Quote:
Adrian Veidt was born in 1939, the son of rich German immigrant parents. As a child, he received high grades in school, and it was noted that he was very intelligent. He then hid this information from his elders and peers by deliberately achieving average marks. After his parents' deaths, he inherited their substantial fortune at the young age of 17, but he chose to give it all to charity and embark on a vision quest, following the route of his childhood idol Alexander the Great. His rationale was that he wanted to be free from money and make something of himself on his own, from nothing.
Problems:
1. Alexander the Great certainly did not make something of himself from nothing; he was born a prince and heir to a great kingdom and army. In fact it is believed by many he committed patricide to be able to take his father's army and make a go at the world sooner.
2. Alexander the Great didn't do "vision quests". That was the province of the Oracle of Delphi to whom he had no connection. He plotted to take over the world because "it never occurred to him not to".
3. One of my greatest weaknesses is my inability to conceal my intelligence. This frequently annoys me.
Quote:
Veidt's believes that his vast intelligence obligates him to unite the warring modern world as Alexander the Great did in his time. When he comes to doubt the value of confronting street criminals in the face of greater crimes of the powerful and governments that go unpunished, he endeavors to study world politics, and concludes that nuclear war will bring the world to an end in just a few years, and plans to use such a catastrophe to save the world.
Ozymandias is politically liberal, supporting social causes and performing at a benefit for India, which has suffered famine. He believes that everyone is capable of personal greatness, if they try hard enough, and that any problem can be solved with the correct application of human intelligence.
Ozymandias is shown to be both very genial as noted by Hollis Mason, and does not lack a sense of humor, joking around many times during his interview with Nova Express and his battle with Rorschach, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre. Ozymandias is also a vegetarian. His favorite companion is his genetically-engineered pet lynx, Bubastis. He is also a fan of electronic and reggae music.
These are better parallels. Alexander believed that a great man should play only for the highest stakes, and he firmly believed that greatness was personal not political. He once said that the only man he considered nearly his equal was the ascetic Diogenes. Alexander was definitely very congenial, especially towards people who showed no fear of him.
Alexander had tastes that were perceived in his time as nerdy and weird (philosophy, playing the lyre, and shaving his beard). His dearest companion was his horse, Bucephalus, which was definitely of unusual stock, significantly larger and stronger than normal horses of the time and with distinctive facial coloring. When the horse died in Afghanistan, he named a colony after it.
Alexander was a social visionary whose ultimate dream, to form a new culture and way of life out of the fusion of the Greek and Persian cultures, never came to pass. He also wanted to explore the entire world and had begun sending out scout ships down the coasts of Africa and the Middle East.
How the world would have been different had Alexander not died young is one of the great "what ifs" of history. It's very probable that the industrial revolution and contact between Europe and the Americas and China would have come thousands of years earlier than it did.
Greek hoplites vs Inca atlatl would have been more than just a AoE II scenario. And since industrialization would have come before the development of guns, combat would have been like something out of a Final Fantasy game.
