Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy and a sitting senator in the Italian parliament, has passed away at the age of 86, according to reports from Italian media on Monday.

The cause of death is currently unknown; however, he was hospitalized last week for scheduled medical checks related to his chronic leukemia.

Berlusconi served as Italy’s prime minister multiple times beginning in 1994.

His flamboyant lifestyle left a mark on popular culture, while his abrasiveness, coarseness, populist style, and constant legal woes trashed political norms and tainted Italy’s image in the world.

Berlusconi was born a showman and liked to boast that his career began as a crooner on cruise ships.

He moved on to construction and real estate, building an empire that included television networks, newspapers, publishing houses, a top soccer team, and much more.

It all started with a 1970s game show that featured a housewife stripping a piece of clothing when a caller answered a question correctly.

By the 1980s, it had grown to become Italy’s largest media empire, Mediaset, which allowed Berlusconi to branch out and own Italy’s biggest publishing house, the newspaper Il Giornale, and the AC Milan soccer club.

With a carousel of soap operas and scantily clad showgirls, his networks molded an adoring audience into a virtual electorate.

In the early 1990s, when bribery scandals toppled the political establishment, Berlusconi moved to fill the vacuum.

With his rags-to-riches story, he sold many Italians a rosy dream of prosperity and lower taxes.

In the 1994 general elections, Berlusconi swept to power, but the government crumbled just seven months later.

Over the next two decades, he showed the world that humility was not one of his virtues.

“I am by far the best prime minister Italy ever had,” he exclaimed.

Berlusconi was enmeshed in legal troubles through the 1990s, from providing false testimony to investigations into ties with the Sicilian Mafia.

With no conflict-of-interest legislation in place to stop him, Berlusconi not only kept his TV networks as prime minister but also won control of all state-run broadcasting.

The power Berlusconi wielded was closer to tyranny, according to Maurizio Viroli, who teaches politics and government at the University of Texas – Austin.

“A power that no political leader has ever been able to concentrate in his own hands in any democratic or liberal country in history,” Viroli says.

“That’s why I use the word ‘tyranny.'”

Berlusconi developed close personal ties with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

However, abroad, Berlusconi was often mocked for his perma-tan, hair transplants, and facelifts.

While his schoolboy pranks, off-color jokes, and racist remarks left him increasingly shunned on the international stage, he became the longest-serving prime minister in Italian history, governing at different times between 1994 and 2011, for a total of approximately nine years.

Foreign commentators could not fathom the secret of Berlusconi’s popularity.

Viroli calls it Italians’ dislike for moral principles.

“When they see someone who tells them it is right not to have principles, to disregard civic duties, to violate the laws, they love him.”

Berlusconi survived multiple corruption trials, tawdry tales of orgies, and paying for s** with a minor.

Ultimately, when the European debt crisis hit Italy in 2011, it was turmoil in the financial markets that forced him to step down as prime minister for the last time.

His political career appeared to come to an ignominious and definitive end in 2014 when he was ousted from parliament following a conviction for tax evasion.

However, Berlusconi’s days as a political figure were not over.

He stayed on as leader of his Forza Italia party through his sentence and ran for and was elected a member of the European Parliament in 2019.

He then returned to Italian politics after being elected to a Senate seat in the 2022 Italian general elections.

His party formed a coalition government with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Berlusconi’s comments on Putin and the war in Ukraine continued to cause headaches for the Italian government.

Silvio Berlusconi left behind a legacy that is both complex and controversial, with supporters and detractors alike mourning his passing.