It's all over ... or is it?

 

Today we will be looking at the famous saying "It ain't over until the fat lady sings." Of course now, a saying, but once a, maybe even the most, important rule agreed upon for the Battle of Waterloo (1815), by the leading participants Napoleon Bonaparte, Arthur Wellesley (Duke of Wellington, see picture) and Gebhart Leberecht Von Blücher in the discussion of a fair ruleset before the fighting ensued.

This rule was obviously as simple as can be. A fat lady would be placed near the battlefield. The moment she decides to start singing, the battle would be stopped and a death count would be held. The army leading in foes slain at that very moment would be named the winner. For a long time historians believed that these three leading men suffered from a gambling addiction which heavily influenced all their military decisions, since it seemed like they all wanted there to be a random moment in battle where the fat lady would start to sing. After all, the fat lady is the only one knowing when she would start to sing. How can you plan for this? It would be totally random. Gamblers love these random moments of chance to win or lose it all!

Of course, there are other historians who believed it to be a very fair way to decide who would be winning the battle. If the fat lady can start to sing at any moment, it means all armies should start to fight at their very best from the start. It would be a full blown strike force meeting another full blown strike force head on, with no holding back. Obviously, as we all know, the fat lady started singing two hours down into battle, when the armies of the Duke of Wellington and Field General Blücher were leading by quite a healthy margin. Even if the fat lady had decided to start singing much later, the French still would have lost. That is fair.

However, recently there has been some renewed discussion about this battle. Translators from France have mentioned that Napoleon has been quoted wrongly, as he had understood the rule to be "It ain't over until the fattest lady sings." Now, there was a fat lady near the battlefield, but was she the fattest lady? Probably not. And it's actually impossible to go back in time to find the fattest lady alive on earth at that moment, to find out when she had started singing. If she even sang at all!

Descendants of Napoleon are now standing guard in front of the fattest lady alive at this point, claiming once this lady starts singing, only then the war is over. And as they are the only ones to have sent an army (of 12 old men) to Waterloo, they fully believe they will be able to claim victory. Has to be mentioned: the current fattest lady alive is being paid by descendants of Field General Blücher (she is a German woman after all), to never sing a note for the rest of her life, thus making sure there is no victory for Napoleon.

What do you think, dear reader? Does Napoleon have a case? Will world history be changed very soon? Or has this war already been all over many many years ago?