Who Knew Young Stalin Was Like a 20th Century Situation

^Just kidding. But you should check out

http://bangabledudesinhistory.blogspot.com/

For all history geeks. It's true that half of these gentlemen featured aren't so comely but I'm sure they're beautiful in the eyes of the ladies who lust over their other attractive features. I'm encouraging my friend to submit her historical crush, Woodrow Wilson (though honestly, I have no idea what's up with that), and I personally have a thing for William III of England or more commonly known as William of Orange/half of the William & Mary duo of Glorious Revolution fame. Several reasons are the cause of this. For one, he was known to be a plain man devoted to duty and country, who disliked pageantry and pretensions - an excellent trait for any ruler surrounded by sycophants - and most admirably, like most great men, it was a great woman who formed the core of his world. Despite being a kind of charmless, chillingly reserved man, William went batshit when he found out that his wife, cousin, and co-regnant, the 32-year-old Queen Mary, was dying from smallpox, in the most romantic way possible.

Hysterics, weeping, praying, all that. (for full details, click on link above) His devastation was so extreme that everyone at court became frightened at this immoderate display of emotion from a man usually so unfathomable. He wasn't even around when the queen finally died because he actually fainted when the doctors told him that she was in her last moments. William declared that "from being the most happy, he was now going to be the most miserable creature upon earth. He said that "during the whole course of their marriage he had never known one single fault in her; there was a worth in her that nobody knew besides himself". That is moving shit.

After her death, he shut himself up in his bedchamber and refused to see anybody, writing that the "world was over for him," and confined himself for so long that people actually wrote him poems, reminding him that he still had a country to rule, foreign enemies to ward off, and not to mention, crazy grief was unseemly for a male monarch and so un-Christian to boot since technically she was in a better place. He never pulled a Queen Victoria, exactly, and eventually resumed his duties with the same exhaustive diligence he had committed to throughout his entire career, but he wore a locket of Mary's hair under his clothes for the rest of his life until his own untimely death, eight years after hers.

So you can see why I find him so attractive. I would totally watch a movie about their life as a guilty pleasure.