Ed Ranks "The Greats" by Greatness, Part II

You saw the first six, who might be the least Great of the "the Greats," as well as an honorable mention. Now get ready for the next group of The Greats! If you don't know what I'm talking about, maybe you should scroll back a post.

This is Part II, ranking "the Greats" by greatness (factoring notable achievements, lengths of rule, cultural and historical legacy, and so on). 

Also, if someone is only sometimes named "the Great" instead of always, I don't rank them. To use a different example than I used last time, consider the case of the awesome Roman general and statesman, Pompey. Pompey is also sometimes called "Pompey the Great," but I'm not considering him for these rankings. Was he great? Yes. Was he greater than others who made this ranking? Certainly. However, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus is so damn famous that he's just known as "Pompey." He's a mononymous figure who only needs one name, like Homer, Molière, Pocahontas, Cleopatra, Michelangelo, or Lalaine and Zendaya. So in that sense, he's too great to even be called "the Great." You can't call Catherine the Great just "Catherine" in a random conservation and expect someone to know who you're talking about, since there are a million other famous Catherines. Pompey is like that. If someone asks "which Pompey?," there are an idiot. Because nobody cares about Sextus Pompey.

14. Frederick the Great

Dude looks like he got caught by Chris Hansen.

The ruler of Prussia (ah, Prussia!) from 1740 until 1786, making him the longest reign of any Hohenzollern king (ruling for a whopping 46 years). Famous culturally for his renowned patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment, and as a military general and statesman for this success (against great odds) in the Seven Years' War. What were the great odds? Well, France and Austria had traditionally been enemies. However, they decided to team up and try to kick Frederick's ass (not without reason, as earlier in his reign, Frederick warred against Austria and annexed Silesia). With the power of Austria and France combined (along with the addition of allies in Russia, Saxony and Sweden), things didn't look good for Prussia. Until they teamed up with England, who mainly wanted to join the fight because they hated France and had hated France for hundreds of damn years. In the end, the alliance to beat up Prussia failed, thanks in some part to Russia's empress dying and eventually being replaced by the elsewhere-on-this-list Catherine the Great. Opinions on how great Frederick the Great actually was have gone up and down in history, with him being hyped up as a Germanic legend and idol by the Nazis for a while. After the Nazis were kicked out of power the cult of personality around Frederick faded, though some historians say he was a competent general and "enlightened" despot.

13. Gwanggaeto the Great

The nineteenth monarch of Goguryeo (a progenitor of Korea) who reigned for 22 years from to 391–413. His reign brought about a "golden age" for this early version of Korea, where he conquered Baekje, which was at the time the most powerful of the "Three Kingdoms of Korea," whose capital is the modern Seoul. After conquering Baekje, Gwanggaeto conquired Silla (another of the Three Kingdoms), and also sent out expeditionary forces to take over other, smaller little kingdoms that existed across the modern Korean peninsula (and also Manchuria and the Liaodong peninsula, which is now what we'd consider as China, as well as parts of Inner Mongolia and Russia). Goguryeo's mightiest point was during Gwanggaet's reign, who was the first to create a loose unification of all of Korea. 

12. Casimir III the Great

Casimir reigned as the King of Poland from 1333 to 1370, which is a nice stretch of time to get some stuff done. What did he do? He took an otherwise poor and weak kingdom, and made it rich at powerful. He reformed the Polish army. He doubled the size of his kingdom. He opened the University of Krakow (Poland's first University). Shockingly, for a medieval ruler, he encouraged protections and rights to Jews and actively encouraged them to settle in Poland. Way to go, Casimir! Now try not to die in a hunting accident. Oops! Looks like I'm 650 years too late for that warning.

The mace she beat her husband to death with.

11. Catherine the Great

Other than the fact that she fucked horses (allegedly!) and that Helen Mirren played her in that recent miniseries, how much do you actually know about Catherine the Great? Probably not much, yet she continues to be one of the most famous of "the Greats." She was Russia's longest reigning female ruler, and came to rule via the ultimate power move of organizing a coup d'état against the reigning king who was HER HUSBAND (that is so damn boss!). She used fellow Russian Peter the Great as her model of rule that included many reforms, modernization efforts, and the foundation of new cities and towns. Her era of rule is often called the "Golden Age" of Russia. Sounds pretty impressive to me. I mean, she was still a despot though. Who probably had her husband murdered after dethroning him. So there's that.

10. Theoderic the Great

A man you've likely not heard of, he was King of the Ostrogoths from 471 to 526, and regent of the Visigoths from 511 to the same year of 526 (his death, naturally). He was the man who did what many Hot Topic stores have been trying to do for years: unite the Goths. As ruler of the combined Gothic realms, Theodoric controlled an empire stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Adriatic Sea. This was when the Roman Empire had fallen, so you might be surprised to see a map of Italy showing it completely ruled by the Goths. Well, that happened, my friends. Theoderic rules quite a notable stretch of territory. As this period of rule falls into what many consider to be the "Dark Ages," his legacy isn't that memorable these days. While he rules a large chuck of land and there was some medieval German reputation of him as being a great and mighty ruler, the real powers of dark age rules didn't start to spin up until the era of Charlemagne and others.

9. Sejong the Great

Definitely worthy of the top 10.

It took another thousand years for the Koreans to consider a man to be worthy of the title "the Great" after the reign of Gwanggaeto the Great, but that time finally came between     1418 and 1450 for the reign of Sejong. Jump forward long after Goguryeo and you now have the ruling Joseon Dynasty of Korea. When Sejong took the throne as a 21-year-old, it was because his father abdicated to give him power. Despite that, his dad (Taejong) still tried to rule on his own until his death 4 years later. After Taejong died, Sejong wasted no time in consolidating power around himself. Among the many accomplishments he made to earn the title "the Great" include widely adopting Confucianism throughout Korea by integrating its beliefs into government practice, engaging in diplomacy with China and Japan to secure Korea's strength, strengthening the military to battle Japanese pirates and the Jurchens (Manchus), extending the Korean territory to the Songhua River and capturing a number of castles, the promotion of science, technology, and agriculture, and the creation of the Hangul alphabet - still known as used today, and more commonly simply known in the west as the "Korean alphabet."

8. Peter the Great

Czar Ron Jeremy

As you might now by now, Peter the Great was a rather hilarious dude. He was a competent and strong Tsar of Russia, ruling from 1682 to 1725 (nearly 43 years, though the first few years were joint rule with his brother, Ivan). Through a number of successful wars, he expanded the Tsardom into a much larger empire that became a major European power and also laid the groundwork for the Russian navy after capturing ports at Azov (from the Ottoman Empire) and the Baltic Sea (from Sweden). A before-and-after map of what "Russia" became under Peter's rule is an amazing thing to look at. He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized and based on the Enlightenment. That also includes military reforms, that allowed Russia to become a major maritime power. The port city of St. Petersberg was founded by, and named after, Peter (obviously).  Peter's reforms had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign. Before Peter's rule, Russia was though by Europeans as those crazy barbarians in the snowlands to the east. During and after Peter's reign, Russia was "European" for the next several centuries. Whether they are still considered to be Europeans to this day is largely filtered through the complexities of the Cold War and post-war power dynamics. Peter was arguably the greatest ruler in Russian history... oh yeah... and he also liked to get shitfaced and drink and party his ass off.

Well, there you go for the mid-tier "the Greats." We conclude things next time, with the Greatest of the Greats!