11. Nicu Ceausescu took full advantage of his father’s absolute power to live a playboy lifestyle – but he faced justice in the end
For more than 20 years, Nicolae Ceausescu ruled over Romania with an iron fist. The Communist leader had the support of the Soviet Union and amassed a fortune while millions of his people lived in poverty. As well as being a dictator, Ceausescu was also a family man. His wife Elena loved the good life as much as her husband did and was infamous for her lavish spending. Together, they had three children. Of these, it was the youngest, Nicu, who was expected to take over from his father as the supreme leader of Romania.
Nicu was the archetypal dictator’s son. Born in Bucharest in 1951, he was indoctrinated into Communist politics from an early age. He was a teenager when his father started rising to power. Ceausescu had high hopes for his youngest child and tasked two of his smartest Communist party members to be his personal tutors. But far from being foreign minister material as his father hoped, Nicu was a hopeless student. He regularly skipped school and was even commonly mocked for never reading a book.
Despite his poor performance in high school, Nicu took advantage of his connections to earn a place at Bucharest University. There, he studied physics and also became a prominent member of the student Communist Party. But again, studying wasn’t his thing. Instead, Nicu embraced the playboy lifestyle. He was a notorious heavy drinker and gambler. He would visit Monaco to get drunk and hit the casinos with Uday Hussain, son of Iraqi dictator Saddam. Even worse, he had a habit of stealing ordinary people’s cars for fun, plus it’s alleged that he has a serial rapist.
Upon graduation, he moved into politics full-time and by the late-1980s, he was on track to be his father’s successor. In 1989, however, the Ceausescu dictatorship was overthrown as revolution swept across Eastern Europe. The tyrant and his wife were both arrested and executed by firing squad. Nicu was found guilty of using state money to fund his decadent lifestyle. He was sentenced to prison for 20 years. Though he only served two years, by 1994, he was dead in a Vienna hospital, his life cut short by his rampant alcoholism.