A certain conventional wisdom characterizes — and caricatures — Emperor Norton as an imperious, high-handed blusterer with something of a dictator complex.

But a countervailing body of evidence shows that, on matters that the Emperor saw as being of greatest consequence, his impulse often was not to try to rule by fiat — but rather to call a meeting of a national assembly or council, a few months hence, that would be constituted at the meeting and tasked with charting the most productive specific path forward within the general parameters that he had set.

Or, on occasion, the Emperor cast himself in a supporting role by offering himself as a neutral diplomat to broker a peace between disputing parties.

Presented here are four examples showing how Emperor Norton’s insistence on a well-ordered and just society arose from the instincts of a thoughtful reformer seeking to bring together recognized leaders for the purpose of influencing and leveraging their collective agendas and actions — and that he was not the cartoon autocrat of “weird history” podcasts and drive-by social media reels.