It’s gotta be the super mario man himself hailing from Georgia, Iosif Stalin.
-
Wins against the nazis, doesn’t elaborate, leaves, USSR becomes the sugar daddy of the eastern bloc
-
Has a really cool looking moustache. No wonder he gets parodied as Mario
-
Literally outwitted his enemies by playing the “innocent secretary” and gaining power.
-
Was highly respected and feared by his enemies
-
Is still parodied and memes have spread of him by both tankies and non tankies alike
-
Is in Red Alert 1
-
Massive troll in pranking the other party members, he would throw bits of fruit into their drinks.
-
Isn’t Hitler.
Also:
- Was a fucking bank robber for the cause, making him a cross between John Dillinger and Robin Hood
- Looked like a movie star in his prime.
Also also, a horrible despot and mass murderer.
Also also, a horrible despot and mass murderer.
This is just western propaganda.
Hadrian
For a while, I’ve mentioned that the most logical course of action after the Napoleon and Oppenheimer movies is a Marcus Aurelius one, complete with Peter “Optimus Prime” Cullen as Marcus Aurelius.
I’d love to see a TV series about Hadrian where he arrives in a new province every episode and fixes stuff.
Interspersed are scenes of young Hadrian with Trajan, who is constantly badgered by mail by provincial governors (including Pliny the Younger) about trivial matters, as he tries (and fails spectacularly) to instill into Hadrian the importance of decentralized leadership.
If we’re going for “cool story” rather than “admirable person”, then the Byzantine emperor Justinian II.
Tell us a story!
He was overthrown, had his nose cut off, and was exiled to the Crimea. After conspiring to return to power, he was summoned back to Constantinople for additional punishment; but instead he escaped to the steppes and married the daughter of the Khazar kaghan. The Byzantines negotiated with the Khazars to have Justinian extradited, but Justinian was warned by his wife and killed the Khazar officials sent to capture him. Next he escaped to the Bulgars, married his daughter to the Bulgar Khan, and convinced the Khan to lend him an army to re-take the throne. So he appeared before the walls of Constantinople at the head of a barbarian army, but the city refused to surrender. Finally he used his knowledge of the city’s geography to crawl in through the sewers and took the throne by surprise.
Holy crap, that is wild. I’m going into a rabbit hole about him, this is great!
Hank Scorpio is the only correct answer. Or maybe it’s wrong, i dunno, but I think it’s correct.
For me, Stalin falls out of the cool category due to deaths under his leadership (about 3.3 million officially recorded victims).
I have always enjoyed Alice Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter. She was brash, witty, at full of antics. Here’s an example: When it came time for the Roosevelt family to move out of the White House, Alice buried a Voodoo doll of the new first lady, Nellie Taft, in the front yard.
Thomas Sankara, revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso, jamming on his guitar, 1980s.
Having just carried out literacy campaigns across the country and vaccinated 2.5 million children free of charge… carrying out greening projects to curb the growing desertification in the Sahel, advocating women’s liberation and freedom and general improvements of women’s social status, alongside the nationalisation of land and mineral resources… then he played his stratocaster as he often did with his jazz band.
Sorry but you’ll never be this cool.
Theodore Roosevelt
As he famously said:
What’s up, bitches!
Cyrus the Great.
As a russian I’m saying: fuck Stalin and USSR. After Lenin it was seemed like Orwell’s antiutopia. And now Putler wants it back…
