Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, as he promised, is continuing on his listmania streak. Today he provides for you a list of the greatest rulers in the history of the world. Yesterday he promised that the list would be of the greatest “leaders” in the history of the world. While putting together today’s list your Maximum Leader realized that a better appelation would be “rulers.” Allow him to explain.

This was a tough list to put together. There are so many criteria by which one could judge someone as being “great.” The criteria that your Maximum Leader settled on mentally were these: scope of power/influence in geographic terms, power within the political structure, longevity of rule/reign, scope of internal improvments within territory ruled, “cultural” growth/blossoming. After considering these criteria your Maximum Leader determined that leaders in democracies tend not be able to be compared to leaders in political systems where power is invested in a narrower number of people (or in just one person). Thus, your Maximum Leader determined that he wasn’t talking about “leaders” in the sense that we might call George Washington, Winston Churchill, or Charles DeGaulle leaders. He was really talking about rulers in an imperial or other monarchical sense. Your Maximum Leader also determined that these rules had to generally behave in a way that an objective observer could reasonably describe as “good.” This would eliminate men like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao from the list - although they might otherwise fit the criteria.

That said… Here is the list:

THE TOP 10 GREATEST RULERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

1. Augustus Caesar. First emperor of the Roman Empire.
2. Qin Shihuang. First emperor of China.
3. Tokugawa Ieyasu. Shogun of Japan.
4. Peter I of Russia. Tsar of Russia.
5. Rameses II. Pharaoh of Egypt.
6. Charlemagne. Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks.
7. Alexander the Great. King of Macedona.
8. Kublai Khan. Emperor of China.
9. Louis XIV. King of France.
10. Heraclius. Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

NB: The links on this list are all to Wikipedia pages. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t read all of those pages completely for accuracy and scope. He puts them there as general references.

Your Maximum Leader notes that this list is unordered, except for number 1. Your Maximum Leader does believe that Augustus Ceasar would top his list in any circumstances.

Tomorrow… A slightly different take on an old familiar list…

Carry on.