The Great British Monarchy
Good day friends,
Prime Ministers come and go, land, alliances, industry. Great Britain is constantly evolving into something new and radical. It is nice to know though, that the British monarchy is a shining constant in an otherwise tumultuous sea. Whether you love them or not, you cannot deny that the strong, caring, sometimes insane Kings and Queens of our isles have guided us through some of our darkest hours.
Now, considering that this is a brief look at our British monarchy, we must first outline the start of Great Britain.
Officially, Great Britain was born on the 1st of May 1707 with the merger of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. Let us not forget, that the two kingdoms were in a monarchical relationship since the reign of King James I of England in 1603. However, this was never a political union and so cannot be considered the official creation of Great Britain.
With this in mind, we generally take Queen Anne to be the first Monarch of Great Britain as she assumed power on the 1st of May 1707.
From the 1st of January 1801, Ireland was also merged into this union and so it became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with poor little Wales still being left out of the party.
So what will follow, is a timeline list of our Great British monarchs which will be utilised in part 2 of this topic (to come latter) to outline the positives (and possibly negatives, no promises) of our Kings and Queens.
House of Stuart
Queen Anne 1702-1714
House of Brunswick, Hanover Line
King George I 1714-1727
King George II 1727-1760
King George III 1760-1820
King George IV 1820-1830
King William IV 1830-1837
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
King Edward VII 1901-1910
House of Windsor
King George V 1910-1936
King Edward VIII 1936
King George VI 1936-1952
Queen Elizabeth II 1952-Incumbent
So there we are, our British heritage there for your viewing pleasure. As I said, next time we will look at the timeline in more depth. Until then,
Good day.
Author: Andrew C Davies
crontonhistoryblog 