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(1) DOVAHHATTY (BRAZIL 2013)

“There once was a dream…a dream to purge this rotten world from the barbarians who infest it. A dream called Rome.”

Or at least a dream called the Unbiased History of Rome. I’m calling it now – despite being self-proclaimed satire and “a channel not for learning history…but to indulge in the sheer madness of it”, it is still the best introduction to the history of Rome from its legendary founding to the fall of the western empire.

And certainly the most entertaining – I never knew I needed Roman history as depicted by memetic chads, wojaks and virgins but there you have it. I desperately needed it and you do too. Note that it evolved over the course of its videos – all nineteen of them, from The Roman “Mythology” in Unbiased History of Rome I to The Fall of Rome in Unbiased History XIX – from simpler and shorter videos to more sophisticated and longer videos. For all his historical parody, Dovahhatty has an eye for attention to detail and his content appears comprehensively researched.

Narrator (no, not Dovahhatty as narrator appearing in his own videos as an horned overlord in purple but my own rhetorical narrator): “It is in fact not unbiased”.

Indeed, it is history as the Romans themselves might have told it, but even the most luridly over-the-top self-mythologizing Romans – looking at you, Virgil – might have blushed at it as “blatantly biased towards particular factions, sometimes even reinterpreting entire events in their favor”.

And by particular factions, I mean the Romans – but not all Romans, just the good ones, not the plebs. And by the good Romans, it means selected emperors, leaders and military commanders or other heroic figures, typically those who the Romans themselves saw as exemplary or heroic. Usually of the patrician class – with the occasional equestrian or even low-born figure risen through the ranks of the army thrown in.

Not so much the senatorial class or senators with occasional exceptions – after the Senate turned bad that is, conspiring against the emperors, usually in the same room each time as a running gag. Also not so much the Praetorian Guard – after they turned bad, which was almost immediately. And of course not so much Roman women – or foreign women for that matter – who constantly recur in something of a running gag theme as the eternal femme fatale for Rome, particularly the empire, although there are noble exceptions.

The good Roman men are of course usually portrayed as absolute chads – or the occasional good wojak. The bad Roman men are usually portrayed as memetic virgins – or the occasional bad wojak. Although Dovahhatty often has his tongue firmly in his cheek, portraying emperors notorious for their legendary cruelty and depravity as the divine chads they no doubt saw themselves as – Caligula, Nero, Caracalla and Elagabalus for example.

And that’s the Romans – you can imagine how hilariously biased it is against the various peoples Rome saw as their barbarian enemies. By Jupiter – it’s scathing of their “civilized” opponents like the Greeks, let alone when you get to the Persians or Germans, both of whom it literally demonizes.

Its portrayal of Germans or “Germs” is a particularly amusing highlight for me – typically horned and fanged with yellow or red demon eyes (except when they’re slightly more human wojaks with slasher smiles). And of course they’re mindlessly destructive, hating the barest hint of civilization or construction of anything less rudimentary than their wretched mudhuts, with a persistent desire to spread chaos and burn the world as they constantly clamor in (modern) German, albeit often as only single-word expressions of their chaotic evil – “toten”, “mord”, “zerstoren”.

Indeed – the only reason that Dovahhatty is my top special mention and not first in my actual top ten is that, sadly, he seems now to be dormant. That is despite continuing his Roman history with his Byzantine Empire Unbiased History (until the dawn of the Arab conquests) as well as a couple of other historical topics and media reviews – including one of Game of Thrones – all of similar high quality.

One simply doesn’t listen to a Dovahhatty video in the background (unless you’ve already seen it) – it’s important to actively watch for the in-video captions, usually the dialog of the historical characters and source of much of the humor, albeit often misspelt.

Speaking of captions, I’ll let Dovahhatty’s disclaimer which appears at the start of his videos speak for itself:

“Unbiased history is a work of historical parody…It seeks nothing, but to provide a severely distorted, and outright false rendition of historical events, producing heavily biased narratives for light-hearted critical reflection, and with luck, comedic effect…It portrays acts of sexual, vulgar, violent, and highly offensive nature. The topics it discusses are those of political intrigue, historical importance, and humanitarian tragedies”.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)