Got a couple here, really.
Erzherzog Rudolf von Habsburg - mostly I think he's interesting because he was kinda confused, about a lot of stuff really. Crown prince of Austria-Hungary, and had a vaguely liberal bent on the old Josefinist ideas but couldn't quite reconcile that with the rest of his politics. Served in the army and was more or less effective, if not stellar, but that's okay because it was mostly during peacetime anyway. Was married to a woman for whom he probably had feelings that weren't really returned, so he turned to adultery and probably got a VD of some kind, with which he then infected his wife. Then spirals into a destructive relationship with a teenaged minor noblewoman, leading to whatever the hell happened at Mayerling, where he died at age 30. His young death and the fact that he was different than most of the rest of the family promptly led dynastic apologists to label his death the doom of the Dual Monarchy.
Philippos II tes Makedonias - cool name, first of all. Starts off his reign with the entire kingdom in peril, but conducts some nick-of-time army reforms and saves the day. Then he follows it up with a series of centralization slider moves, diplomatic maneuvers, military campaigns, and strategically plotted marriage alliances that leave him prospective partner of Athens in dividing up and ruling the Greek world. Then that arrangement, which was more or less dead on arrival, collapses totally, but he saves his kingdom from the forces of the united Greeks (more or less anyway
) by skillful military action once again, turning himself into the hegemon of most of the Greek states. Did I mention the marriage alliances?
Also, I guess you can't beat having a kid, whatsisname, who becomes moderately famous for doing something or other.
Emory Upton - kind of like the contemporaneous Prussian reformers but with the added twist of dying alone, almost totally ignored, in such a fashion that would spawn decades-long internal theoretical debates in the US Army and estrangement of the Army from the civilian populace at large. Which is pretty depressing. Not what I was trying to get across. Anyway, he saw some impressive service during the ACW, highlights including - of course - the storied and innovative assault on the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania Court House. The regiment he had during 1862 and 1863, the 121st New York Volunteer IR, "Upton's Regulars" or the "Onesters", included an ancestor of mine in their ranks, as well, which is always a pretty neat thing. And pushed for some fairly farsighted reforms, although he also pushed for some other ones that were less appropriate for America than they were for Germany. Anyway, pretty cool guy, eh fetishizes germens and doesnt afraid of anything.
I also am very interested in the second Friedrich of Prussia, Eumenes tes Kardias, Erich von Falkenhayn, Joseph Joffre, Simon Grundel-Helmfelt, and John Quincy Adams.
