Welcome to Tyrant Scene Investigation, where we examine how power is gained, used, and remembered by history’s most infamous rulers. In this episode, we investigate Leopold II of Belgium, a constitutional monarch at home who became an absolute tyrant abroad as the personal ruler of the Congo Free State. Remembered domestically as the “Builder King,” Leopold engineered a brutal colonial system built on forced labor, rubber extraction, corporate partnerships, and propaganda, resulting in the deaths of millions of Congolese people, and what early human rights advocates would later call crimes against humanity.