TRIPOLI, Libya - His name of choice was the Brother Leader, though his nearly 42 years of rule were rarely brotherly, and his leadership left one of the world’s most richly endowed countries in shambles.

Now, as the former subjects of Moammar Khadafy comb through his family’s mansions, farms, and seaside villas, the properties are revealing the details of lives lived far removed from the people, ones filled with the signs of their peccadilloes and rivalries.

At one farm, horses wandered by marble statues of lions, tigers, and bears, and reindeer grazed by the wood deck of an empty pool. At the home of one son, Saadi, there were signs of a life mundane in its seeming frustration. A man who drifted through stints as an athlete, soldier, and Hollywood movie producer, Saadi kept the English language self-help book “Success Intelligence’’ in his master bedroom.

Given Khadafy’s noted flamboyance, the residences of the House of Khadafy were not quite as grand as people might have supposed.

They lacked the faux grandeur of Saddam Hussein’s marbled palaces. There are no columns that bear Khadafy’s initials, or fists cast in replica of his hands, or river-fed moats with voracious carp.

But in Baghdad and Tripoli, what remained still projected the distance between power and powerlessness.

As rebels and residents started to pick through the detritus of the Khadafys’ lives, there was a sense of laying claim to a country commandeered by the Arab world’s longest-ruling leader - and speaking their minds about the country they have inherited.

“For somebody who’s very rich, he was very cheap,’’ said Fuad Gritli, as he drove through a sprawling parcel near the airport known as the Farm, where Khadafy lived.

There was also a sense of something incomplete. Even as people picked through the Khadafys’ belongings, the colonel and his children remained at large.

In the sanctum of the Farm, there are rolling, irrigated fields. Camels wandered unattended. Still standing was a tent where he met foreign dignitaries, its canvas decorated in pictures of camels and palm trees. NATO bombing had destroyed an unfinished Moroccan-style house, more tents built with more expensive fabric, and a knot of bunker-style concrete buildings for official use.

As Gritli and a friend drove through roads that seemed to lead nowhere, they shook their heads. Rebels rolled through a compound still not secure. So did looters.

“We weren’t allowed to get anywhere near, not even the gate,’’ Gritli said.

“Khadafy was not living like a rich man, I admit that,’’ said Malik el-Bakouri, a 27-year-old doctor from Tripoli, as he drove past a guest house where water cascaded from a broken pipe in a city suffering from a shortage of it. “But his sons, all the people in his tribe, and all the families around him lived good, and they lived good for 40 years.’’

Khadafy’s sons’ behavior would have made a reality show proud - Saadi was a professional soccer player, and Hannibal repeatedly had brushes with the law in Europe.

But the sons’ villas on a sand bluff overlooking the Mediterranean had a distinctly 1970s feel. They were not lavish; the brown paint on the patio decks was peeling.

But to the young fighters roaming through Hannibal’s quarters there was just enough luxury to inspire envy.

“We’ve got to take this over!’’ said Bahaeddin Zintani, a 23-year-old fighter who took turns with his brother lying in bed and posing for pictures before a home gym fitted with a mirror. “This is the first time I’ve even seen anything like this.’’

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.