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Which Medieval King had the best nickname?

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Charles Martel, King of the Franks, known as the fucking Hammer of God.

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Justinian II Rhinotmetus ("Slit-Nosed"), who was deposed and had his nose cut off. He came back, slipped into Constantinople through an aqueduct with the help of Tervel of Bulgaria, reclaimed the throne and had a solid gold nose made to replace his original.

I find that Hellenistic kings had cooler nicknames in general though, like Ptolemy Soter ("the Savior"), Antigonus Monophthalmus ("the One-Eyed"), Demetrius Poliorcetes ("the Besieger"), Ptolemy Keraunos ("the Thunderbolt"), Seleucus Nicator ("the Victor"), Antiochus IV Epiphanes ("God Manifest"), etc. but that's another time period.
 
Eric the Bloodaxe, King of Norway in the 900s.

Not medieval but some greek kings were called epiphanes which means "the manifest" and I think that sounds pretty sweet for some reason.

Also not medieval or a king but I am fond of Julian the Apostate.

Richard the Lionhearted, and William the Conqueror are probably my favorites though.
 
I'm not well-versed in these things so I can't offer anything new, but this thread is making me really want to fire up Mount & Blade.

Out of all those listed so far I still think Bulgar-Slayer sounds coolest.
 
Sorta, but I think it was only ever used posthumously by his enemies. Vlad III's father, Vlad II, chose a pretty cool nickname for himself though: Dracul, which just means " the Dragon". Thus Vlad III was called Vlad Dracula "the son of the Dragon".

Wrong. I'm romanian: "dracul" means "the devil", the word has nothing to do with dragons. The confusion may come from the fact that Vlad Dracul was part of The Order of the Dragons, a religious and military cast sworn to protect christianity from the Otoman Empire.
Vlad was never called Dracula, where the fuck do you come up with this nonsense?? Bad movies about vampires? Jesus Christ.
 
b) It's hardly a flattering nickname, but King John "Lackland" for losing the majority of England's possessions in continental France. He lost control of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Gascony, which are vast swathes of lands in western and southern France.
He actually was named lackland as a child because he was the youngest son and was set to inherit no titles. This changed once his brothers died of course, but thats where the name came from.
 
Wrong. I'm romanian: "dracul" means "the devil", the word has nothing to do with dragons. The confusion may come from the fact that Vlad Dracul was part of The Order of the Dragons, a religious and military cast sworn to protect christianity from the Otoman Empire.
Vlad was never called Dracula, where the fuck do you come up with this nonsense?? Bad movies about vampires? Jesus Christ.
For what its worth, wikipedia says YOURE wrong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Drăculești
 
Fuck that wiki page, it's nothing but a big pile of bullshit nonsense there.

I don't know anything about any of the people you're talking about, but "drac" is etymologically from Latin "draco" which primarily meant "dragon" and was used to poetically refer to the Devil. You're 100% right that the modern Romanian word only means "devil" though!
 
Alfonso the Battler

reconquista king, made a will in which he left his kingdom to the templars, hospitalers and the knights of the holy sepulchre, although after his death the nobles went "fuck that shit" and put iirc his brother, who was at that time a monk, in charge
 
This is getting ridiculous, are you trying to teach me my own native language or history? I'm done with this, remain at your trusty wiki pages.

Why so hostile? Calm down. Your native language is vastly different from medieval Romanian or Latin such that your medieval countrymen would hardly understand a word you say.
 
This is getting ridiculous, are you trying to teach me my own native language or history? I'm done with this, remain at your trusty wiki pages.
I think the only thing ridiculous here is how upset you are over this. But fine, to each his own.
 
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Stupor Mundi - The Wonder of the World

Also called Preambulus Antichristi (predecessor of the Antichrist} by the fucking Pope.

Probably the greatest HRE too.
 
I don't know about best nickname but Justinian II The Nose-less was certainly the most badass

He soon arrived in the land of the Bulgars, an even more vicious race of lawless, badass warriors. Justinian made peace with the Bulgar Khan and promised him truckloads of money and hookers in exchange for his help. The Khan quickly assembled a well-trained, balls-out force of 15,000 bloodthirsty Bulgar cavalrymen ready to fucking kick serious asses. Together with his new allies, Justinian rode out for the gleaming spires of Constantinople. His force was too small to penetrate the massive walls of the heavily-fortified city, but like any good diabolical madman hell-bent on the destruction of his enemies, Justinian had a plan. He knew about an old abandoned aqueduct that ran into the heart of downtown Constantinople, so in the middle of the night he and his men snuck into town through a series of secret passages and immediately started fucking shit up Trojan Horse-style, hacking up motherfuckers, burning shit, and generally just causing more havoc than a punch bowl of Red Bull at a birthday party full of eight year-olds being held in a Fabergé Egg museum. The next morning, ten years after he had been deposed, Justinian once again took a seat on his blood-soaked throne.

Now the people that had messed with Justinian were fucked. And by fucked, I mean seriously fucking fucked. His first order of business was to march the false Emperor through the streets of Constantinople while a mob of angry citizens hurled rocks and rotten food at him, and then Justinian personally executed him in the public square by stabbing his head off with his boner. Then he set out looking for the traitorous Generals that had used his face for a pincushion ten years ago. In the time since Justinian was deposed, the two jackass traitor usurpers had themselves been overthrown and exiled, but the Emperor had his men travel to the farthest reaches of the Earth, find those bastards and bring them back to Constantinople. Once he had them firmly in his kung fu grip, Justinian slashed their noses and tongues just like they had done to him, had them bound and trussed, and spent the next two weeks using these guys for footstools while he sat on his throne. When he got bored of resting his feet on the backs of his enemies, he had them publicly executed for treason

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/justinian.html
 
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Stupor Mundi - The Wonder of the World

Also called Preambulus Antichristi (predecessor of the Antichrist} by the fucking Pope.

Probably the greatest HRE too.

Cause he absconded to Sicily ? ;P



I'm not sure if it's his contemporary nickname but Louis XI has been called the "Universal Spider."
 
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb --> Saladin

Saladin is not a nickname, just a western mispronunciation of his name.
His nickname was al-Nasser (the victor).

A medieval nickname for a muslim ruler that makes me chuckle is "al-Muktafi bi-llah" (roughly translates to "makes do with god"). The Abbasids were really running out of names by then.

The most badass, although technically he was just a general, got to be Khaled ibn Waleed's : Saif ul-llah al-maslul (god's drawn sword)
 
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