The Empress of Russia had quite the appetite for sex. Catherine the Great was not a bad ruler. Born Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst in Germany, she married Peter III in 1745. Historians believe that none of her four children were fathered by the king. After her husband’s death, Catherine went on to be with as many men as she wanted.

The King of Bavaria spent time and money building elaborate and fantastical castles. Neuschwanstein, the German castle that inspired Walt Disney’s design for Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty‘s signature castles was his. Ludwig was born in 1845 and became king at 18. He had no training or experience so he shied away from the job for the rest of his life. Ludwig retreated to his lavish castles and fully invested himself in his fantasy world, imagining himself as Parzival, a medieval figure associated with the Holy Grail.

The Tsar of Russia went as far as to demand an entire country shave their faces. He could be insensitive and inconsiderate. Rumor has it that when Peter went to Thames to learn maritime technology, he stayed at diarist John Evelyn’s home, where he “made it his Court & palace.” The housekeeper reported that Peter and his entourage trashed the palace. They aimed their pistols at portraits in the home, uprooting the diarist’s garden, and soiling at least 12 blankets.

The King of Great Britain and Ireland is one of the most famous mad royals. It was during the Revolutionary War that George fell into a long-term bout of violent madness that necessitated his restraint in a strait jacket. Two more bouts of insanity in 1804 and 1810 ruined the King, and he died deaf and blind in 1820. Modern research attributes his madness to porphyria, a metabolic disease, or arsenic poisoning from various medicines or cosmetic products.

The Book of Daniel in the Christian Bible narrates that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, came down with a seven year spell of madness. He retreated from society, lived like an animal, and ate grass like a farm animal. Scholars are unclear whether the writer meant Nebuchadnezzar or another king of Babylon, Nabonidus. Both Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus had sons named Belshazzar, and Nabonidus a reputation as an eccentric.

He is the famous emperor who built the terra cotta warriors. Qin burned books and became obsessed with immortality. Born Zhao Zheng in 259 BC, Qin Shi Huang united the disparate states of China into one unified force. He burned books and even buried 460 intellectuals alive for speaking out against his quest for immortality. He sent parties throughout China in search of elixirs, alchemists, and magicians who could help him achieve immortality. He died in 210 BC and was buried with his army of terra cotta warriors and concubines.

The Prince of Wallachia was born in 1431 and in that same year, Vlad’s father, Vlad II, became a member of the Order of the Dragon. This was a group devoted to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. This Order bestowed upon Vlad II the surname “Dracul,” meaning dragon. Vlad III, as the son of Dracul, went by “Draculea.” Turks captured Vlad III and his brother, keeping them captive throughout childhood. When Vlad III finally returned home, he reclaimed the throne and invited hundreds of noblemen to his palace for dinner. He had his guests stabbed and impaled on stakes. When Ottoman envoys refused to remove their turbans, Vlad III nailed them to their heads. “Dracula” lived up to his historic nickname by impaling dozens of merchants and Ottoman prisoners of war.

The Ming Dynasty Emperor was passionate about the pursuit of pleasure and the world of make-believe. Born Zhu Houzao, he took the throne of the Ming Dynasty in 1505, at the age of 14. He was still a teenager, and he never fully gained control of his impulses. He handed over control to a group of eunuchs, devoting himself to pleasure-seeking instead. Legends state that Zhengde’s harem was so large, women starved because there wasn’t enough food for everyone. Zhengde died from an illness he caught after his pleasure boat capsized.

When his brother, Ahmed I, took the throne of the Ottoman Empire in 1603, tradition dictated that he execute his brother. 13-year-old Ahmed spared the life of his 12-year-old brother, and instead held him captive in a window-less prison. Mustafa stayed incarcerated for 14 years, which had a severe affect on his mental health. The death of Ahmed I marked the ascension of Mustafa from the cage to the throne. After a brief rule, he was replaced by his nephew Osman, and sent back to imprisonment. After the death of Osman, nobles returned Mustafa to power. He refused to leave his cage so they pulled him out and installed him on the throne. He abdicated his spot to his other nephew, Murad, and returned to his prison. He died at the age of 47.

The King of Sweden, who once courted Elizabeth I, ascended to the throne in 1560 but as time went on, paranoia started to take over. Vicious mood swings and unhinged impulses began to take over. He sentenced guards to death for irritating him and executed people for whispering or giggling in his presence. Servants who looked well-put-together were put to death for trying to seduce the ladies of the court. He eventually ended the life a Swedish nobleman with his own hands by stabbing him to death. He then had his guards execute a number of other aristocrats who were held in his castle’s cells.

Ibrahim I became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire but showed himself to be an inept ruler. Depressed over his brother’s death, he distracted himself with his harem of 280 concubines. Ibrahim’s most infamous moment of madness came when he had his entire harem drowned. The high taxes he imposed to keep himself fat and happy ultimately did him in. His people imprisoned him and they installed his 6-year-old son as Sultan, all with the support of his mother. He was strangled to death by his own former executioners.

In 1766, Christian VII of Denmark became king at age 16. He never acted a day older. He played pranks on his grandmother, ran wild through the streets with his friend and his mistress, destroying shops and patronizing brothels, then built his own torture rack and had himself tied to it and flogged. His devious doctor, Johann Friedrich Struenseé, had himself appointed to Christian’s cabinet and seduced Christian’s wife. Christian’s equally manipulative stepmother persuaded a very weak-minded Christian to have Struenseé and the Queen arrested for their affair.

Justin II was ruler of the Byzantine Empire from 565-578 AD. Justin was prone to bouts of madness and would often try to bite others in court. He demanded that organ music be constantly played to settle his nerves. Members of his court had to hold him down during fits of violent rage, even installing bars on windows to prevent him from jumping out. He would laugh, cry, make animal noises, and hit people without provocation making people believe he was possessed by the devil.

Joanna of Castile was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish royals who sent Christopher Columbus on his western voyage. Joanna married Philip I of Burgundy, son of the Holy Roman Emperor. Joanna earned her title “Juana La Loca” after Philip’s sudden death in 1506. She refused to be separated from Philip’s embalmed body, keeping it in her room and even traveling with it. Her family never saw her as fit to rule, and her son Charles eventually took on the role of regent, becoming the real leader of the country.

Caligula’s great-uncle Tiberius, Emperor of Rome, ended the lives most of his family to prevent them from usurping his throne. Tiberius adopted young Caligula, and when Tiberius died in 37 AD, Caligula claimed the throne, killing Tiberius’s son to keep him from being emperor. He decreed that he was a living god. He replaced the heads of statues of gods with busts of his own likeness atop their bodies. He even reportedly committed incest with his sisters. Finally, Romans had enough and a group of guards stabbed him to death.

Catherine the Great’s husband, Peter III, had a much less successful royal career. In 1742, when he was 14, his aunt, the Empress of Russia, brought him from Germany to Russia with the intention of making him her heir. Peter hated Russia, and the Russian people hated him as well. Peter and Catherine were a bad match. She was intelligent and driven, while he was a stunted man-child. It is unclear whether they ever consummated their relationship.

Prince Sado’s brutal treatment at the hands of his father, King Yongjo, led to a life of perversion, violence, and despair. Sado indulged in his vices liberally. He was obsessed with clothes, and threw alcohol-fueled parties. He slept with a nun, and even tried to seduce his younger sister. When King Yongjo learned of some of Sado’s misdeeds, he summoned him to court and locked him in a giant chest. He starved to death after 8 days.

Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible, was prone to wild rages from a young age as he faced constant threats from usurpers to his throne after the deaths of both parents by his eighth birthday. After his wife’s death, Ivan sank into a depression that inspired a 24-year-long reign of terror. He ended the life any noble who spoke against him, beat his daughter-in-law so badly she miscarried, and even murdered his son in one of his rages. Legends also say the tsar allegedly blinded the architect of St. Basil’s Cathedral just so he could never create another building as beautiful.

Charles VI ruled France during a time of great chaos. His paranoia and violent rages made him dangerous and homicidal to anyone near him. During his spells of madness, he often had to be restrained. He gave up on his personal hygiene to the point that he had to be cut out of his clothes. Charles suffered from a “glass delusion”, believing that his body was made of glass. He faded in and out of this delusion, causing radical changes to his character. He was an outdoorsy athlete but when the glass delusion struck, he refused to move, sitting still for hours on end.

Elagabalus took the throne in 218 AD. He was a lesser-known Roman Emperor but his behavior rivaled that of the most vicious, cruel, and self-indulgent rulers of all time. He chained naked women to chariots and whipped them as they pulled him around, released poisonous snakes into the audience of the gladiator games and watched as crowds panicked and died from poisonous bites, and would tie dinner guests to a water wheel to watch them slowly drown. His perversity deserves a list, but there might not be enough room for all of his eccentricities and atrocities.

Nero’s mom, Agrippina, orchestrated Nero’s rise to the throne in 54 AD by marrying her uncle, Claudius, and convincing him to install Nero as Emperor instead of his own son. She then poisoned Claudius to death. When Nero came to power, he took multiple wives and lovers, spent massive amounts of money on personal pursuits, and ended the life anyone who dared to criticize his ways. In 64 AD, a great fire struck Rome. Many Romans believed Nero himself started the fire to make way for a new castle. He blamed Christians, initiating a period of oppression and torture of Christians in Rome.

The 23-year-old Princess of Bavaria became convinced she swallowed an entire glass grand piano as a child and that any sudden movement would shatter the instrument. She would walk sideways through doorways and corridors to avoid breaking. The princess’s delusion has become a part of her quirky reputation, though scholars speculate she suffered from something Robert Burton calls “The Glass Delusion” in his psychological study, The Anatomy of Melancholy in 1612. The Glass Delusion is thought to be a form of melancholy in which the sufferer believes they are made of glass.

Maria Eleonora’s goal as queen was to give her husband a male heir. She bore her husband, King Gustavus Adolphus, a girl named Christina in 1626, and she immediately rejected her daughter, calling her a monster. She allegedly tried to kill Christina by pushing her down stairs and dropping her. When the king died, she refused to bury Gustavus’s body for more than a year and slept below a hanging casket that contained his heart. The Queen of Sweden’s insanity was on another level.