Breakdown of Никто не знал, как эта бедная девушка стала царицей.
не
not
этот
this [f: эта, n: это]
знать
to know
как
how
никто
nobody
бедный
poor
стать
to become
девушка
young woman
царица
empress
Questions & Answers about Никто не знал, как эта бедная девушка стала царицей.
Why is царицей in the instrumental case here?
The verb стать (to become) requires the noun or adjective that follows it to be in the instrumental case. Because she became an empress, the nominative царица changes to the instrumental царицей.
Why does the instrumental form of царица end in -ей (царицей) instead of the standard feminine -ой?
This is due to a spelling rule. After the letter ц (as well as ж, ш, ч, and щ), an unstressed о turns into an е. Since the stress in царица falls on the second syllable, the unstressed instrumental ending is spelled with -ей instead of -ой.
Why do we say никто не знал instead of just никто знал?
Russian requires double negatives. Whenever you use a negative pronoun like никто (nobody) or a negative adverb like никогда (never), you must still put не in front of the verb. Literally, the sentence says 'Nobody did not know'.
Why is the verb знал in the masculine form if we don't know who 'nobody' includes?
The negative pronoun никто (nobody) grammatically acts as a singular masculine noun. In the past tense, it will always take the masculine singular verb ending (like знал), even if it refers to a group of women.
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