this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
137 points (99.3% liked)

History Memes

2122 readers
460 users here now

A place to share history memes!

Rules:

  1. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.

  2. No fascism (including tankies/red fash), atrocity denial or apologia, etc.

  3. Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.

  4. Follow all Piefed.social rules.

  5. History referenced must be 20+ years old.

Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world

OTHER COMMS IN THE HISTORYVERSE:

founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 41 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Explanation: The Roman Emperor Elagabalus was noted for having an... atypical gender presentation at the time. It's commonly accepted nowadays that Elagabalus was probably trans or NB as we would recognize it in the modern day, asking to be called the feminine form of address, wearing women's clothing, marrying men and women, and offering half the Empire (!!!) for a good SRS doc. As with all matters historical, the details are always up for debate, though, especially the reliability of the sources and the applicability of modern labels to pre-modern individuals.

Unfortunately, they were not good rep, as they were a teenager who was given sudden control of an entire Empire and all of its fabulous wealth and potential for abuse, and used that as one might expect a teenager to do.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

why did people just keep doing that lol, surely all the people with power should go "hey guys maybe let's find an excuse to not make a child the emperor?"

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

In Elagabalus's case, it was more "We don't like the current Emperor, so we'll take any excuse to start a civil war and place this TOTALLY pliant and obedient puppet on the throne"