If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?
I want to go see Ridley Scott’s Napoleon played by Joaquin Phoenix. Even though the History Legends YouTube channel gave it a bad review, I still want to check it out.
Napoleon was never my favourite historical figure because he was a tyrant. He might have started low and reached up high but he ended up on top of a pile that the Revolution was supposed to have removed.
He was the man of his times. Oh, he did defeat the entire continent multiple times, but the perfidious Albion, as the French used to call their archenemy England, managed to rally Europe after each defeat that no matter how many times French arms put them down, the Old Order still got the upper hand in the end.
No, I wouldn’t meet him because I esteem the man. I’d meet him right after Waterloo, because I would like to pick his mind for lessons learned.
I’d like to know what he would have done differently if he could travel back in time like I did.
I’d be very curious to know if Napoleon had any regrets about his actions or if he’d take the chance to go another way about it.
They say insanity is repeating the same actions and hoping for a different result.
In my mind, I should want to know whether the man was aware of his delusion or not. Too many mentally troubled folk imagine themselves to be him, and that makes me curious to find out if he himself was insane or not.
Götterdämmerung 