do you have any favorite historical figures?
I’m generally extremely fascinated by historical figures, or figures who lived in the past in general, so it would be very hard to try and pinpoint a favourite one because they interest me for different reasons: maybe they lived in a particular period, maybe they were of a certain class in a certain time and place, maybe they were actually important but had a peculiar private life, maybe they were philosophers or thinkers or mathematicians and I deeply admire their work, maybe they were absolutely poor and invisible but you can guess what their life was like based on historical documents and objects found. one of my most common fantasizing trips (both when I was little and later in life) was imagining myself injected in the past, confronted with different rules and morals and cultures, so again, it’s difficult to pinpoint favourite people because of my general passion for anything past xD that being said, I do have one exact person that made my jaw drop on the floor in a fit of “I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS, THIS IS NOT A DIE HARD MOVIE WTF”, and ever since then has become my role model, that famous person that you put on a pedestal, kneel down at his altar and whisper “goddamn” he’s the Devil Commander, aka Amedeo Guillet, become legend during WWII. you know, in school they generally teach you that italy back then was a kid that needed mom’s help (germany) every time they picked a fight with someone, but they also generally don’t tell you that even with this, there was a devil going rampant in eastern africa together with his african men. that was amedeo, named Devil Commander by his troops that came to believe he had to be some kind of immortal. he has wiki pages on him, but the english one has NOTHING of the story the italian tells, it misses all the “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDIN ME” facts, all the “HOW DID WE ESCALATE TO THIS” moments, all the “WHERE DOES HE GET THE ENERGY” life questions. highlights include things like being adopted as uncle or dad by everyone he meets (like yemen’s imam, or the king of jordan, a fucking cameleer that saved his life in the middle of the desert), leading troops made of natives of different ethnicities and religions and somehow fulfilling the strangers-to-family trope in the middle of the fucking war, with them getting perfectly along and generating such loyalty that even with the high amount of casualties he had, no one ever deserted. also singing his own soundtrack as he acted like in a james bond movie, pissing off the britains time and time again as he went on a fucking private guerrilla even though he could have gone home, going full undercover to escape getting caught by them, and just generally eliciting the “that man is completely out of his mind, he doesn’t give a damn if he dies???!!!!” “I know I love him” feeling. I’m so passionate about that dude and the fucking absurd life he lived to the glorious age of 101 (because even with everything he lived through, including malaria, he died of natural death), that I’m available to translate the italian wiki page to share the amazingness of this devil. what a fucking inspiration.
