What The Hereditary Principle Did For Us: British Monarchs Since The Tudors

[poliphilo]

George VI: a weak, silly man with a stammer.
Edward VIII: an irresponsible playboy with fascist sympathies who had to be gotten rid of.
George V: dull, stupid, stiff and arrogant.
Edward VII: a bit of a dark horse. Unpromising material but rather effective in office.
Victoria: suffered from clinical depression for much of her reign. Iconic in old age as the Widow of Windsor (a triumph of the spin doctor's art.)
William IV: who?
George IV: playboy and wastrel- a national embarrassment.
George III: terribly dull, periodically mad.
George II: very German.
George I: completely German. And nasty with it.
Anne: supremely dull figurehead of a golden age. The least inspirational of British Queens.
William and Mary: at least they weren't James II.
James II: stupid, charmless autocrat who had to leave in a hurry.
Charles II: our first constitutional monarch, intelligent, witty and politically able.
Charles I: stupid, charmless autocrat who tore the country apart and lost his head.
James I:  the wisest fool in Christendom. Famous for slobbering and persecuting witches.
Elizabeth I:  Gloriana!
Mary: famous for burning people.
Edward VI: died young.
Henry VIII: authentically monstrous. The British Stalin.
Henry VII: a Machiavel- cold, efficient; brought the middle ages to a juddering halt.

Comments

OK bearing in mind it's a different perspective

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

There was a good show on recently about all the Georges. Lucy Worsley was doing it and we're fans of hers in our household :) Mad George actually seemed by far the most civilised of the lot.

George V did try hard to sort out the Home Rule question and calm down some of the acrimony between the parties. That said, I wouldn't have him at the dinner table, he was a bit of an authoritarian killjoy as you say. Doesn't mean he was a bad monarch though.

Victoria sending the people of Ireland the total sum of £5 for famine relief in the 1840s was not a good look.

I feel a bit bad on George VI's behalf though - a disability is not a character defect.

Re: OK bearing in mind it's a different perspective

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Not a character defect- but would you choose a shy, stammering man as your war leader? Fortunately he had Churchill to hide behind.

I may have been unfair to George V

Victoria was a terrible Queen. She was lucky in her husband, Prime Ministers and propagandists. Mostly she just sat on her arse and felt sorry for herself.

George III was a decent man- but still- in Shelley's phrase "an old, mad, blind, despised and dying king." Pretty devastating, eh?

Re: OK bearing in mind it's a different perspective

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's amazing that poem is so fresh even though the events are about 170 years ago...

Re: OK bearing in mind it's a different perspective

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love how the romantics ripped into the Georges.