Re: OT: Royalty talk

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Tue, 8 May 2007, David Lodge wrote:

> On Mon, 07 May 2007 19:34:39 +0100, Brian Loe <knobdy () gmail com> wrote:
> > In it, the
> > queen is The Queen even though she was only a Spanish princess before
> > marrying The King of England (good ol' Henry VIII). Also, this Henry
> > was a Tudor and wasn't he the one that formed the Church of England?
>
> I wonder whether that's due to simplification, so as not to get the  
> audience confused..
>
> Henry VIII was responsible for forming the Church of England 'cos he was  
> wanting an annullment (not divorce) for his marriage to Catherine. The  
> Pope denied this right, forcing ole Hank to make his own church; which is  
> confusing as it is probably closer to Catholic than Protestant, even  
> though Catholics are not allowed to be a reigning monarch in the UK. Note  
> this is one of the reasons why Hank didn't have 5 wives - as the marriage  
> was annulled, it technically didn't happen.
>
> > Does this perhaps go back to the original "royal families" of Europe
> > (King of England being a cousin of the Kind of France and all that) -
> > you would need to come from one of those families to marry and become
> > Queen as opposed to being born of a "made" Lord or whatever?
>
> There were many reasons for the mixing up of the different European royal  
> families, including good breeding lines, tactical reasons, cementing an  
> alliance, forging an alliance and last and least, 'cos they liked each  
> other. Oh course, for most of the middle ages (really up until the start  
> of the 20th century) the majority of Europe was composed of tiny kingdoms  
> all over the shop. The large country concept it really a modern thing.
>
> > Going to have to go read up on him after all - the tv show is just
> > entertainment...Anne Boleyn (sp?) is even attractive where as I
> > thought she was supposed to be quite ugly (but perhaps that was
> > because the English People loved Catherine so much?).
>
> I doubt the latter - at those times there was a very strong class divide  
> and the nobility didn't care about the peasants or what they thought...  
> Cue one civil war later and it was realised that what the English vox  
> populi really wanted was a monarch to behave like a monarch and not a  
> puritanical dictator (like Cromwell).
 
No - the Civil War estabished the sovereignty of Parliament. In other 
words, that we wanted the monarch to behave like a ceremonial figurehead, 
opening supermarkets and suchlike, while the real power resided in the 
elected parliament. We call this system "Parliamentary democracy", and 
it's worked well for us, we haven't had a civil war for over 360 years.

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