Boris describes HMQE2 as best ever monarch

disagree

I'd go Alfred, Elizabeth I, Edward I for top 3

 

Edward I was a qunt.  I'd plump for Edward III over Longshanks.  Agree on Alfred and Liz I, but would also put in Henry II for legal reforms and Matilda for gumption and Athelstan for being the first.

My vote is for Henry V. Took an arrow in the face and just got on with it.   

Probably the Kenneth Branagh version but I haven't seen the Tom Hiddlestone one. Any good? 

Best:

  • Henry VII (saved a broken and bankrupt kingdom and eschewed the stupid aristocratic claims to France's equivalent of Lincolnshire other than in name)
  • James I (sailed the ship of state over tricky seas)
  • Charles II (LAD)
  • Alfred/Edward the Elder/Athelstan (architects)
  • Mary II (sensible, saved the country from rampant superstition)

Edward I/III and Henry I/II would have been up there but for troublesome offspring (tbf not Mattie's fault)

Worst:

  • Edward the Confessor (the worst Englishman that has ever lived - basically handed over all his subjects to be genocided by a foreign tyrant because he had a spat with his brother-in-law)
  • John (does ANYone have ANYthing positive to say about him?  Had rightful king Arthur blinded and then murdered, then had the murderers murdered on trumped-up charges, ran blarting to the Pope over Magna Carta to renege on his own promise)
  • Mary I (handed a grateful kingdom on a platter and then pissed all over it)
  • Charles I, James II (just sit on the throne and STFU - don't go imposing your FSM lunacy on people who don't want it)
  • Henry VI (given the biggest territory of any English king and reams of competent advisers that had enabled that, ended up causing the most brutal civil war the country had ever had)
  • Richard II (lying scum)

surprised u don’t include richard i in the worst category there scep tick - bankrupted the country out of pure folly, ignored it, then left it 2 the mercy of his brother

E8 at least had the decency to extradite himself from the throne when it was obvious he'd be more E2 than E3.

Quick skim suggests Richard III has been overlooked - perhaps because he is such an obvious choice.  Infanticide megalomaniac.  The Billy S Macbeth storyline would have been better suited to him, he seems to have been righteous until 1483.

Three Richards, all dicks.

best monarch, plainly, is going to be one from the days when the british monarch had some real power 

Hank-7 was a good one. Businesslike, restored stability after the frankly ludicrous Wars of the Roses and pointless French campaigns before that. Reformed the Treasury, which always seemed to need doing. His eldest son a mere idle playboy by comparison.

Elizabeth 1 was not a madwoman. She was cruel and paranoid, like her dad, with an extra streak of personal vindictiveness, but intelligent and amoral rather than mad.

Surprised there’s no love for Edward VII - the only monarch in our history who has invented a chair to facilitate orla between three participants simultaneously. 

His eldest son a mere idle playboy by comparison.

Second. First pre-deceased H7. Sliding doors moment. H8 was the Harry to Arthur’s Wills. Bred for the tourney rather than the throne. 

Always had a soft spot for Edward IV 

Only king not to fritter away the country's wealth on pointless French wars 

Agreeing with Louis XI that the whole thing was a waste of money and time, on receiving 60,000 gold crowns and a 50,000 annual pension, intending to spend  the time afterwards partying

Sadly he died shortly thereafter of apoplexi from overeating, leaving the country in the gentle hands of his brother Richard III 

 

 

Yes, Liz I saved the country from continental style 30 year wars between fanatical Catholics and Calvinists, setting up the Church of England as a compromise

Hence 3Dux hate 

Being an avid Yorkist I have Ricky 3 as my fave and Hank 7 as evil bastard no.1 for rewriting history to denigrate his predecessor. Anyone who doubts this, read Daughter of Time.

Alfred - saved English identity

William I - put an end to endless Scandinavian aggression, the previous Saxon kings being just Scandinavian puppets 

Henry II - understood the importance of law and knew his rugger

leaving England with no heir but his fookwit brother was not a great move.

tbf he did try pretty hard - three legit possibles lost through miscarriage and about a thousand bastards. 

Quick skim suggests Richard III has been overlooked - perhaps because he is such an obvious choice. Infanticide megalomaniac.  

Bollocks. Richard had nothing to gain from the murder of the princes. It was Buckingham. You've fallen for Tudor propaganda.

Being an avid Yorkist I have Ricky 3 as my fave and Hank 7 as evil bastard no.1 for rewriting history to denigrate his predecessor.

Sound man. I went to Dicky III's funeral btw.

Bollocks. Richard had nothing to gain from the murder of the princes. It was Buckingham. You've fallen for Tudor propaganda.

He basically threw his sister-in-law under the bus to get rid of E5.  He knew from what happened when H6 was sprung what could happen if someone sprung E5 out of the Tower.  He could have stopped H7 before he even started had he just paraded E5 on the battlements or something to prove E5 was alive.

I will concede that there is the possibility that E5 and his brother died of natural causes, could have been a very pestilential time, which then caused problems later.  But Richard absolutely had the kingdom to gain by terminating his nephews with extreme prejudice.

The key is what R3 did to Hastings (the baron, not the port), a mate of his who helped him get the Lord Protector position, at a time when nobody had even the slightest scintilla that R3 was going to go full tonto on bloodline.  Two months after getting the LP he had Hastings dragged out of Cabinet and summarily executed.  No reason at all other than covering up the path.

and tbf 2 old willy waggledagger, he was pretty good at bringing history alive and was an unintended expert at putting his own interpretation on2 it

u kno, amongst 1 or 2 other skills he probs had

You know Thomas More had his lips firmly placed around Henry Tudor's cock, right?

Did the French Lord Chancellor?  He reported in 1484 that R3 had murdered E5.

And it's SAINT Thomas More to you Orwell 

You know, the religious Saint who had Tyndale burnt alive for translating the Bible into English

Whilst the Greeks at all times could read the Bible in their own language

Ah yes, that famous ally of the medieval English whose vested interests lay in stable rule in England. Oh wait...

How about the Italian cleric Dominic Mancini, who wrote at the end of 1483 that R3 had killed E5 in hi De occupatione regni Anglie per Ricardum tertium libellus?

How about the Italian cleric 

How about the fact the story was put about by the family that stood most to benefit from it the deaths and went on to found a rigidly controlled propaganda-led state?  It just doesn't make any sense.

 

And it's SAINT Thomas More to you Orwell 

I'm not Christian, Tarquin, so I don't believe in saints.  And he was a Tudor propagandist, so hardly beyond worldly things.

It just doesn't make any sense.

It doesn’t make sense that someone who stood to be king if E5 and R2.5 were somehow disqualified and removed from existence should disqualify them and remove them from existence?

 

We know he had them disqualified…we know he removed their allies from existence. 

richard iii more than likely had the princes murdered imo 

they were dead by 1487

the mancini stuff is pretty strong evidence they were dead in 1483

although he’d had them de-legitimised, he was paranoid as fook given all the rebellions and plotting against him, so they were deffo dangerous 4 him 2 allow alive

henry vii could have done it, but by then he’d won a decisive victory and didn’t need 2 - he executed his captives l7er in his reign when the rebellions started again. and he didn’t do it in secret.

it’s not evidence per se, but while i think the pure tudor propaganda theory has legs (it is deffo a thing, they were rampant), it is somewhat undermined by dicky 3’s body being found and eg having the hunchback, which suggests the propaganda had more than a kernel of truth

henry vii could have done it.

Not Henry VII. Buckingham, who was the next in line before Henry VII.  And as you say, they were already delegitimised and RIII had the throne.  Anyone trying to get the throne had to first undermine RIII, which would have legitimised the princes again, and would have then had to deal with them as hurdles to the crown.  Far easier to kill the princes first - something RIII had no motive to do.

The strongest argument against H7 doing it (apart from the obvious one that every contemporary source that deals with the issue says R3 did it) is that H7 rode the wave of revulsion from the disappearance of E5.  Which R3 could have punctured by presenting E5 as his ally. 

R3 absolutely had every motive to get rid.  After all, he had seen how E4 nearly lost everything because H6 was alive in prison - and was sprung for one more crack at the job.  It's not even as if H6 had the nous to do that for himself.  E5 would have had loads of supporters seeing him as the legit king - which wouldn't be surprising as not one person on the entire planet had any doubts he was, until E4 was dead and R3 could machinate from a position of strength.

Buckingham wasn't after the throne for himself either - he supported H7's first go at the butt end of 1483, hence his execution.  But if Buckingham actually did/arranged the deed, he did so on R3's orders.  After all, it would have been a grandmaster move for R3 to tell Buck to kill the princes, then reveal to the world that Buckingham had done so, and have him attaindered forthwith.  And of course...

Buckingham, who was the next in line before Henry VII.

...Buckingham was executed in 1483, when the next in line to the throne was Edward of Middleham - R3's son. 

Lady Jane Grey. Only 16, but made a spirited attempt to prevent England falling into the hands of Catholic Mary. Refused to allow her husband to be given the title king. Quite a feminist, in that sense.

Sorry to be a tede but you can't have alfred.  He was king of a quite lovely part of the world but not king of all england.

i would go best:

aethelstan

henry V

henry vii

worst:

stephen

henry vi

all the georges

Bloody Mary, daughter of Spanish Princess, Catherine of Aragon, and granddaughter of  Los dos Reyes Católicos, singlehandedly turned England Protestant

Whether that makes her the best or the worst depends on your religious affiliation

Certainly her husband, Philip II of Spain, of all people, was so p*ssed off with her fanaticism, that he cleared off back to Spain

Refused to allow her husband to be given the title king. Quite a feminist, in that sense.

Her “feminism” benefitted no woman apart from her.  Whereas Edward vii campaigned against racism and class divisions when he was one of the world’s biggest beneficiaries of both. 

Seems a bit harsh blaming Britain’s war on a man who died four years before it started. 

WW1 was a shocking mistake by European diplomats and if anyone had the charisma, people skills and aversion to war to have banged their heads together and prevented hostilities it would have been E7.  He enjoyed continental women far too much to allow war to sully his happy hunting grounds.