And going backwards we have Edward the Confessor who was half Norman ( hence the basis for Williams claim ) , then we have the Danish Kings so we get to Edmund Ironside and run out of the historical record giving a reliable linage for both parents.
Why do you think there is more interest in the Tudors than the Stuarts among the general public?
- Thread starter Charles III Stuart
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I think the only English monarchs after 1066 who can be called English/british by blood are the Lancastrians (perhaps sans Henry VI), the Yorkists, the Tudors (maybe not Mary I), James VI/I and maybe Charles I, Mary II and Anne. Maybe also Richard II, Empress Matilda and her late majesty, Liz II. But even their english parents/grandparents have ancestors who are not English so where do we cut the definition? It’s all so nonsensical really. Besides, a lot of those who can be called “genuine British kings” weren’t really amazing kings. Meanwhile, George VI was essentially 100% german genetically and he was the epitome of Britishness and led the empire through WW2 against the Germans - So what the hell does it matter really?
(Also, sigh, once again we got derailed into weird definitions of genetic ancestry)
(Also, sigh, once again we got derailed into weird definitions of genetic ancestry)
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Handel's music wasn't even that good, compared to Turlough O'Carolan, who was active at the same time. I'd take traditional Irish music over continental music any day. Irish music does a better job of connecting with you on an emotional level with a beautiful melody.
As much as I love James VII & II, even I have to admit that Monmouth winning would have been better for the Stuarts in the long run.
He had an English first name, Scottish last name, spoke English natively, was raised with British culture, cared about the people of Britain in a way Geordie Whelps, with his frequent excursions to Hanover, never did. Keeping in mind that I'm Irish, there is no doubt in my mind that my people would have been better off under Bonnie Prince Charlie than we were under Geordie Whelps.
He was not tyrannical to the American Colonists. He was, however, tyrannical to the Irish. He refused to emancipate us.
What he was not was meaningfully British in any way. He was 3% British ancestrally, as a great-great-grandson of the 48% British James VI & I. He had no connection to British culture, spoke English poorly, preferred Hanover to Britain, discriminated against the Irish, etc...
No, because BPC wasn't from a German family that was only in England because they usurped the throne from the rightful monarchs because of religious bigotry. Bonnie Prince Charlie was the rightful King from 1766 to 1788. His brother Henry was the rightful King from 1788 to 1807. After that, we're out of legitimate Stuarts. The crown should then have passed to Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia, according to male-preference primogeniture, but I'm not as enamored with the House of Savoy as I am with the House of Stuart, and Charles Emmanuel IV wasn't any more British than George III, and would have also led Britain into another personal union.
After the death of Henry I & IX, the crown should probably have gone to the most senior Monmouth descendant.
Why would I like them? They were responsible for upholding laws that turned my people into third-class citizens in our own homeland for over a century. It's like asking an African-American why they dislike Strom Thurmond.
James VI & I is remembered for the King James Bible. Charles I was a murder victim. It makes no sense to hold the fact that he was murdered against him. Do we hold the fact that Spencer Perceval was murdered against him? James VII & II was not "way too Catholic for his own good", he was a victim of religious bigotry.
Neither Charles I nor James VII & II is to blame for being mistreated by others, and it's kind of victim blaming to say they are. It's not Charles's fault that Cromwell was a murderous fanatic, nor is it James's fault that the English were bigoted against his faith.
Elizabeth II was the most British monarch since Queen Anne, who died in 1714.
None of the monarchs since 1066 have been of 100% British ancestry, the last monarch to be more than half British ancestrally was Queen Anne (d. 1714), the next one will be William V. From 1760-1952, the British monarch was less than 1% British ancestrally. I've looked at their family trees and done in the math.
It's not weird at all.
can be summed up in his advice to - ICR if it was Gluck, Dittersdorf or JC Bach, some German composer who'd showed up in London for the staging of an opera- "you've taken too much trouble with your opera. The English don't care. They want something they can tap their feet to"
so what are Henry V- son of Mary de Bohun (an Englishwoman)- Henry IV- son of Blanche of Lancaster (an Englishwoman)- Edward IV and Richard III- sons of Cecily Neville (an Englishwoman)- then? Edward V and his siblings was probably the "most English" after them, since like Anne, they only had one foreign grandparent. Then let's not even get started on the trashcan fire otherwise known as the Tudors
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Simple, it's due to the way Elizabeth I describes the family in The 2005 Gunpowder, Treason and Plot movie: "Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, the mad half-sister... and me."
That's basically the definition of it. A man who won (and kept his throne), Henry VIII (who needs no describing), the zealot boy king, Mary (who could only be described as Joanna la Loca... but English) and Elizabeth I.
If that's not dramatic and interesting enough, I don't know what is.
I think you could sell any kind of story, though. For my money the cycle from Henry V->Henry VI->Edward IV->Richard III has more interesting personalities and exciting changes of fortune than the Tudors (heck, Shakespeare himself used that material). Henry VII in particular doesn't really do anything interesting once he attains the crown, and the winning of it wasn't really because of him to begin with (it was two women who conspired against Richard and more seasoned men who won the battle).
I really do think it's Henry VIII and Elizabeth I doing all the heavy lifting. Really, you hardly ever hear about any of the others to begin with. And I also have a feeling that it's the six wives/virgin queen dichotomy that draws people in; it's easy to speculate why a father and daughter made such different choices. And both were arguably successful in what they set out to do, so we can have an actual debate about who was 'right.'
YMMV on that one to be honest...
Not everything Haendel did was great sure, but I love myself some good old Baroque from time to time. And Haendel's best known pieces are well-liked for a reason. His Hallelujah from the Messiah, the Saraband and Zadok the Priest are pretty great.
Honestly I could concede the point on that one. But I'm not sure I listen to Haendel for the same reasons I'd listen to Irish traditionnal music.
A fact that most people sadly don't care about nowadays. It was important, especially at the time, but that's not enough to draw people to a particular Historical character.
When I said I hear more about James I & VI because of his mother Mary Stuart and her rivalry with Elizabeth I... It's because the fact he succeeded both and the irony of how Mary's son succeeded her cousin and executionner is the kind of story people love to hear. But James himself feels pretty bland as far as monarchs are concerned and few people talk about his actual reign save for a few details that are quickly forgotten. He lacks... well, the "flashiness" that makes the Tudors remembered.
He also happened to be a bit of an absolutist monarch. Par for the course of the era sure, but that doesn't help making him beloved.
In the same way that Louis XVI of France and Nicholas II of Russia are...
Look, plenty of people will argue that Charles I didn't necessarilly deserve to be executed and that he was a fine man. But you'll never hear these people call Charles I a good King save a few peculiar circumstances... Fact is he poorly handled the situation, got people to rebel against him and then had to face a Civil War because of that. He was also tried before he was executed and while you can definitely see Cromwell and his cronies as having somewhat rigged the jury because they wanted the execution for less-than-justified motives (which was the case), it's not like all of their grievances against Charles were unfair.
Just because you like a particular figure in History doesn't absolve it from his (or her) failings.
Yes. But that was also because James II himself was a bit of a bigot as well. The Protestants didn't like having a Catholic King sure, but James didn't help win their favor when he kept promoting Catholics in key positions, claiming the superiority of Catholic doctrine over Protestant beliefs and even persecuting a few dissident protestant faiths (such as Presbytarian Scots).
James also kinda behaved like his cousin over the Channel at times... You know, the Sun King of France, the guy who repelled the Edict of Nantes of his grandfather and thus persecuted protestants. As well as deeply absolutist. James II and Louis XIV got along very well (proven by the fact Louis welcomed James in exile at Versailles) and shared many ideals. So, for all of their bigotry, it's not like the Protestants didn't have legitimate reason to want to get rid of James...
mainly the question of Charles raising taxes leading to the Parliamentary coup.
Ever since Runnymede, parliament has had power of the purse and Charles I was trying to circumvent the Magna Carta
and led to the KJV only movement who ignored the source material
this, which ,@Zygmunt Stary, is why I brought up the Sejm ie if a monarch breaks a contractual limitation on the crown is he still legitimate.
really? the flashiness of James I's court led directly to the problems that Charles I experienced. The financial situation, the distrust of royal favourites (looking at you, George Villiers), the fights with parliament. They were all problems that had been bubbling under the surface during the reign of the so-called Wisest Fool in Christendom. Had James died earlier (either in 1615- when a riding accident nearly finished him off- or 1622- when he had a bladder infection that nearly killed him IIRC), Charles' reign could've potentially looked very different. As for Charles being a political incompetent, when the riding accident left James "disabled" from acting, a fifteen-year-old with relatively no experience (James didn't really bother educating Charles for fear of the problems he'd had with Henry Frederick repeating) and no political allies (again, James wouldn't even let the boy have his own household) at court, managed to keep the country running smoothly. Did dad thank him after this? Maybe make sure he got some decent education? Nah...daddy hooked up with Villiers again (who Charles hated*).
*Charles only made friends with Buckie because he wanted to win his dad's approval. Likewise, Charles - due to the lack of political experience and mistrust of his own judgment- followed the instructions his dad had left him far too closely in the reign up to the Personal Rule. And the Personal Rule was pretty popular. The only people to bitch about it was parliament.
Apologies for diverting the discussion, but these folk-linguistic explanations are unsupported by the evidence. Loss of historical /r/ ("non-rhoticity") would have been a proscribed, lower-class feature in the early Hanoverian period; it is entered the London standard around 1800, though poets such as Keats were still chastised for relying upon it in rhyme, and became predominant in the last quarter of the 19th century. We hardly need to appeal to German influence to explain it; loss of /r/ at the end of syllables is a natural and widely-attested sound change found in e.g. varieties of Malay, originating from the inevitable cross-linguistic tendency to produce it weakly (i.e. as a tap [ɾ] or a approximant [ɹ~ɻ~ɹ̤]).
As for the pronunciations of either and neither that you mention, (i.e. with the "PRICE vowel"/ME /iː/ ), they first appear in standard speech in the early 1700s and have no clear Middle English antecedents, meaning that your Hanoverian origin theory actually looks superficially plausible. However, E. J. Dobson, one of the chief authorities on the pronunciation of Early Modern English (English Pronunciation 1500-1700 (1968), vol. II, § 129, p. 648) states that it is "clear that Standard English adopted it from the 'Eastern Dialect'" (i.e. the dialects of East Anglia); this is hardly compatible with the elevated origin you propose.
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yeah i agree thats not how phonological shifts work see the \sh\ in Peninsular Spanish for another folk explanation or how the feature didnt spread to the Americas. Single person shiboleths altering language only happens in Tolkien fiction.
That’s the Idear: Intrusive ‘R’
Generations of Americans have puzzled over the British tendency to add ‘r’s where (it seems to us) ‘r’s don’t belong. This can be found in such phrases as “an i…
dialectblog.com
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