Changes to Historical Tyrants Series Winner

Hey there Extra Historians,

I wanted to fill you all in on a discussion the EH crew and I have been having. After the voting concluded on our “Historical Tyrants" series and Rob began his research on the winner, “Leopold II of Belgium”, we realized that this was going to be one of the darkest and most disturbing pieces of history we’ve ever covered. It’s a topic that includes subjects like torture, cannibalism, sexual abuse, and the mutilation of children. All of which are not great topics to build an Extra History series around.

As we’ve talked about before, a full Extra History series takes the studio between 10-12 weeks to complete. This is a long time for anyone to be engrossed in extremely emotionally draining research, recording, illustration, and editing. That is especially true for our artists who have to look at reference images in order to create the series, and for Rob, who has to build the gallery of those references. With that in mind, we’ve come to a group decision that rather than doing our regular 3 episodes on a single dark and taxing subject, that the team would have to deep-dive in for months, we will instead turn the “Tyrants” series into an anthology of 4 individual episodes, that are all based in all the topics you voted for. 

Of course, since “Leopold II of Belgium” won, the first episode will still be about this monstrous man. Then afterward, we’ll do episodes on the other tyrants you voted on, ordered by the number of votes they received. 

Episode 1: Leopold II of Belgium

Episode 2: Herod the Great: The Gospels' Greatest Villain

Episode 3: Emperor Qin Shi Huang: All Under Heaven

Episode 4: Richard III: Shakespeare Smear

We really feel that jumping between tyrants and time periods will help not only our team's mental well-being, but also in making this a more interesting series. One that doesn’t have to wallow in a singular horror, but is instead free to explore multiple tyrannical inflection points and the historical context around them.

Please know this wasn’t a decision we made lightly. If you’ve been a patron for a while, you’ll know how rarely we adjust episode structures that you’ve voted for, as we strongly believe that the input our patrons provide is a huge part of what makes this channel special. However, this time we needed to put the experiences of the folks crafting the episodes first. 

Thanks so much for your understanding, and as always, thanks a million for all your support.

• Matt