How can I get Roman numerals in text?

Question

For example:

Charles's sister Bona, married the eldest son of Philip VI of France, the future John II of France, in 1335.

How can I get Roman numerals?

Answer 1

Here's an example how you could use the TeX primitive (mentioned by Martin) for defining your own macro for conversion to big Roman numbers:

\documentclass{article}
\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\rom}[1]{\expandafter\@slowromancap\romannumeral #1@}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
Charles's sister Bona, married the eldest son of Philip \rom{6} of France,
the future John \rom{2} of France, in 1335.

Today is the year \rom{2011}.
\end{document}

It's done similar to the definition of the LaTeX macro \Roman.

Answer 2

Simply write

Charles's sister Bona, married the eldest son of Philip VI of France, the future John II of France, in 1335.

Answer 3

biblatex offers the macros \RN and \Rn for upper- resp. lowercase roman numerals, plus \RNfont and \Rnfont for formatting those numerals.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{biblatex}
\renewcommand*{\Rnfont}{\scshape}

% The following is only included to prevent BibTeX/biber errors!
\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

Philip~\RN{6} (or, if you prefer, Philip~\Rn{6})~\dots

\end{document}

Answer 4

The \romannumeral kernel primitive is your friend:

\newcommand{\RNum}[1]{\uppercase\expandafter{\romannumeral #1\relax}}

Charles's sister Bona, married the eldest son of Philip \RNum{4} of France, the future John \RNum{2} of France, in 1335.

Answer 5

You can convert a number to a lowercase roman numeral using the TeX primitive \romannumeral<number>\relaxor in uppercase using \uppercase\expandafter{\romannumeral<number>\relax}. Counter values can be printed in as Roman numerals using \roman{<counter>} (lowercase) and \Roman{<counter>} (uppercase).

However for simple Roman numerals in text I would simple write it as you already did.