AH Challenge: The Tyrant Lizard King

Your challenge, should you chose to except it, is have a man go down in history as the "Tyrant Lizard King" or, in Latin, Tyrannosaurus Rex.
 
A Roman Emperor begins a lizard-collecting hobby.

He is also very tyrannical and despotic.

Graffiti on the walls of Rhegium makes fun of him, saying that he's a "Tyrannosaurus Rex"

Some guy sees it. People start referring to that emperor as Tyrannosaurus Rex.

People from then on call him Tyrannosaurus Rex.
 
Bones from Tyrannosaurus Rex wasnt discovered until 1880 so noone would be called that

He doesn't want someone named after the dinosaur, he wants someone who incidentally earned that name.

It's a tough sell, honestly. It sounds incredibly awkward in English and only slightly better in French. Is there any language is sounds good in?

Lizard could come from either the man in question keeping lizards, or taking one as his emblem, or from his cold-bloodedness (did they know about that in the past?)

Tyrant in the sense we use it is actually a fairly recent term, and the old meaning is kinda mutually exclusive with "king".
 

Hendryk

Banned
At the height of his fame in 1969, Jim Morrison a.k.a. the Lizard King decides to set up a countercultural commune in California. Hundreds of his more hardcore fans, as well as assorted hippies, become members. His style of leadership, based on raw charisma and the collective use of mind-altering drugs, becomes more authoritarian over time, and his enclave, The Gate, is investigated by the FBI. In order to escape what he considers harassment by American law enforcement, he buys a tract of land in Guyana and encourages his followers to relocate there. Many of them do, only to see the increasingly unstable Morrison turn into a virtual autocrat. By the mid-1970s he is derisively referred to in the international media as the Tyrant Lizard King.
 
a tribal chieftain establishes a kingdom on the islands of Komodo and Flores, and keeps a collection of giant pet Komodo dragons, and feeds people he doesn't like to them....
 
A nobleman rises to power as a knight in the First Crusade, proving himself in battle. He is known for being a good military strategist, but he is somewhat despised for his cruelty to his underlings, as well as those he does battle with. He is made fun of behind his back for his gaping, wide eyed expression, and his tendency to lick his lips. Some of the other knights notice his resemblance to certain local wildlife, nickname him the Lizard.

As the Crusaders take over Jerusalem, this knight finds himself in an argument with Baldwin over some major issue or other. He gains the backing of some of the other leaders, more probably because they are playing politics than that anyone actually likes him, and at a weak moment, they depose Baldwin and proclaim this man king of Jerusalem instead.

His reign is short-lived, as he is quite unpopular. Both the locals and many of the crusaders see his rule as illegitimate, referring to him as a tyrant, which quickly morphs into The Tyrant Lizard. When his backers betray him, and Baldwin comes back into power, he is dragged through the streets of Jerusalem and then beheaded, his head being put on a stake outside the gates, with a sign warning those remaining loyal to him that they aren't welcome here. The sign says, The Tyrant Lizard, King of Jerusalem.

The story is embedded into various folk tales and legends, where it becomes shortened simply to The Tyrant Lizard King.
 

maverick

Banned
At the height of his fame in 1969, Jim Morrison a.k.a. the Lizard King decides to set up a countercultural commune in California. Hundreds of his more hardcore fans, as well as assorted hippies, become members. His style of leadership, based on raw charisma and the collective use of mind-altering drugs, becomes more authoritarian over time, and his enclave, The Gate, is investigated by the FBI. In order to escape what he considers harassment by American law enforcement, he buys a tract of land in Guyana and encourages his followers to relocate there. Many of them do, only to see the increasingly unstable Morrison turn into a virtual autocrat. By the mid-1970s he is derisively referred to in the international media as the Tyrant Lizard King.

Must...resist...urge...to steal...idea!
 
Bones from Tyrannosaurus Rex wasnt discovered until 1880 so noone would be called that

Actually, several classical authors report of "bones of gigantic size" in several temples, which were idendified as "bones of "giants" or "of monsters" which some hero of the past slew, often side by side to the weapons that the mithical hero used to slew the fiendish creature.
If I remember well, Augustus had a private collection of those.
 
Instead of adopting the title "Steelman," a certain Georgian bank robber adopts the name "Lizardman" :p

Of course then Stalin would likely end up being called Tyrant Lizard Czar.

Tyrannosaurus caesar!
 
Arkhan mind if I steal this idea for my TL. I want to use it for a future monarch whose fixation of the welsh dragon tends to make him a little unsettling.
 
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