddafi (1942 – 2011) was the self-declared “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamihirya”. As a young army colonel, he overthrew the Libyan monarchy in a 1969 military coup. He then became the country’s bizarre – and brutal – dictator until overthrown in a 2011 uprising. President Ronald Reagan called him “the mad dog of the Middle East”, just before he sent American warplanes to bomb him. Gaddafi’s 42-year-reign was marked by dramatic twists and turns. He morphed from socialism to Islamic fundamentalism. Once a key sponsor of terrorism, he became an avid cooperator in the Global War on Terror. He started off as an Arab nationalist, only to eventually revile Arabs and turn to African nationalism instead.

5. A Messiah Complex

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Gaddafi. Reuters

Gaddafi saw himself as a messiah. He modeled himself on Chairman Mao, and published The Little Green Book, which contained a political philosophy labeled The Third International Theory. A cockamamie mix of direct democracy, Arab and African nationalism, and Islamic socialism, it was intended as an alternative to capitalism and communism. The book became required reading for Libyans, and it formed the theoretical basis of the country’s government. In reality, Libya was a kleptocratic dictatorship, governed on the basis of nepotism to enrich Gaddafi’s family and his tribe. It had a grossly mismanaged economy that survived only because of abundant oil and gas.

4. Hitting on America’s Secretary of State

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Gaddafi and Condoleeza Rice. CNN

A creepy womanizer, Gaddafi often hit on female reporters. He frequently met them for interviews in bathrobes or in his underwear. He became obsessed with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and referred to her as his “darling black African woman“. He showered her during a visit to Tripoli with $212,000 worth of gifts, including a lute and a locket with his picture inside. He also saw himself as a fashion icon, and cultivated an odd collection of ensembles and sartorial choices that made him modern history’s most bizarrely dressed ruler. Changing in and out of silly uniforms multiple times a day, Gaddafi was the closest real life depiction of a James Bond baddie. The cartoonish villain look was further enhanced by his all-virgin female bodyguard, officially named the “Revolutionary Nuns”, but known more commonly as the Amazonian Guard.

3. Viciousness Beneath the Bling

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Libyan rebels capture Gaddafi. Freedom Group

The buffoonish look and bizarre philosophy hid a brutal dictator. Gaddafi’s regime engaged in massive repression, torture, murder, and human rights violations. He often ordered women kidnapped off the street – including teenaged girls – and taken to one of his many palaces. At least one of his victims was kept imprisoned in his basement for six years. He forced her to watch porn while snorting cocaine with him, and repeatedly assaulted, urinated on, and subjected her to sundry perversions. Gaddafi was finally overthrown in a 2011 revolt and captured by rebels, who tortured and likely sodomized him before killing him.

2. The Man Behind The Killing Fields

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Saloth Sar. Pinterest

Cambodian communist revolutionary Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot (1925 – 1998), was a monster concealed by a charismatic façade. When he seized power at the head of the Khmer Rouge in 1975, nothing hinted at the horrors he was about to unleash. He renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea, and transformed it into a nightmarish ideological tyranny, masterfully depicted in the 1984 movie, The Killing Fields. About a quarter of Cambodia’s population was killed in a horrific genocide carried out by  Pol Pot and his followers, that was made even worse by its irrationality. In an attempt at social engineering, cities were evacuated, and the urban masses were forcibly converted into peasants toiling on poorly run collective farms. Roughly three million were murdered or starved to death before the nightmare ended when the Khmer Rouge were driven from power in 1979.

1.     The “Very Kind Man” Who Unleashed Genocide

Bizarre: Some of the Modern Era’s Oddest Rulers
Pol Pot. Aventuras na Historia

Born into a prosperous family, Pol Pot received an elite education in Cambodia’s best schools, then moved to Paris, where he joined the French Communist Party. He returned to Cambodia, became a French and Geography college professor, and was beloved by his students as a “very kind man“. He often spoke about themes of human decency and kindness, and was described as: “an attractive figure. His deep voice and calm gestures were reassuring. He seemed to be someone who could explain things in such a way that you came to love justice and honesty and hate corruption“. Some students remembered him as “calm, self-assured, smooth featured, honest, and persuasive, even hypnotic when speaking to small groups“. Many of those students became his most enthusiastic followers when he led the Khmer Rouge. They were among the most ruthless executioners of what came to be known as the Cambodian Genocide.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Africa Today, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1978) – The Coronation of Emperor Bokassa

Biography – Idi Amin

Biography – Pol Pot

Blunt, Wilifrid – The Dream King: Ludwig II of Bavaria (1970)

Cojean, Annick – Gaddafi’s Harem: The Story of a Young Woman and the Abuses of Power in Libya (2014)

Davis, Brian Lee – Qaddafi, Terrorism, and the Origins of the US Attack on Libya (1990)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Muammar al Qaddafi

Hinton, Alexander Laban – Why Did They Kill: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (2005)

History Collection – This Day in History: Pol Pot Changes Cambodia’s Name to Kampuchea (1976)

IMDb – King Faroukh Biography

King, Greg – The Mad King: The Life and Times of Ludwig II of Bavaria (1996)

Leopold, Mark – Idi Amin: The Story of Africa’s Icon of Evil (2020)

Mad Monarchs – Farouk of Egypt

Museum Facts – Egypt’s King Farouk or ‘Thief of Cairo’

Shaw, Karl – Power Mad! A Book of Deranged Dictators (2004)

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