14 Monday Mar 2022
Posted in From the Emperor's Desk, Uncategorized
From the Emperor’s Desk: Today is the 10th anniversary of starting my European Royal History Blog!
In 10 years I’ve written 1,599 articles for my blog and have had 735,552 hits on my blog!
https://europeanroyalhistory.wordpress.com/
So thank you to all my loyal readers and i will continue to deliver quality content!
Liam Foley đź‘‘
17 Sunday Nov 2019
Tags
Henry VIII, History, King Henry VIII of England, Kings and Queens of England, Mary Tudor, Philip II of Spain, Queen Mary I of England
Mary I (February 18, 1516 – November 17, 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was the queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. She is best known for her aggressive attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. The executions that marked her pursuit of the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England and Ireland led to her denunciation as “Bloody Mary” by her Protestant opponents.
Mary was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother Edward VI (son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour) succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became mortally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed, correctly, that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had begun during his reign. On his death, leading politicians proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded.
Mary I, Queen Regnant of England and Ireland. Queen Consort of Spain, Naples and Sicily, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Milan.
Mary was—excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England. In 1554, Mary married King Felipe II of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556.
During her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions. After Mary’s death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor, Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, at the beginning of the 45-year Elizabethan era.
After Felipe II’s visit in 1557, Mary thought she was pregnant again, with a baby due in March 1558. She decreed in her will that her husband would be the regent during the minority of their child. However, no child was born, and Mary was forced to accept that Elizabeth would be her lawful successor. Mary was weak and ill from May 1558.
Felipe II, King of Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, Archduke of Austria and Duke of Milan.
In pain, possibly from ovarian cysts or uterine cancer, she died on November 17, 1558, aged 42, at St James’s Palace, during an influenza epidemic that also claimed the life of Reginald Pole later the same day. She was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth. Felipe II of Spain who was in Brussels, wrote to his sister Joan: “I felt a reasonable regret for her death.”
Although Mary’s will stated that she wished to be buried next to her mother, she was interred in Westminster Abbey on December 14, in a tomb she would eventually share with Elizabeth. The Latin inscription on their tomb, Regno consortes et urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis (affixed there by James I when he succeeded Elizabeth), translates to: “Consorts in realm and tomb, we, sisters Elizabeth and Mary, here lie down to sleep in hope of resurrection.”
Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland.
21 Wednesday Jun 2017
Tags
History, King William IV of the United Kingdom, Kings, Kings and Queens of England, kings and queens of Scotland, kings and queens of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom
June 20, 1837: His Majesty King William IV of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King of Hanover died at Windsor Castle. He was 71 years old. Since The King died childless his niece Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandrina-Victoria of Kent ascended the British throne after him. After her proclamation as Queen she announced she wanted to simply be known as Victoria. The throne of Hanover governed by the Salic Law could only be held by a man, and so it went to the new Queen’s uncle HRH Prince Ernest Augustus, The Duke of Cumberland became King Ernst August of Hanover.
#KingWilliamIV #QueenVictoria #DukeofCumberland #TodayInHistory
19 Wednesday Oct 2016
Posted in Featured Monarch, This Day in Royal History
Tags
dysentery, History, King John of England, King of England, King of the English, Middle Ages, Ttiles
On this day, 800 years ago, October 19, 1216 King John of England dies at Newark-on-Trent and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry III. King John has gone down in English history as one of England’s ineffective kings. Jim Bradbury, British historian specializing in the military history of the Middle Ages, states that the current consensus among historians was that John was a “hard-working administrator, an able man, an able general”, albeit, with “distasteful, even dangerous personality traits”, including pettiness, spitefulness and cruelty.”
His cause of death at the age of 49 after a reign plagued with numerous battles was dysentery. A condition highly curable today but often fatal in the Middle Ages. Shortly after his death rumors began circulating that he had been killed by poisoned ale, poisoned plums or a “surfeit of peaches”.His body was buried in Worcester Cathedral in front of the altar of St Wulfstan.  A new sarcophagus with an effigy was made for him in 1232 in which his remains now rest.
An interesting factoid is that during the reign of King John the title of the monarch officially changed from “King of the English” to “King of England.” The standard title for all monarchs from Æthelstan (924-927) until the time of King John was Rex Anglorum (King of the English). Canute II the Great, King of Denmark, was the first king to call himself “King of England”. In the Norman period Rex Anglorum (King of the English) remained standard, with occasional use of Rex Anglie (King of England). From the time of King John onward all other titles were eschewed in favor of Rex or Regina Anglie .(King of England).
30 Friday Sep 2016
Posted in Kingdom of Europe, Royal Genealogy
Tags
British Royalty, Conspiracy Theories, Duke of Edinburgh, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Edward VII, Emperor of Russia, grief, Hereditary Prince Alfred, History, Queen Victoria
With my interest in royalty I often peruse genealogy charts and biographies to look at the history and events in people’s lives to see if I can capture an accurate picture of who these people were and the times in which they lived. That is what I do when I wear the hat of an historian. I also have a background in psychology and despite having these high and lofty titles they are still human and can and do suffer all the ills associated with the human condition and that includes grief.
When I examine genealogy charts and notice that there are deaths that come close after one another I realize that certain royal family members may be caught up in grief. Often their biographies may detail their grief, as the case with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, however, there are times when nothing is mentioned. This past July I noticed that King Edward VII of the United Kingdom went through many losses in one year. I envision that it may have been a very difficult time for him.
In 1892 he lost his eldest son and heir, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (1864-1892) to pneumonia. It has been reported that Prince Albert Victor’s mother, Princess Alexandra, Princess of Wales (at that time) never fully recovered from her son’s death and kept the room in which he died as a shrine. This was typical of those in the Victorian era that made grief seem like an Olympic sport. I suspect that the future King Edward VII also never recovered from the death of his son…what parent ever truly recovers from such a tragedy?
However, it is the year 1899 that we turn to in examining the difficult year for Edward VII. On February 6, 1899 came the death of his nephew, HRH Alfred, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (October 15-February 9, 1899), the only son and heir of HRH Prince Alfred, reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Duke of Edinburgh and brother of King Edward VII. The Hereditary Prince’s mother was, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia the fifth child and only surviving daughter of Emperor Alexander II of Russia and his first wife Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine.
The Hereditary Prince was aged 24 and his death was under circumstances still not entirely clear.Was it due to health reasons such as consumption or was it suicide? He is alleged to have secretly married Lady Mabel Fitzgerald, granddaughter of the 4th Duke of Leinster, and it has been claimed that this caused friction between young Prince Alfred and his parents and was the cause of his suicide. One report is that Alfred shot himself with a revolver while the rest of the family was gathered for the anniversary celebration of his parents marriage, January 23rd 1899. Prince Alfred survived the initial self-inflicted gun shot and was taken to Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha for three days before being sent to the Martinnsbrunn Sanatorium in Gratsch in the South Tyrol (Austria, now part of Italy). Alfred died there at 4:15 pm on February 9, 1899.
Technically this part of the story belongs more to the grief of the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha than to Edward VII himself, after all, it wasn’t his son that died. I only relay this story here because it was the start of a string of deaths in the British Royal Family that would run from 1899 until August of 1901 that would have had an emotional impact on the future Edward VII.
In keeping my desire to have these posts be not too length and therefore easily digestible, I will stop here and post the next entry next Friday.
10 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Uncategorized
The next country I will examine in the usage of ordinal numbers for is monarchs is France. As my previous blog post demonstrated all monarchies, France included, developed over time. This includes the usage of ordinal numbers to differentiate monarchs of the same name within a given territory.
The modern Kingdom of France evolved out of the old Kingdom of the Franks. Similar to England where Anglo-Saxon names fell into disuse in France the old Frankish names such as Childeric, Dagobert and Thierry also gave way to more modern Christian based names. All of the numbering of the French kings follow the numbering that began with the Carolingian Dynasty. There is not any real discrepancy in the numbers except with the name Charles.
In 768 Charlemagne became co-king of the Franks along with his brother Carloman. However, Charlemagne was technically not his real name. It is an Anglicized version of his given name plus his sobriquet. His name was simply Charles. To history and even his contemporaries he was known as Charles the Great (Latin: Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus) It is the Latin form of his name and sobriquet that have been Anglicized and passed down to posterity.
There were a few successor to Charlemagne, reckoned Charles I of France, that also held the name Charles and similarly were known by their name along with their sobriquet. Adding to the confusion was the fact that titles and territories were in a constant state of flux. Here is a list of the Carolingian kings/emperors with their titles and sobriquet’s.
Charles the Bald, King of West Francia, 840-877, Holy Roman Emperor, 875-877
Charles the Fat, King of East Francia, 882-887. King of West Francia 884-887, Holy Roman Emperor, 881-887.
Charles the Simple, King of West Francia, 898-922.
In some lists of the kings of France both Charles the Fat and Charles the Simple are listed as Charles III. I have also seen some lists where Charles the Bald is listed as Charles I of France and Charlemagne is listed as Charlemagne instead of Charles the Great without an ordinal. The lists where Charles the Bald is listed as Charles I, Charles the Fat is listed as Charles II. There are some lists that omit Charles the Fat entirely. After Charles III the Simple there would not be another king of France by that name until 1322 a full 400 years! Even then Charles IV was known by his sobriquet as Charles the Fair.
In the end all of these mistakes are difficult to reconcile and I have just come to accept that the numbering for the name of Charles is simply off by one.
Part II will be posted tomorrow.
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European Royal History 