After Johnny Caspar takes over as the ruling crime boss in Miller’s Crossing, acquiring new money and power, but also a whole lot of new headaches, he complains: “Runnin’ things… it ain’t all gravy.”

Caspar was only expressing something that all those in charge eventually discover, something that Kublai Khan, who was born on this day in 1215, would have been very familiar with.

Khan, grandson to Ghenghis, fought off all pretenders to the throne — including his younger brother — and expanded the Mongol empire until it encompassed a fifth of the planet’s inhabited territory.

His 33-year reign wasn’t exactly a peaceful one: there were constant wars of expansion, with his armies pushing all the way to Central Europe. He also had to fight to hold onto what he had, and civil wars kept breaking out all over. He sank two fleets trying to invade Japan. And, after swallowing up China, declaring himself the first non-Chinese Chinese emperor, and moving the empire’s capital to Beijing, the wags back home started complaining that he was neglecting his Mongol roots. “I own China,” you can imagine Khan saying to his friend Marco Polo, “and these guys still want me to be ‘Kublai from the block.’”

In his late seventies, with rebellions and wars still cropping up, queens dying around him, and a bad case of the gout, Khan went into a well-earned semi-retirement.

As another big fat ruler once said, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”