It's a Long Road to the Top If You Wanna Rock and Rule: Ten Rulers who Rose from Nothing

We go from peasant Liu Bang to peasant Diocletian to explore rulers who rose to the Top.  

Transcript

It’s A Long Road to the Top if You Wanna Rock and Rule:  

Ten Rulers Who Rose from Nothing

October 2025

“A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.” Niccolo Machiavelli

“Gettin' robbed, gettin' stoned

Gettin’ beat up, broken-boned

Gettin' had, gettin' took

I tell you, folks, it’s harder than it looks

It’s a long way to the Top if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll”

Angus Young, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott, collectively known as AC/DC

For younger boomers and many Gen X males, there was always something about ACDC.  They predated the hair metal days of Motley Crue and Poison.  Their music had both a physicality, emphasized by the lyrics, the gravelly voices of their lead singers, and Angus Young’s guitar playing, while he hard-danced/duck-walked across the stage.  There was also the suggestion of latent violence in their songs, such as T.N.T., Highway to Hell, Dirty Deeds, and later Thunderstruck.  And of course, in an era in which drummers came and went like a downtown city bus, they tragically lost their first singer, Bon Scott, at the height of their fame.  Yet unlike, say, Van Halen, the replacement of the frontman did not change the band.  It was Brian Johnson who performed on Back in Black, the titular album, one of the best-selling records of all time.  

And, oddly, there were these moments of farce or inventiveness, such as Young’s iconic schoolboy outfit (which he wears to this day at the ripe old age of 70).  There was the cannon in For Those About to Rock strangely echoing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.  And on the song cited in the opening of this podcast, Scottish Bagpipes. Not Bon Scot, but bonny Scotland.  And finally, the band was not English, as was the case with many contemporary hard rock bands, but Young was Scottish and started in Australia.  

Upon hearing (again) “It’s a Long Way to the Top,” I noted that the Young Brothers (Angus and his since-sadly-deceased brother Malcolm) had labored for years before hitting it big in the late 1970s.  I do not actually think the band members were hit men, like the protagonist of Dirty Deeds, but I do believe they lived all the moments described in that song and knew that being a rock star was “harder than it looks,” as Scott is a testament.  

Because my mind never lingers on anything without, at some point, switching to history, I was thinking of those rulers for whom it was “harder than it looks.”  Not just ruling itself.  I believe that too is much more difficult than it appears to those who have never tasted real power.  Tiberius called it holding the wolf by the ears.  But note how many never abdicate, even when the opportunity arises.  Instead, it is a whole lot easier being a Commodus, handed power based on birth, rather than Maximinus Thrax or Diocletian, both of whom had to fight for it literally.  

The vast majority of rulers attain the throne through birth, status, or both.  Far rarer is the self-made ruler who mounted the throne having once been a peasant, or worse.  A few on this list rose from the lower class and achieved success without a military career.  Frankly, before the advent of true democracies in the 18th century, there were no examples.  Because of our democratic forms of government today, our presidential ranks are full of such figures.  From Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton, presidents who grew up impoverished can achieve the highest office in the land.  Yet even today, we have a president whose father started him out in 1973 with $400 million.  George W Bush was the son of a president, and his father was a CT Senator.  We can boast of Grover Cleveland, but it is still easier to succeed as the son of Frederick Trump than as the son of Richard Cleveland.  And in the past, it was birth far more than money.

Take the Romans.  Even after the fall of the Julio-Claudian dynasty with Nero’s suicide, there was still a clear preference for Senatorial leaders, or at the very least, wealthy equestrians.  New Emperors tended to be military leaders, and getting a top command was often based on birth, family, and status.  

And though a military career is almost a prerequisite for rising from the bottom to the Top, thousands of victorious generals never made it.  The clever would-be ruler also had a patron, someone with power who took an interest in the figure and helped them through the rough spots.  And the third critical piece of their rise is utter ruthlessness.  I noted the rather severe nature of many of AC/DC’s songs.  I am not sure whether these rulers would appreciate the music of AC/DC, but they would understand lyrics such as these:

The man is back in town

So don’t you mess me ’round

’Cause I’m T.N.T., I’m dynamite

T.N.T., and I’ll win the fight

So here is the top ten rulers who took the long road to the Top.  

10.  Basil I of the Eastern Roman Empire

Basil I, nicknamed “the Macedonian,” was born in 811 but did not become the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Emperor until 867, at the age of 56.  Though long life was not guaranteed in the 9th century, he lived and ruled until 886, dying at 75. Born to a peasant family in Macedonia, he rose to prominence in the imperial court after gaining the favor of Emperor Michael III, whose mistress he married on the Emperor’s orders. In 866, Michael proclaimed him co-emperor. Fearing a loss of influence, Basil orchestrated Michael’s assassination the following year and installed himself as the Empire’s sole ruler. He was the first ruler of the Macedonian dynasty.

Despite his humble origins, Basil was an effective and respected monarch. He initiated a complete overhaul of Byzantine law, an effort continued by his successor that ultimately became the Basilika. On the foreign front, he achieved military success against the heretical Paulicians, whom he subjugated in 872. He also pursued an active policy in the West, allying with Carolingian emperor Louis II against the Arabs, which led to a new period of Byzantine domination in Italy. Upon his death in a hunting accident in 886, he was succeeded by his son, Leo VI, who was also rumored to be the son of Michael III. Many Eastern Roman observers consider Basil perhaps the greatest Emperor after the 500s.

9. Hwong Wu

In the mid-14th century, China was plagued by epidemics, famines, and peasant uprisings during the rule of the Mongol Yuan (yoo wan) dynasty. After the death of Kublai Khan in 1294, the Yuan began to decline immediately, creating the chaos mentioned above. Zhu Yuanzhang (shu yan hang), orphaned during this time of turmoil, joined a Buddhist monastery as a novice monk, where he occasionally begged for alms to sustain himself, gaining an understanding of the struggles faced by ordinary people while harboring disdain for scholars who gained knowledge only from books. 

In 1352, he joined a rebel division, quickly distinguishing himself among the rebels and rising to lead his own army. In 1356, he conquered Nanjing and established it as his capital. He formed his own government, composed of both generals and Confucian scholars, and rejected Mongol rule over China. He adopted the concept of country administration from them and implemented it in the territory he controlled, eventually expanding it to the entire country. He gradually defeated rival rebel leaders, with the decisive moment being his victory over Chen Youliang in the Battle of Lake Poyang in 1363. In 1364, he declared himself King of Wu. 

In early 1368, after successfully dominating southern and central China, Zhu chose to rename his state. He decided on the name Da Ming, which translates to “Great Radiance”, for his Empire, and designated Hongwu, meaning “Vastly Martial”, as the name of the era and the motto of his reign. In the following four-year war, he drove out the Mongol armies loyal to the Yuan dynasty and unified the country.  And this is the formation of the celebrated Ming Dynasty, known for both porcelain and massive ocean-going fleets, among 100 other things.  The dynasty lasted until 1644.  

8. Toyotomi Hideyoshi 

I always like this figure because many have seen his fictional doppelganger in the TV mini-series, based on the James Clavell novel Shogun.  Hideyoshi was Nakamura, the Taikō, whose death in the book and series leads to the Civil War, eventually won by the fictional Yoshi Toronaga, who in real life was Ieyasu Tokugawa. 

Toyotomi Hideyoshi ( 1537 – 1598) was a Japanese samurai and daimyō or feudal lord regarded as the second “Great Unifier” of Japan. Although he came from a peasant background, his immense power earned him the rank and title of Kwampaku (or Imperial Regent). He was the first person in history to become a Kwampaku who was not born a noble. He remained in power as Taikō, the title of retired Kwampaku, until his death. It is believed, but not certain, that the reason he refused or could not obtain the title of shogun, the leader of the warrior class, was because he was of peasant origin. 

Hideyoshi rose from a peasant background as a retainer of the prominent lord Oda Nobunaga to become one of the most powerful men in Japanese history. He distinguished himself in many of Nobunaga’s campaigns. After Nobunaga died in 1582, Hideyoshi defeated his assassin, Akechi Mitsuhide, at the Battle of Yamazaki and became Nobunaga’s successor. He then continued the campaign to unite. Hideyoshi became the de facto leader of Japan because, technically, the ruler was the Emperor based at Kyoto.  But in Medieval Japan, the Emperor, though revered, had no real power. 

Hideyoshi conquered Shikoku in 1585 and Kyūshū in 1587, and completed the unification by winning the Siege of Odawara. With the unification of Japan complete, Hideyoshi launched the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592, achieving initial success but eventually facing a military stalemate that damaged his prestige before he died in 1598. Hideyoshi’s young son and successor, Toyotomi Hideyori, was displaced by Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, which would lead to the founding of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Hideyoshi left an influential and lasting legacy in Japan, including Osaka Castle, the Tokugawa class system, the restriction on samurai possession of weapons (the sword hunt), and the construction and restoration of many temples, some of which are still visible in Kyoto.

7. Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq 

Also known as Ghazi Malik (February 1325), he was the Sultan of Delhi from 1320 to 1325. He was the first sultan of the Tughluq dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate. During his reign, Tughluq founded the city of Tughluqabad, whose fort near Delhi can still be seen today. His reign ended upon his death in 1325 when a pavilion built in his honor collapsed. The 14th-century historian Ibn Battuta claimed that the sultan’s death was the result of a conspiracy against him.

There are numerous views on the ancestry of Tughluq. Ranging from Turko-Mongol to Turkic origins, mentioned by Ibn Battuta and Shams-i Siraj Afi, but some of the sources suggest that Tughlaq’s father was a Turko-Mongol slave of Balban. At the same time, his mother belonged to the Jat caste from the Punjab region. According to Farishta, the Tughlaqs were a mixed race of Turks and Jats.

Tughlaq began his career as a menial servant in the service of a merchant, serving as a horsekeeper before entering the Khalji service.  Under Tughluq, the Delhi Sultanate ruled over half of India, and under his son, 80% of the country.  

6. Maximinus Thrax 

Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus “Thrax” (c. 173 – 238) was a Roman emperor from 235 to 238. Born of Thracian origin – given the nickname Thrax (“the Thracian”) – he rose through the military ranks through the patronage of Emperor Septimius Severus and his son Caracalla.  Maximinus Thrax would ultimately hold high command in the army of the Rhine under Emperor Severus Alexander. After Alexander was murdered in 235, Maximinus was proclaimed Emperor by the army, beginning the Crisis of the Third Century, 50 years of instability and civil war. He is often remembered for his unusual height, though its veracity is disputed.

His background was, in any case, that of a provincial of low birth, and he was seen by the Senate as a barbarian, not even a faithful Roman, despite Caracalla’s edict granting citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the Empire. According to the Augustan History, he was a shepherd and bandit leader before joining the Imperial Roman army, causing historian Brent Shaw to comment that a man who would have been “in other circumstances a Godfather, [...] became emperor of Rome.”

5. Liu Bang 256 – 195 BC

Liu Bang was born into a peasant family in Pei County, modern-day Jiangsu Province, eastern China, in the mid-3rd century BCE. Liu rose to become a minor provincial official. Around 210 BCE, he was ordered to escort a group of laborers in chains to Mount Li near Xianyang, where the First Qin Emperor was building his mausoleum, of which the famous Terracotta Warriors are only a small part.

He turned rebel after the death (210 bc) of the Qin emperor Shihuangdi, who had been the first to unify China. The rebels were under the nominal leadership of Xiang Yu, a warlord who defeated the Qin armies and then tried to restore the pre-Qin feudal system, reinstating many of the former nobles and dividing the land among his generals. Liu Bang, by then a vital rebel leader, gained control of the kingdom of Han in western China (now the Sichuan and southern Shaanxi provinces). The former allies soon turned against each other, and Liu’s peasant shrewdness led him to victory over the militarily brilliant but politically naive Xiang Yu. The civil war ended when Xiang Yu took his own life in 202 bc, upon which Liu Ban took the title of Gaozu Emperor, absolute ruler of China. His dynasty, the Han, lasted 400 years.  

Liu Bang was a coarse man who once urinated into the formal hat of a court scholar to show his disdain for education. Nevertheless, he was a pragmatic and flexible ruler who recognized the need for educated men at court. He showed particular concern for reviving the rural economy and for easing the tax burden on peasants. Though generally humane in civil matters, he dealt harshly with those who threatened his reign from within China. His conduct of foreign affairs was a skillful combination of diplomacy and the use of force. His descendants continued consolidating and expanding the Empire.

4. Ivaylo (died 1281)

Ivaylo was a rebel leader who ruled briefly as tsar of Bulgaria. In 1277, he led a peasant uprising and forced the Bulgarian nobility to accept him as Emperor. He reigned as Emperor from 1278 to 1279, scoring victories against the Byzantines and the Mongols. Beset by foreign and domestic enemies, which included the Bulgarian nobles, he was eventually forced into exile among the Mongols, where he presented himself as a dethroned vassal. The Mongols then killed him in 1281 as an enemy of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus. 

Marxist historians have used Ivaylo’s reign as a monarch as an example of early anti-feudal class warfare and have preserved it in folk songs, traditions, and legends. He served as an inspiration to Bulgarian guerrilla freedom fighters during the Ottoman period. 

3. Emperor Justin

Justinian II, rightly, gets all the press. And of course, this era is near and dear to my heart because of my hero Belisarius.  Also called Justin the Thracian (note two Thracians on this list, and Spartacus may have been one as well.  What is in the water in Thrace?  Born to a peasant family, he rose through the ranks of the army to become commander of the imperial guard. When Emperor Anastasius I Dicorus died, he outmaneuvered his rivals and was elected his successor, despite being around 68 years old. His reign is significant for the founding of the Justinian dynasty, which included his nephew, Justinian I, and three succeeding emperors. His consort was Empress Euphemia.

Justin was noted for his strongly Chalcedonian Christian views. This facilitated the ending of the Acacian schism between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, resulting in good relations between Justin and the papacy. Throughout his reign, he stressed the religious nature of his office and passed edicts against various Christian groups seen at the time as non-Orthodox. In foreign affairs, he used religion as an instrument of state. He endeavoured to cultivate client states on the Empire’s borders and avoided any significant warfare until late in his reign.

Justin cemented his position by assassinating potential opponents, especially anti-Chalcedonian supporters of Anastasius. Both Amantius and Theocritus were executed nine days after the election. Early in his reign, he also dismissed several officials who served Emperor Anastasius, including Marinus, the praetorian prefect.

In his time, Justin was viewed as an illiterate career soldier with little knowledge of statecraft.  He surrounded himself with trusted advisors, the most prominent being his nephew Flavius Petrus Sabbatius, whom he adopted as his son and invested with the name Iustinianus (Justinian)

Many things contributed to Justinian I’s reign, the greatest in Eastern Roman History.  Having the general Belisarius on hand was a big help.  But there would have been no Justinian without Justin.  

2. Temujin 

Temujin, later Genghis Khan, was the son of a Mongol chieftain.  But this chief was by no means the leader of the entire people, or even a large section of them.  With his clan leader father, Yesügei, dead, possibly by poison when Temujin was nine, the remainder of the clan, led by the rival Taychiut family, abandoned his widow, Höelün, and her children, considering them too weak to exercise leadership and seizing the opportunity to usurp power. For a time, the small family led a life of extreme poverty, eating roots and fish instead of the regular nomad diet of mutton and mare’s milk. 

I should also note that much of this was speculative.  Most contemporary sources on Genghis’s life are non-Mongol, and most Mongol historians came long after his death.  So, like Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf, what we believe might be speculative.  But unlike the mists of Rome 2,700 years ago, we do have contemporary sources, so we can say with some confidence that Temujin did lose his father at an early age, and that this loss could have been potentially ruinous to him and his family.  

Much of the rest is also documented.  Temujin’s forging of alliances with other Mongol Clans.  His elimination of rivals and, eventually, his leadership over the whole nation.  Then the conquest of not one but two massive empires: Jin China and Khwārezm.  Cwa Rezm.   

1. Diocletian 

Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus (  242/245 – 311/312), nicknamed Jovius, was Roman Emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305. Diocletian restored efficient government to the Empire after the near anarchy of the 3rd century. His reorganization of the fiscal, administrative, and military machinery of the Empire laid the foundation for the Roman Empire in the East. It temporarily shored up the decaying Empire in the West. The last major persecution of Christians occurred during his reign.

He was born Diocles to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia. As with other Illyrian soldiers of the period, including his predecessor Aurelian, Diocles rose through the army.

In 284, during a campaign against the Persians, Numerian, brother to Emperor Carinus and co-emperor, was found dead in his litter, and his adoptive father, the praetorian prefect Aper, was accused of having killed him to seize power. When Diocletian, acclaimed as Emperor by his soldiers, appeared for the first time in public dressed in the imperial purple, he declared himself innocent of Numerian’s murder.

Acclaimed Emperor on November 17, 284, Diocletian possessed real power only in those countries that were dominated by his army (i.e., in Asia Minor and possibly Syria). The rest of the Empire was obedient to Numerian’s brother Carinus. After having put down a revolt by Julianus, a troop commander in Pannonia, whom he attacked and killed near Verona, Carinus proceeded to attack Diocletian. An indecisive battle near the confluence of the Margus (modern Morava) and Danube rivers, not far from present-day Belgrade, would have been a defeat for Diocletian had Carinus not been assassinated by a group of soldiers. Thus, in midsummer of 285, Diocletian became master of the Empire.

The saving of the Empire can be shared among the Empire’s subjects.  Both Aurelian, before him, and Constantine, after him, played roles in preserving the Roman Empire after its near collapse in the mid-200s.  But it was Diocletian, more than any other Emperor, who crafted the building blocks not just for the preservation of the united Roman Empire for another 200 years, but also for the Eastern Roman Empire, which was to last 1,000 years after that.  

Instead of AC/DC, though, Diocletian, and heck, this entire list is best summed up by a contemporary of AC/DC, albeit in a different genre.  I am not going to tell you the name of the band because if you do not know it – it is time you learned about this band:  

No time for losers

’Cause we are the champions

Of the world

But it’s been no bed of roses

No pleasure cruise

I consider it a challenge before the whole human race

And I ain’t gonna lose (and I mean to go on, and on, and on, and on)

We are the champions my friend