Talk:King of Rome

message: Each and every article on a Roman king begins with "was the nth legendary King of (ancient) Rome". This article never mentions legends. This is highly confusing, I should think, to the average reader. We need to clarify the nature of the source material for the Roman Kingdom to explain why each king can be described as "legendary" yet also to explain the historicity of the basic facts (existence of a kingdom, growth of the state and a culture). This is not my area of expertise an I am not competent to do this. Srnec (talk) 15:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Legendary

message: Why is the mention of Napoleon included in this article? Is it somehow relevant? Sisyphus88 (talk)
:When Italy was (briefly) part of the French First Empire, the Emperor Napoleon I ("the" Napoleon) bore the title King of Italy, and created his son (Napoleon II) King of Rome, a title he bore for several years even though he never ruled in his own right. In other words, there was some legitimacy to the designation, he was (briefly) King of Rome.   Awien (talk) 14:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Napoleon II 

message: The translation of rex as king has anachronistic and misleading overtones. "Chieftain" might be a more accurate translation (assuming one is needed at all, which I doubt). "Kingship" is and ever was an extremely variable condition. Haploidavey (talk) 17:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Which should be said, as should much else - although chieftain tends to downplay the quasi-divine status of the kings; but king has been the standard translation of rex - in this context as in others - since the Anglosaxons learned Latin. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't even like chieftain for Gaulish rix (where it implies tribalism,  despite the fact that Celtic polities who have a rix/rex are generally called a civitas rather than pagus or tribus), let alone rex. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:24, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Good reasons, therefore, to elaborate rex as specific to context. Haploidavey (talk) 13:26, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Rex

message: Where did we find this? It is approaching two centuries since Barthold Georg Niebuhr; surely it is a little late to be treating the kings as being as historical as the Presidents of the United States. 
At the same time, we should represent the traditional narrative correctly; Tarquinius Superbus may not have used much military force, but Livy's story is not a free election. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: History?

message: Part previews via googlebooks: 
Frank Walbank (ed), The Cambridge ancient history, Volume 7, Part 2 (reprint of 1989 revision) 
H. H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World, 753 to 146 BC, (4th edn., 2002) 
Olivier Hekster, Richard Fowler, Imaginary kings: royal images in the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome, (2005) 
Haploidavey (talk) 14:49, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible sources

message: Don't see any discussion of this unless it's the historicity complaint above. Lycurgus (talk) 07:39, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: Seriously, Romulus is not even confirmed as a historical person, but you still have the year of till when he ruled?! I mean the year 716 BC, and also all the other years, what are your sources for it?! This is ridicolous...  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.141.66.128 (talk) 12:24, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The article makes it clear that Romulus is a legendary figure, but that does not mean the traditional dates assigned to his reign by Roman mythology should not be included (translated into our calendar). I agree though that this article is scant on sources generally. Richard75 (talk) 13:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources for years? 

message: There are no real portraits of the (legendary) kings of Rome, so these should be deleted from the table. Wherever they're from, they are completely fictional. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 22:21, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Keep They are the only available portraits for many of the kings, and as far as I know portraits on most articles don't need to actually be of the people they represent. Especially if it's all we've got. Not sure how to find the specific Wikipedia policy on this (I'm not taking an hour just to find a policy for this), but I'm sure there is one. Cheers! Psychotic Spartan   01:38, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, I thought there was a policy and was looking for it, but I've had portraits deleted on other pages (e.g., Lucian) for the same reason. The reality is that these are not portraits with any value. They're just entirely fictional and so have no value, except to mislead people who don't realize that they're false. I used to think that was a good enough reason, but I don't anymore. At the very least there should be some text saying that they're fictional. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 04:02, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion: Delete "portraits" 

message: It's currently listed as "Proclaimed himself king after murdering his brother, Remus." This doesn't seem entirely accurate. Because I thought in some stories, Romulus (or one of Romulus's men) killed Remus in battle, not as an act of murder? Further, maybe he "proclaimed himself king" in a certain sense, but he was nevertheless entitled to be king. This is quite different from the impression I get when I read that, of a random joe proclaiming himself king (which, at least in my mind, conjures up images of either an oppressive dictator who lords over everybody without any right to be doing so, or else a delusional narcissist who believes himself to be king but isn't actually a king. But Romulus was none of that. Romulus, along with Remus, was a descendant and heir of the royal family of Troy. And Romulus, in particular, was the one divinely-appointed to found the city of Rome and become the first king).
I propose changing it to: "Received the kingship after the death of his brother, Remus." 76.111.168.184 (talk) 18:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romulus's succession