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

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, all the Tudors burned people but, being a protestant country, we make as if Mary was the only one.

I believe- I could be wrong- that Henry VIII once had a catholic and a lollard chained back to back so they they could argue as the burned.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Gosh. What a prime asshole.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was the syphilis or the jousting wound or whatever...

I don't know, he started off as such a gifted, glamorous renaissance prince and then something soured him.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Possibly unbounded power and a lack of any rule of law to keep him in check?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Also, like Stalin, he succumbed to paranoia.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, but so did Gordon Brown. Didn't really matter; the electoral system meant that he could be kicked out pronto, and the rule of law meant that it only escalated into silly private temper tantrums. No such luck with absolute dictators.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Paranoia is a disease of power. You'd have to be pretty robust not to succumb. And foolish not to succumb a little. Every throne is insecure. There are always plotters.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

I am not sure that going back in time helps you very much more either:

Edward V: child king, disappeared
Richard III: warlord, suspected murderer (yes, I am well acquainted with the Ricardian case)
Edward IV: warlord
Henry VI: feeble in mind, warlord
Henry V: warlord

and so on. Case upon case of assholes who happily and regularly burned vast stretches of countryside and caused the deaths of hundreds in the cause of interminable aristocratic war.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I stopped at the Tudors because I can't go any further back without consulting wikipedia.

Up until Richard III kings had a simple choice- be a successful war lord or get a red hot poker up the arse. Some of those guys were pretty impressive on their own terms, but every single one of them was a monster.