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It’s been a while, but I think some of the general idea around the emperors after Augustus (the first several anyway, including Tiberius and Caligula) got their histories sort of… revised? by those who came later and wanted to demonize the former emperors to make themselves look better or whatever.

Like Claudius was written about as basically being a complete moron yet he was pretty competent as an emperor. It makes one wonder why historians at the time took all this time to say how unfit a person was or how they fucked their mom and all this shit, which may well be true, who knows, but it does seem like intentionally shitting on all of them except Augustus of course since dude lived so long be basically established himself as a demigod before he died.

You can pretty much be assured that anyone in history who ever wore a crown was a dogshit person in some capacity, but it’s worth considering the sources for bloody excess like what Caligula gets pinned with. And since the creator uncritically put Mao and Stalin and Kim Il-Sung on a list alongside Hitler, they’re probably absolutely incapable of considering sourcing.

Considering the army really liked him. Id say he gets a bad rep precisley because he was not that incompetent.

Caligula wasn’t even the worst Roman emperor, there was plenty more of them which caused much more suffering and no one of them even come close to Constantine if we consider the repercussions later in history.

Watch mojo is actually a fairly big channel so they can get away with some things

Ok, on the Mongolian thing, specifically Genghis Khan, you are correct… to a point. In comparison to other pre-gunpowder armies (probably an arbitrary point, but you gotta have some line when bullshitting about history) the Mongolians were absolutely more “tolerant” in many ways. There’s the famous “bring me a Muslim and a Christian so I can hear them debate to me” moment. He was pretty open to all religions as long as people bent the knee basically, which, all things considered, is very progressive. Especially compared to many European societies and rulers that demanded absolute adherence to a specific sect of Christianity. Just being Christian alone wasn’t even enough. So that’s all well and good.

There was, however, the whole “what if they don’t bend the knee?” question lol. And the answer to that is pretty much “nice city you have here. Be a shame if it didn’t exist.” Which, again, isn’t especially uniquely evil for the time. It was kinda routine for Romans at least 1000 years before the Mongols (obviously mostly different parts of the world before someone assumes shit off comparisons) to do the whole “surrender and we’ll work something out or resist and we’ll level your city.” A pretty effective tactic.

The Mongolians get a shitty historical framing because mostly Europeans have written the history that we read (and Chinese who had their reasons to not be kind in the history books). So of course they frame brutal warlords like Caesar (which is what he was to anyone who was not a Roman citizen) as great statesmen, adept at war and diplomacy, etc. And it’s hard to deny he wasn’t a great statesman, clearly he was since he elevated himself to something beyond what others had done and successfully held onto it (until he didn’t). But they leave out the exact details of his conquests around Europe and even in Northern Africa/Western Asian area. We hear about piles of heads and the nickname “the scourge of god” for the Khans. But Caesar’s name is associated with emperor, wealth, eventually it’s associated with god himself with Constantine and onward with the Eastern Orthodox Christians. Pretty telling setup when one side becomes “godly” and the other “the scourge of god.” Pretty early version of “the hordes of Asia” used many times later on by Europeans.

Kind of all over the place, but my only point is it’s ok to admit that Genghis Khan was a pretty not good guy. He directly led to the deaths of who knows how many people and it wasn’t for any sort of high minded liberatory goal. Just conquest. He and his people just happened to be especially good at it and he wasn’t white, so, he gets too much negative coverage compared to others.

If we were making a real evil people list I’m fairly certain at least half to 2/3 would be US presidents and statesmen cough Kissinger

I swear they put Vlad Tepes because of the whole dracula thing, thinking he was a real vampire. Turks literally did the same thing million times over for centuries in Balkan, Armenia and every place they occupied.

For everything he did, he’s literally nothing compared to average USA president or European monarch, how tf does he even make it to top 10 every time?

I feel like it was to have diversity in the list. I doubt it would be very interesting if they just had 5 Nazis in the top of the list.

Also Ghengis can be as friendly as he likes, but I feel like the rampant imperial conquests that saw the deaths and enslavement of millions of people kinda makes him evil. Even if it wasn’t him directly doing it.

Also there is no way that you have a large percent of the world population with some Ghengis DNA without commit some very evil acts.