Reaction to Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible. Epic Rap Battles of History 

@WHAT IT DO DAVE Novgorod is a city in Russia Dave

Yes Novgorod is and was a real city that Ivan sacked. Vasilivich simply means son of Vasily, Ivan’s Russian name was Ivan Vasilyvich as his father’s name was Vasily. Yes Ivan died while playing a game of chess lol. Bucephalus was Alexander’s horse. Supposedly Bucephalus was considered too wild to tame, Alexander’s father was gonna have the horse killed, teenaged Alexander noticing the horse was spooked by its own shadow went in, turned the horse so he couldn’t see his shadow, got on him and rode him so his father gave him to him and Alexander was the only one the horse would allow on his back. Lol they were chanting Old Fritz which was Frederick The Great’s nick name. Lol Yes that line was about Frederick himself, there was a rumor that he was well gay. Yes that’s what happened to Frederick, he asked for a chair, sat down, fell asleep and died. Ok the horse story lol. Well Catherine’s enemies started a rumor that her sexual appetite was so great that it could only be satisfied by a horse. The rumor was that she died when the hoist holding up her horse broke while she was trying to have intercourse with her horse. However it wasn’t true, she died in her own bed of a stroke, thus the that horse story is a pile of s$&@. If you’d like to know more about Ivan, Catherine and Russian history I recommend watching Russia Land Of The Tsars.

I didnt know that about Pompey so I guess his part makes sense hahah

Oh that actually is quite interesting they even played with that, i knew most of the other's stories but that one i didn't know, nice

@@eazeprestige8853 Yep, he was caught and beheaded by Egyptian soldiers because Ptolemy thought it would please Caesar if they got rid of his enemy. It...REALLY didn't. Caesar was *pissed* that a Consul of Rome (even one he's fighting a war against) was beheaded like a common criminal by foreigners.

@@ms_scribbles hahaha ptolemy was trying to kiss ass and it backfired

It made me laugh how hard he avoided the obvious!

the funny thing people accepted same sex love but then that cult Christianity came up

Except it is not a cult. And that is historically not true

@@langdonledwig3734 any religion that has the top guys as all knowing and you must fear him and must give everything to him, drink his special juice that is apart of him is you want to be saved and waiting for the end of the world to be in paradise. so many churches get money from it people but everything goes to the church they dont do things for everyone and the one that do, well those are the outliers.

@@world4saker did you know that Frederick the Great was alive during 1700s? Which, get this, was after Christianity “came up”

Jesus Christ what a bar!!!

It'd like to add: 5. It is also a continuation from the previous bar, when she said "Don't call me queen, I'm far more Great". Since an Empress rules over an empire, which is greater than a kingdom - the domain of a queen.

Bro that’s crazy

That’s insane. Thanks for this comment

I missed that 4th layer actually damn

Yes and Fritz is also something the English sometimes use to refer to Germens like during the great war.

Hey you are right but also he is bascially calling him a little bitch vasliyvich which yeah and vasilyvich is ivans father name which he took from him and yeah that whole thing is a triple lol but great bar

It’s another way of saying “Junior” in this context

@@artembentsionov your right and og course calling him a little bitch as well lol

It's probably sad that I know WHY they have a meter down there.

@@copocopocopocopo yup

It also fits with the theme that the characters in the battle die the same way as they did in real life. Ivan brings out the horse to "take care" of Catherine, but it doesn't work because the story was a lie.

@@edwardblair4096 I like how Catherine was _going_ to spare Ivan until he took that poor shot at her, so she came back to end it by bringing up his Chess death

In fact it never happened and all evidence says it never happened. It was just something nasty to say about a woman with power, a thing most people felt uncomfortable with to begin with (Even the teacher who raised her own son turned him against her telling him women shouldn't lead/be in power, etc). Then again even today people act like that, so I shouldn't be using past tense. It's still when a man acts aggressive people back him as a 'brave leader' when a woman acts aggressive people insult her as an 'aggressive bitch'. It's the typical double standard. At least we are slowly tackling it.

@@FallingGalaxy Absolutely not comparable. All leaders have opposing parties. She had them more than most not because of her gender as is. Russia was pretty ok with women on the throne (as shown with her husband's aunt). That was just a means taken from social norms as an excuse, and pretty minor in why people were against her. She was a foreigner (She was a germanic noblewoman) that barely spoke russian, that had more or less stolen power from her husband, the rightful ruler, as to stay on top as long as possible even refusing to cede power to her son (most likely a bastard), the rightful heir(at least officially), after said husband died. She was VERY promiscuous, which is a problem in a system based on hereditary monarchy. And It was also an issue with puritanical tought: how do you claim divine authority while being a "sinner"? In addition to that, she used her lovers as political chips on european thrones, dismantling countries (like Poland) trough those means, so obviously that's not gonna be very popular with the other powers on the continent. In addition to that she extended the serdom sytem to Ukraine, where it didn't exist. (Serfdom was by all means slavery. The people were just tied to land and their rulers rather than a direct owner), after cracking down on russian peasants and rewritting law to acquire more internal power. So what do we have? A person that weakened the power of her population, implemented a slavery system, dismantled countries and cultures, usurped her throne twice, established a political structure based on nepotism and sex, and had had a son whose lineage was dubious. It's slightly more complicated than "poor women are oppressed".

i wouldnt doubt that she was into that......those people(regardless of their genitalia) were quite excessive in everything. food. sex. murder. slavery.... EVERYTHING.....

@@FallingGalaxy people in those days were calling women aggressive bitch?? I’m not sure that’s the language they’d use☠️

its still kind of an odd area to settle its like the northern areas of canda its apart the country but its not exactly too populated

@@demonic_myst4503 true, but its full of resources

@@shadowgunner1526 didnt know that the more you know thank you

Frederick makes fun of this by saying "Lions, and tigas, and bears, oh my!" Basically saying Ivan expanded in to a frozen land with no people to resist but couldn't push into Europe...or lands with people that could resist.

And, intentionally, also sounds like Ahlquist, Lloyd's surname.

It's also possible that his childhood traume of seeing his good friend Katte executed in front of him, caused him to be somewhat asexual.

Bhcephalus was the name of his horse.

9:00 fredrick the great used some weird tactics that involved spitting up his troops, he was also homosexual.

@@michellamoureuxm facts. I also about to comment on the name of the 🐎

@@michellamoureuxm was Alexander the great bisexual or something °~°. No disrespect though cause he ruled a huge areas from parts of East Africa all the way to conquering Persia(all of Persia) at that time Persia was very peaceful(beautiful women by the way) @whatitdodave and traveling the deserts and knowing where to lay traps was a huge part of military strats for Alex. And yes he laid with men(on a daily) why these guys did all this fornicating back than is Beyond me 😳💚too much Sodomizing going on. Oh and Alex mother didnt want him to marry any woman outside his race. She killed alot of women she thought was unworthy of having his kids(look her too) she was a monster 😢. But a woman,a foreign woman mind you that would bear Alexander's kids would have claims on all the lands he conquered(and that's what his mother looking at)so if he had thousands of let's say Persian slaves and they wanted to secretly unite under their new leader who happens to be sitting on the throne(if Alex were to die),there would be some violence and insurgence amongst the Persian and other slaves. They rule those lands within a short time knowing all it took was a women to overthrow him by "Inheritance" to rule. That's what his mother feared. Go rewatch Alexander the great and see the look in Angelina Jolie eyes as sges grooming up Alex. What I commented here @whatitdodave is all historically possible.

@@jebVlogs556 i have no idea on Alexander but a good portion of romans back then did have younger men around for that.

Yeah, when Ivan had himself crowned the first Tsar, he was declaring himself the divine ruler of all of Russia. Also, he was Russian Orthodox, not Catholic. Novgorod was a real city, and a really big city at that for the time. As for why...nobody really knows, but Ivan was seriously insane and was prone to acts of violence when his paranoia overwhelmed him. As Catherine mentions, he even murdered his own son in a fit of paranoid rage. Nobody actually knows why Alexander died, but poisoning was the biggest, most lasting rumor. It's entirely possible that Alexander poisoned himself with alcohol by drinking too much.

Bucephalus was Alexander's beloved warhorse who was with him through almost his entire campaign, but died somewhere around Pakistan and was buried like a hero.

"Ain't exactly straight" is a double reference. First, he's talking of his use of the "oblique order", which isn't exactly straight because it focuses most of his forces on one end of a line, rather than evenly across, to punch through one of the enemy's flanks. The other reference is to the fact that Frederick was gay. It gave him a lot of trouble when he was the crown prince, but didn't seem to do him much harm when he became King of Prussia. However, that might be because everyone was busy worrying about the wars going on in Europe at the time and only cared that Frederick was successful militarily. His father forced him to marry as a condition of his release from prison, but while they were distant and never had children, I haven't ever read any evidence that he was ever cruel to her as many kings with unwanted wives would be in those days.

Each of the Greats in this video die as the real, historical people died...mostly. Or the biggest rumor if it's unknown, in Alexander's case. Frederick the Great died peacefully in his sleep while taking a nap in his favorite chair, Pompey the Great was beheaded in Egypt on his way to speak with the pharaoh, and then there's Catherine the Great who was rumored to have died by having sex with a horse, which...as she says in the battle, it's a pile of crap spread around by her political enemies who didn't like that a woman had ruled for so long and so well. So, as men have done for thousands of years whenever a woman became powerful, they claimed she was so full of lust that she even had sex with animals. (I mean, she was no meek virgin an really liked that D, that's for sure, but she was no more sex-crazed than any male ruler with mistresses.) Catherine actually died of a stroke.

i fucking hate that dave did not know it.

Safe assumption I’d bet 🤣

Ivan the Terrific

Which is, funnily enough, kind of the original meaning of "awesome".

Hell, there's even a misunderstanding with the others. Technically, the English word "great" doesn't necessarily mean "good". It generally means big, larger than life, but that can just as easily apply to bad things.

Also yes frederick was gay

yup, that would be Zach Sherwin- guy has shown us some interesting flows at times

@@MercenaryPen Zach is as much of a co-creator of most ERB's as Lloyd & Peter.

It's not quite exact, but Terrible isn't a wrong translation. It's simply an older use of the word 'Terrible.' Nowadays we use it to mean simply 'bad' but it used to carry the meaning of awe-striking and powerful.

@@Krescentwolf Exactly! It's not that the translation is wrong, it's just that it's using the older, more formal meaning for the word "terrible". "Causing terror", but not necessary through evil, just immense power.

@@ms_scribbles The word terror itself has changed meanings greatly since then too. It used to mean "worthy of awe" or, in other words, "awe-full". Awful. It comes from the same root as terrific, which now ironically has entirely good connotations.

yes

A horse so loved he founded a city for him

@@GrizzledBear7 what a chad thing to do I forgot about that

As a Greek i should explain the name translates as " Ox-head" because it was ugly and looked fearsome kept get frantic and jumpy and attack anyone approaching it until Alexander figured horse was scared by its own shadow so he turned it to the sun and mounted it

@@GrizzledBear7 speaking of, where would that city be today ?

What 😃😃😃😃😃

Well... she was a female ruler at a time when politics was considered a _man's_ job (so her rule was "unnatural"). She was also shameless about her sexuality. A German scholar, Adam Olearius, claimed that Russians (in general, not Catherine in particular) had fondness for sodomy, especially with horses. This claim was often repeated in anti-Russian literature throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to illustrate the alleged barbarous "Asian" nature of Russia. Put the three together, and it's an easy step to apply this scurrilous story as the cause of her death. The true story is a little more mundane: She woke up, had her coffee, sat down to do paperwork, and died of a stroke.

he doesn't say his sword is straight forward. The line is "this will be straight forward, i'll take up this sword that I brought and slice you in half like the Gordian Knot." The Gordian Knot was a knot that was said to be impossible to untie so Alexander's solution was to just cut it in half. So he's saying beating Ivan will be as straight forward as his solution to the knot.

@@civilwarguy4740 A very different implication due a misheard lyric on my part. Thanks.

@@civilwarguy4740importantly, the legend was that whoever could untie the Gordian knot would rule all of Asia. When presented to Alexander the Great, rather than try to spend hours to untie it like so many others, he simply cut it in half… and then started conquering asia 😂

Likely she died having sex with "a stallion" as in a stud, which was later deformed as a literal horse.

I’m stunned myself.

Also, Bucephalus was his horses name

Too bad they couldn't squeeze Cyrus the Great in. :D

But that would be a spoiler.

"Shock and Awe" tactics of the middle ages.

Also didn't see any responses answer what Bucephalus was. It was alexander's horse. He named a city after him.

Zach Sherwin plays Alexander

catherine the great died after sex with a horse... at least according to the rumor

Already in the works!

You really need to check your spelling. Rapped has two p's.

@@michaelkeegan9260 yeah oops