Despots, old and new

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

As far as I know, nothing of the sort has occurred in our world: incarnate Evil whispering in the ears of a king.

How about Dick Cheney?

No time to write a full post now but I agree with nemo and Zil that real world parallels are hard to draw, because of how the stories are written. And sadly we know next to nothing about how Sauron came to rule the East...