--- title: Kings, queens and emperors — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Kings, queens and emperors», a lesson of the myths course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Ruby is sure Napoleon was tiny and bossy because of it, Henry swears Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and the quote card on the wall says Marie An --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Myths](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/) / Kings, queens and emperors # Kings, queens and emperors Lesson 19 of the myths course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/0/) — Ruby is sure Napoleon was tiny and bossy because of it, Henry swears Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and the quote card on the wall says Marie Antoinette told hungry people to "eat cake". - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/1/) — Famous rulers collect stories the way a celebrity collects gossip: enemies drew rude cartoons, writers made up neat quotes, and painters and films added the rest hundreds of years later. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/2/) — Historians work like detectives: they ask who first told the story, how long after the event, and whether that person was there or had a reason to make the ruler look bad. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/3/) — Napoleon was about average height, the "cake" line has no evidence she said it, and Cleopatra's family was Greek; the true stories are often stranger and more interesting than the myths. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/4/) — When a friend repeats a royal legend, don't laugh at them; say "I heard that too, but I read it might have been made up by his enemies", and look it up together. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/5/) — Napoleon was about 1.69 metres tall, an ordinary or even slightly tall height for a Frenchman of his time. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/6/) — The "tiny Napoleon" idea grew from British cartoons that mocked him, from French inches being longer than English ones, and from his nickname "the little corporal" (a corporal is a low army rank), which was a friendly name, not a measurement. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/7/) — There is no evidence that Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake"; a similar line about a great princess appears in a book by Rousseau written when she was a child of about ten living in Austria. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/8/) — Nero could not have played the fiddle while Rome burned in the year 64, because the fiddle had not been invented; the Roman historian Tacitus says he was away at Antium, came back and opened shelters, though rumours said he sang about the fall of Troy. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/9/) — Cleopatra VII was a queen of Egypt from the Ptolemy family, whose family came from Macedonia in Greece; she was the first of her family known to learn the Egyptian language. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/10/) — Cleopatra lived closer in time to the first Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/11/) — Henry VIII was tall, strong and sporty as a young king; he grew very heavy later, after a bad jousting accident in 1536 (jousting is knights on horses charging at each other with long poles) and years of a painful leg wound. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/12/) — George Washington's false teeth were made from human teeth, animal teeth, ivory and metal, not wood; Elizabeth I's teeth were said to be blackened, probably from sugar. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/13/) — Kings and queens could not do whatever they liked: they depended on nobles, money, armies, the church and laws such as Magna Carta of 1215, and some rulers were overthrown. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/14/) — Julius Caesar was made dictator of Rome (a leader given total power for a time) but was never emperor; his adopted son Augustus became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/15/) — Lady Godiva was a real noblewoman of the 1000s, but the story of her famous ride was first written down more than a hundred years after she died, and "Peeping Tom" was added centuries later still. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/16/) — Queen Victoria looks stern in photographs partly because people were expected to look serious in photos then; her diaries and letters show she laughed and enjoyed jokes, and a photo of her smiling exists. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/17/) — A story told by a ruler's enemies, or written down long after the event, is weak evidence and should be checked. - ← previous: [Vikings, knights and the Middle Ages](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/18-vikings-knights-and-the-middle-ages/) - next →: [Explorers, scientists and inventors](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/) - ↑ back to [Myths](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/)