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Jun 6Liked by Timothy Burke

I do not follow the Star Wars world. But, I have in the past few weeks been rewatching I, Claudius, and it is fascinating in its asking why someone would want power, what moves Livia, Augustus, Tiberius?

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What I love about this comparison is that it is not only vividly different for each of them as characters (and we judge them differently), the real people were also rather varied. (Particularly Augustus, who was much more ruthless and violent than his Brian Blessed version.) There is nothing villainous in Star Wars even a tenth as inhabited as any of the Julio-Claudians in the miniseries.

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