To go back in history, for a male, I'd definitely choose Prince (or was it King ?) Albert of Belgium who ruled at the beginning of World War One. What facts I have read about him make him fascinating : the most well-rounded man of his era, reading a book a day, an excellent horseman, well-traveled, wise, fair, compassionate, charismatic, with real leadership skills, a kind of Renaissance man and very modern.
I'd also choose to be Marie-Antoinette, an odd choice given her fate, but from the biographies I have read, she too led a fascinating life, had to show amazing faculties of adaptation from her teenage years on, (sometimes not very efficiently), and grew in stature as events shaped her. Madame Vigee-Lebrun, who painted many portraits of her and apparently became a rather close friend, writes the most poignant things about her, showing her as full of self-knowledge (including her faults, or what were perceived as her faults at the time), and almost saintly toward the end of her life. If I had to go through the ordeals she endured at the end of her life, I'd like to exhibit the same dignity and nobility.
And Empress Josephine is another one, because, apart from her exotic beginnings, who wouldn't want to be loved with such madness as she was by Napoleon ? His letters to her are always cited in every anthology. To be loved beyond all measure and repudiated at the same time, that must be food for thought for a growing woman.
