5. Eleazar Williams
While most of the other entries on this list relied on good old rebellion or insane public claims in their pursuit of the throne, in the 1830’s William tried his hand at power by pretending to be a French king, specifically the late Louis Charles de Bourdin XVII who had died in 1795 during the French revolution while in prison at the age of eight. Standing in Eleazar’s way a bit was the fact he wasn’t a Caucasian, but instead Mohawk Native American. That, and the claim that his reason for waiting until he was in his forties to let everyone know that he was the Dauphin was because he had forgotten until blow to his head had refreshed his memory (a curiously original claim as it predated cartoon clichés by more than half a century), cast some doubt. Allegedly persuasive enough to get some money from European aristocrats (probably based mostly on their not meeting him) he supposedly died talking about a dress his mother Marie Antoniette wore. So that means I’ll have to come up with some new dying words if I want to avoid being accused of copying.
4. Verdicaee Turner
Most of these leaders, you’ll have noticed, strove to gain their illustrious offices. In Vedicaee Turner’s case, she was born for it. You see, at birth, (she claimed), she tried to kick off the placenta and it “…flipped back onto my head like a crown.” An appropriate beginning for this woman, who in 1927 claimed she was “Empress of the Washitaw Nation. ” The Washitaw Nation is a bogus native American tribe that claims to own all the land that was acquired for America from France in 1803 during the Louisiana Purchase. Discontent with merely basking in power and enjoying the support of a local separatist group called the Republic of Texas, she began to sell expensive passports, driver’s licenses, and other “official” documents related to her nation. She brought under investigation for fraud in 1999. One of the investigating officers said “she’s goofy.” It’s not a title like Alexander the Great, but there are worse titles than “Verdiacee the Goofy.”
3. Hong Xiuquan
It might seem odd to consider a man who managed to get a rebellion that ultimately killed twenty million people “ridiculous,” but that’s just what Hong Xiuquan is. The main instigator of the Taiping Rebellion that lasted from 1850 to 1864 in China, was, in fact, ridiculous. Born in middle class China in 1914, he was originally a bright but undistinguished tutor. In 1836 he became acquainted with and then obsessed with Christianity in a very unusual way. He claimed to have been put on Earth to rid the world of demons. By 1850, he had a following of 10,000-30,000 people that followed him as he preached a “combination of utopianism, evangelism, and muddled Catholicism.” As time went on, he began to believe that he was actually a direct relative of Jesus Christ, which sort of makes him the Chinese equivalent of the Jim Jones (of Jonestown fame). Hong Xiuquan’s rebellion was clearly hopeless as he was outnumbered ten to one by the first army he encountered. Since he could not properly engage enemy armies or cities with a decent hope of victory he settled on having his followers kill millions of civilians while the Imperial army did the same thing trying to hunt him down. Ultimately he poisoned himself in 1864.
2. Chen Sheng
In 209 b.c., Chen Sheng was in charge of a unit of soldiers that was stationed near the Northern border of what was then the nation of China. One day, marching to report for duty, his unit was late because of bad weather. So with an “army” of 450, he rebelled. Instead of doing the sensible thing and deserting, he made for the local palace, determined to become king of the local province of Chu completely though military might. He managed to conquer a palace, and thus his numbers swelled to 10,000.
While this might not seem so ridiculous on the face of it, you have to consider this is ancient China we’re talking about. An imperial army of 200,000 men was dispatched to take care of him. Sheng responded to his hopeless situation by having many of his own soldiers killed in the face of utterly impossible odds. So Sheng’s reign from rebellion to defeat lasted little under six months.
While some Western societies might see him as some sort of martyr an attempted folk hero, Chinese history has been eager to heap abuse on him through the years. The Chinese historical epic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms backhanded his corpse by saying of him “how can a little songbird hope to appreciate the majesty of a swan?”
1. Jonathon Sharkey
We’re not sure how safe it is to call Jonathon Sharkey ridiculous. We might really be putting our butts on the line. You see, while all the rest of these people just wanted to rule a nation of human beings, Sharkey rules a nation of vampires. He let all of us lesser beings know he was the leader of the vampire nation on December 16, 2009 when he testified in court that he should not be bound by the rulings of American courts but by Vampire Law. He even made death threats at a judge. The puny humans didn’t recognize what they were up against, and Sharkey was forced to go easy on us by serving out his sentence. Now, he is planning his 2012 bid for President. We shudder to think how he plans to expand his constituency.
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