It’s easy, even comforting, to think of history’s tyrants as one-dimensional bad guys. That they may have had emotions and frailties as complex as our own threatens to muddy the narrative. But humanizing the inhuman can really drive home the terrifying reality of their despotic regimes, not to mention their sociopathic capacity for compartmentalization.
To that end, and in celebration of Valentine’s Day, here are 10 of the most hated dictators’ most intimate love stories.
This is an encore presentation of this list, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. You can read the full list here!