A Historian Reacts - The British Monarchy by Useful Charts

welcome back everybody to another reaction video well today we're gonna dive into two of my favorite topics merged into one and that is uh genealogy or family history and the british monarchy uh things that i've both things that i've studied for years and years and years if you're familiar at all with my channel you've been around a while you probably have heard me talk about genealogy i've been a professional genealogist for about 25 years now pretty much out of high school something i've devoted thousands and thousands of hours to i've written books on different families i'm currently writing a book on one of my family's the green hill family who came from birmingham england and so this is something that i'm very passionate about and every so often some of you will reach out to me and ask me about my genealogical services i'm gonna put in the black section of this video which we are working on coming up with something to do with all of that to kind of fill that space and make it a little more aesthetically pleasing that'll be coming soon hopefully i'm going to put a post up here in the black section of the video my email address and you can reach out to me through that email address if you are interested in hiring me to do your genealogical services what i'm offering right now just real quick because i want to get into the video is basically i will do about 10 hours of research for you i put everything into an online tree that's the documents the information any photos that i find uh things of that nature and then i uh provide that tree to you and you can access it through ancestry.com you don't have to have an ancestry uh membership to be able to access it it's just a free account that you have to create i put everything in there and it's about 200 is what i charge for doing 10 hours of research now ancestry's professional genealogists they charge i think around 2 500 for 20 hours of research uh so obviously 200 for 10 hours is far far less but what i typically do is if you reach out to me and you're interested i'll send you uh some examples of what i do because at the end when i'm done i make a video showing you everything that i found and talking through how to navigate it and understand it and showing you some of the highlights some of the interesting things i've found and i'll send you a couple sample video links so you can see videos that i've made for other people and i also take a look at your family tree and if i don't think i can find a lot i'll just tell you it's not worth it don't hire me anyway uh this is one of my favorite youtube channels that's called useful charts the links in the description to this particular video and for someone like me who loves history and loves family history this is right up my alley and this is the useful chart where they talk about the british monarchy going from alfred the great all the way down to uh her majesty queen elizabeth ii who is currently the british monarch so we're going to watch this i'm not going to jump in too often but i just want to talk about a few things here and there as we go about it so let's dive in monarch queen elizabeth ii i'll be using my european royal family tree chart which can be purchased as a poster from my website usefulcharts.com please note that i have a separate video covering the kings of scotland prior to 1603 and you can find a link to that video in the description so let's start with alfred the great now alfred the great was not actually a king of england at that time england was divided into several smaller kingdoms one of which was known as wessex and that's where alfred the great was king and if you've ever seen the netflix series uh the last kingdom this is the era in which that's going on alfred the great's one of the prominent characters and all of that you've got wessex north umbria murcia or some of the prominent kingdoms there's others as well um but uh they were ruled sometimes by anglo-saxon sometimes by the danes or the vikings as we call them so there's a lot of that going on and uh alfred the great had this dream of uniting all the anglo-saxons in one england it didn't happen during his lifetime but it happened because of his efforts to move that forward and i think it was his son or grandson that eventually made that happen but during his reign wessex grew to dominate the other kingdoms and eventually through his son and his grandson they ended up conquering all of england so it's actually his grandson athelstan who is generally considered to have been the first king of the english now athel stan did not have any sons so the throne then passed to one of his brothers and then to another brother and then on to some nephews but basically it stayed within the family eventually we come to a king called apple red the unready and we should mention too that though it tended to go through family members uh the anglo-saxon tradition and the tradition in wessex was not that there was a strict inheritance where father the son passed the throne down they actually had to be voted on by a council that would actually elect them it just so happened that more often than not they chose the person who was the heir but it didn't necessarily automatically have to be that way during his reign england was being attacked quite frequently by vikings and eventually a danish king named canute the great seized the throne and ruled england for almost 20 years the last of the original anglo-saxon kings to rule england was saint edward the confessor he didn't have any sons and on his deathbed he supposedly named his brother-in-law harold godwinson as king so uh the story goes that like a decade or more before this edward the confessor had promised the throne to william the bastard who we know as william the conqueror who eventually becomes the duke of normandy in france but on his deathbed they say that he pointed at harold godwinson and that was interpreted that that's who he wanted to take over at least that's what harold godwin wanted to be the case and harold um had not always gotten along real well with edward the confessor and uh in fact i believe that when everything happens in 1066 uh there when the danish invasion happens in the north of england that one of harold's brothers was actually fighting with the danes against harold so harold has to march his army north they fight the battle of stamford bridge which is an overwhelming victory for harold's forces he had like ten thousand men and pretty much wiped out the opposing army uh there had been hundreds of ships that had landed the danish forces and they only needed something like 20 to carry away the survivors that's how devastating that fight was but then he has to turn around immediately this was i think in september the battle of stamford bridge and then in october he goes down he has to fight the battle of hastings and hastings uh was a bloody it was an all-day fight and it easily could have gone either way and some mistakes were made that gave william the opening that he needed to win that battle harold is killed and william the conqueror becomes king however edward had through his mother a cousin over in normandy who claimed that edward had already promised him the throne so quite famously that individual known to us as william the conqueror invaded england with his norman army and defeated harold godwinson at the battle of hastings in 1066. william the conqueror thus became the new king of england establishing a new royal house the house of normandy note that william the conqueror was also a descendant of charlemagne through this connection here they're all related okay any royal family from any country in europe they're all related just know that they're all related which means that everyone who can trace their descent to william can also trace their descent to charlemagne william the conqueror was followed by two of his sons first william ii and then henry the first now henry the first had a son but that son died in an incident known as the white ship disaster and it was such a ridiculous disaster that didn't need to happen they were having this drunken party on a ship and it hit some rocks and was destroyed uh in a storm i think and um or just in bad ways bad weather and uh he was killed number of other prominent nobles were killed uh and that really kind of led to the first big disaster that eventually leads to the house of normandy no longer being on the throne and it goes to the plantagenets along with several other members of the royal family this led to a period called the anarchy because when henry the first died two different people claimed the throne one was his daughter matilda and the other was his nephew stephen matilda had previously been married to the holy roman emperor so she is often referred to as empress matilda through her second marriage though she had a son named henry and eventually henry defeated stephen and became king henry ii so stephen actually went stephen of law steven actually wins this civil war against his cousin matilda but eventually as circumstances eventually lead to uh matilda's son gets to inherit the throne and she's married to jeffrey plantagenet who's the count of anjou uh andrew's in kind of west central france and uh plays a prominent role throughout history but um the the name plantagenet actually comes from the plantaginista plant which i think was like a a broom plant then he would like wear it in his hat or something and and that's where that name comes from the name of probably the most significant dynasty in the history of uh england uh certainly the dynasty that was on the throne the longest and um at least once england was formed and he was known to kind of have this really fiery temper and that seemed to have gotten passed down through the generations this established a third royal house the house of plantagenet named after henry ii's father now what a lot of people don't know is that the house of plantaginate descended from both the normans and the original anglo-saxon kings because you follow henry ii's maternal line you come to saint margaret of scotland who was a granddaughter of athol red the unready this means that every monarch from this point forward was a descendant of both william the conqueror and alfred the great henry ii was the first english king to be lord of ireland he was followed first by his son richard the lionheart the famous crusader king but then by another son named john so richard the lionheart only spends like six months in england during his entire i think 10-year reign and then uh you see here it says henry the young king henry the young king never ruled in his own right but he kind of jointly reigned with um henry ii and all of henry ii's sons participated in rebellions against him at one time or another there was another son jeffrey i think and um but eventually richard gets killed in battle um on his way uh kind of rampaging through france uh he had spent a couple of years imprisoned in i think in the holy roman empire and it pretty much bankrupted the kingdom ransoming him to get him out uh he gets shot uh where near where the shoulder and neck come together by a bolt from a crossbow fired by a french cook on the castle uh on his death bed he instructs that nothing bad should happen to the cook but after they capture the cook after he dies i think they skinned him alive it was a pretty brutal fate for him jon was a complete disaster almost cost uh the plantagenets the throne because right at the end of his reign it very briefly goes to a king louis from france if you want to see some of these stories played out there's a fantastic movie called ironclad that shows the end of king john's reign it's kind of some of it's fictionalized but really good it's uh paul giamatti plays king john if you want to see a little bit of what happened with richard the lionheart the russell crowe movie robin hood has the scene where richard is killed near the beginning of the movie it was during the reign of john that the magna carta was signed you can also see here that he is connected to several important welsh princes through his daughter joan after jon we get his son henry iii who had a nice long reign note that during his reign his brother richard was elected holy roman emperor although he was never crowned henry iii was followed by edward the first who conquered wales so so and edward the first is the one that we know is long shanks he's also known as the hammer of the scots he's the one that you see portrayed in the movie braveheart uh he not only uh conquers wales but for a time uh conquers scotland um and of course he's the one that institutes uh the idea of hanging drawing and quartering as a punishment and when he conquered wales one of the first victims of hanging drawing and quartering was the last welsh prince of wales he also used it on william wallace though it was at this point that the title prince of wales started to be given to the eldest son of the king we then get edward ii and then edward iii edward iii had a long reign and therefore when he died the throne passed to his grandson richard ii and if you want to learn more about this period which is when the 100 years war was going on i just did a series reacting to extra histories series on the hundred years war and there's a lot more in depth a lot more detail there about that so i won't get too much into that right now but richard ii was an unpopular king and during his reign the throne was seized by his cousin henry iv we then get henry v and henry vi it was during the reign of henry vi that the wars of the roses began because one of his relatives claimed to be the true king and it didn't happen quite that simply i realize he's trying to move through all of this pretty fast but henry the sixth was nine months old when he comes to the throne when his father henry v dies and uh he he dealt with serious and long bouts of insanity for a good bit of his life where he would just go catatonic and be completely useless um and even when he was did have a census he was a he was not a very strong or assertive king his wife margaret obama jew there's that on zhu again um was much more assertive and much more uh decisive as queen so edward iv his father richard the duke of york doesn't start out trying to assert his claim to the throne even though he's got a very strong claim to the throne he starts out just wanting to be lord protector in other words he wants to be the go-to guy when he when henry can't rule when he's when he's having these bouts of madness somebody's got to be in charge and so he wants it to be him because the uh the guy that they're putting in charge they don't think he's doing a very good job but he's closely allied to margaret of bonjour so eventually when he keeps getting turned out of the role of uh of protector he eventually asserts his claim to the throne and says you know what enough of this i'm claiming the throne itself the wars of the roses happen um richard and his son his second son edmund the earl of rutland are killed i think of the battle of wakefield and when he very stupidly rides out of the protection of his castle uh and gets defeated uh but then his son the earl of march who was a teenager at the time edward iv claims the throne defeats henry's lancastrian forces at the battle of touton the bloodiest battle ever fought on english soil uh and becomes edward iv that person was edward iv basically henry vi was the most senior descendant of edward iii based on a strict male only line but edward iv was the most senior descendant based on a line that allowed female heirs so you ended up with the york side symbolized by the white rose and the lancastrian side symbolized by the red rose eventually the yorkists won and edward iv was followed by his young son edward v but then edward v and his brother mysteriously disappeared so richard iii who's the younger brother he's the duke of gloucester um is basically bypassed uh in favor uh with his brother edward iv uh in favor of uh edward's wife elizabeth woodville's brothers in particular anthony woodville the earl rivers uh and anthony is the uncle to edward v and kind of has control over him and if you control the king you have influence and so when edward unexpectedly dies in his 40s they call for his young 12 year old son to be brought to be crowned in london uh and richard in his entourage intercept anthony woodville and uh the young edward v on their way to london and say you know what i'm taking charge of of our nephew i'll take it from here and anthony woodville is eventually executed and then richard has edward and his younger brother richard put in the tower and then they go to parliament and get parliament to declare that edward iv's marriage to elizabeth woodville was null and void because he had pre-contracted a marriage to a woman named eleanor butler and he probably had uh there's also an argument that edward wasn't even the legitimate son of the duke of york that uh his mother had had an affair and that was but um the long long story short they declare uh that edward v is a bastard he can't inherit the throne and so richard iii is the legitimate heir after being held in the tower of london the two of them became known as the princes in the tower and their uncle richard iii became king but richard iii was then defeated by this guy here henry vii who through his father was a member of a welsh house but through his mother was a lancastrian and both of henry tudor's claims uh to the throne are really dubious but he's the only lancastrian left because edward henry vi his son uh had died in one of the last battles of the wars of the roses and then henry vi was probably killed uh either by richard or by edward or somebody on their behalf um i think in 1471. so uh catherine or valois who's the widow of henry v uh has a secret marriage to owen tudor who's a really low born kind of guy uh and then their son edmund tudor who is the half-brother of henry vi is the father of henry tudor and then through henry tudor's mother he's descended from edward iii through john of gaunt but again through an illegitimate line that had been barred from inheriting the throne so really the only claim that henry has is that he's the last lancastrian left and he wins the battle of bosworth so he claims it by rite of um of conquest but then what he does is after the battle in which richard is richard iii is killed he has the date of his reign back tated backdated to the day before the battle of bosworth so that at least legally he was the king at the battle of bosworth and richard was the guy who was a traitor fighting against the king of england he married edward the fourth's daughter thereby uniting the yorkists and the lancastrians and establishing the new house of tudor and so then at that point henry viii who's actually the younger brother he has a brother arthur who's supposed to be the heir to the throne who's the prince of wales but arthur dies um right after he marries catherine of aragon who will become henry's wife but henry viii when he comes to the throne now there is no more real serious threat to his claim because he's the claimant through the yorks and the lancasters um there are some people who claim to be like a guy comes along and claims to be richard the younger brother of edward v but no real serious attempt to overthrow henry viii really happens we then come to one of england's most well-known kings king henry viii he was the first english king to also be king of ireland but he is perhaps most famous for having had six wives his first wife was catherine of aragon in spain and she bore him a daughter who would eventually become queen mary the first but he wanted a son as his heir and because of this he ended up divorcing catherine and marrying anne boleyn this sparked the english reformation and the creation of the anglican church because the pope famously disagreed with what henry had done but in the end anne boleyn only bore him a daughter and eventually henry had her beheaded so that he could marry jane seymour finally through jane he had a son but unfortunately jane died shortly after childbirth so he married a fourth time to anne of cleves and uh henry if you go visit his grave today at windsor castle he's actually buried with jane seymour that was the wife he wanted to be buried with of course she died before he could find a reason to divorce her or get rid of her for any reason but she did give him a son which was the most important thing that any of his wives could do for him and buried with them is also charles the first who was beheaded later on in the 1600s but that marriage was annulled and he married a fifth time to catherine howard and he ended up having her beheaded and he married a sixth time to catherine parr who was married to the brother of jane seymour after this and uh jane seymour's brother catherine's husband also was beheaded in the tower of london who was lucky enough to outlive him so the way to remember all of that is divorced beheaded died divorced beheaded survived but in the end all of it was in vain because henry viii's beloved son who became edward vi died as a teenager and therefore in the end henry viii's eldest child mary became queen anyway and there was an attempt near the end of edward's short life to change his will so that his cousin lady jane gray would inherit because she was the nearest relative with a claim on the throne who was a protestant and wouldn't return england back to allegiance to the pope so uh but it didn't work out she was on the throne for nine days she got overthrown and mary took the crown after a very short nine-day reign by lady jane gray mary the first was nicknamed bloody mary because during her reign she tried to revert england back to catholicism she is often confused with mary queen of scots but keep in mind that these were two different people mary the first married the individual who would later become king philip ii of spain but they did not have any children so when mary died her half-sister elizabeth daughter of anne boleyn became queen and things went back to protestantism her reign is known as the elizabethan age and it was during her time on the throne that shakespeare was performing his plays and a lot of what we believe or that people came to believe about people like richard iii was because of this tudor propaganda uh in the form of shakespeare's place uh elizabeth very seriously considered marrying the count again of on zhu there's that continual tie between the british royal family and the dukes and council bonjour elizabeth the first is remembered as the virgin queen because she never married and never had any children so with her the house of tudor came to an end what happened next was that the throne of england passed to the house of stuart from scotland the reason for this is that henry viii had a sister named margaret who married the king of scotland and it was their line that suddenly became the most senior now elizabeth had actually had mary queen of scots beheaded for treason but it was her son james who ended up becoming elizabeth's heir so with james the thrones of england scotland and ireland became united and by the way when you think about the king james bible that's your guy king james vi of scotland james the first of england he's the one who authorized the king james bible he was known as james the sixth and first because he was the sixth king james in scotland but the first king james in england he was followed by his son charles the first but charles the first wanted too much power and this led to the english civil war which then led to the king being beheaded and the country becoming a commonwealth for about a decade ruled primarily by a fellow named oliver cromwell but eventually the monarchy was restored with charles ii who was then followed by his brother james ii but then a problem arose because james converted to catholicism and had a son with his second very catholic wife england and scotland did not want a catholic monarchy so a bunch of nobles invited james's eldest daughter mary and her husband william to seize the throne which they did in what is now remembered as the glorious revolution so you can see here that william and mary this is the one time in history where you have co-rulers they both were ruling in their own right typically when you have a king and queen the king is the monarch the queen is considered the consort or in our the recent case with queen elizabeth she is the monarch and her husband uh prince philip was the consort you have one or the other uh but in this case because they were both grandchildren of charles the first they both claimed the throne in their own right as co-rulers william and mary then reigned jointly and then because they didn't have any children the throne passed to mary's sister anne it was during the reign of queen anne that england and scotland officially merged to become great britain now queen anne did have a son but that son died before her and queen anne actually had over a dozen children i think but none of them outlived her very sad situation so after anne the throne jumped all the way over here to her closest protestant heir a second cousin living in germany and interestingly i think he was something i don't remember the exact number but he was something like 70th in line to the throne but he's the first one who was a legitimate uh heir and was protestant which were the rules um the the law that had been passed uh made the elector sophia i think is what she was called the heir but she died before anne so then georg the first who did not speak a word of english becomes the king and the start of the hanoverian dynasty who then became george the first but keep in mind that george the first was indeed a descendant of the earlier monarchs through a maternal line the only line that was more senior was the one through james ii's son known as the old pretender but by this point parliament had made a law barring his line and any other catholic line from inheriting the throne and thus the throne went to this new house the house of hanover now there were several attempts by the followers of james known as the jacobites to restore that line but all of those attempts failed and i think some of that gets covered in the uh the tv show outlander i haven't watched it yet i guess i need to uh but they talk about the jacobite rebellion in outlander if you're curious to see how history would have gone had the jacobite succeeded i have a separate video on that topic which i'll link to in the description so after george the first we get george the second and then george the third it was during the reign of george iii that great britain officially merged with ireland to become the united kingdom and george iii is the first uh monarch of the hanoverian dynasty whose first language was english uh even his grandfather george ii though he um spent most of his time in england was born german so you know people forget just how incredibly german the british royal family is and that'll only happen again when queen victoria marries a german but george iii is perhaps best remembered for two things for losing the american colonies and for going mad in his later years he was succeeded by his son george iv george iv had a daughter who died in childbirth and thus after him the throne passed to his brother william iv and then on to the daughter of another brother who became queen victoria so i i think some of her uncles had other children but they were illegitimate children uh so and thus not eligible for the throne even though there were a bunch of male lying grandsons of george the third none of them could take the throne so victoria her real name her full name is alexandrina victoria uh and she inherits the throne she marries her first cousin uh who becomes the love of her life another german and that's where we kind of get the modern royal family queen victoria was one of the longest reigning monarchs in british history and it was during her time on the throne that the british empire reached its peak she married prince albert from the house of saks coburg and gotha and so therefore after her we once again get a new royal house her son edward vii was followed by his son george v george v was king during world war one and during that war because the uk was fighting against germany they changed the name of the royal house to a less german sounding name so windsor is named after their primary residence windsor castle technically speaking though it's not going to happen this way queen elizabeth should be the last monarch of the house of windsor because from there it should technically be the house of mount baton or the house of battenberg or the house of glooksburg even because her husband prince philip and then his descendants would be a new house but they're keeping the name windsor and that's why today the royal house is known as the house of windsor it was also during the reign of george v that most of ireland started down the path towards their independence george v was succeeded by his son edward viii but edward viii reigned less than a year because he wanted to marry an american named wallace simpson which was a very unpopular thing to do so it wasn't because she was an american it was because she was a twice divorced american it's important to make that distinction another really curious thing about the british royal family is uh the house the duke of york the um the title duke of york has very often been given to the second son of the monarch henry viii was the duke of york george the sixth is the duke of york every single time that the title duke of york has been given to a second son that son has either died without children or become the monarch and the duke duke of york title has merged back into the crown it happens every single time it's really kind of a weird fascinating thing that has happened oh he ended up abdicating meaning he gave up the throne and his younger brother became george vi george vi reigned until 1952 and because he had only daughters he was followed by a female monarch the current queen elizabeth ii who is at the moment in her 68th year on the throne she will likely be followed by her son charles who would then become king charles iii oh fascinating first of all that's if he goes by charles he could also become king george vii um i would i'm expecting he'll go with charles but i wouldn't be surprised at all if he becomes george the seventh because george is one of his names his name's charles frederick arthur george or charles philip arthur george maybe um and uh so interesting thing here camilla his current wife who had been his mistress for a while uh is the i think great granddaughter of a woman who was the mistress of edward the seventh who is charles his great-great-grandfather so kind of a weird thing that happened there although he might choose to reign as george the seventh instead after that we're likely to get a king william the fifth and then a king george the seventh or eighth now technically the name of the royal house should change when charles becomes king but i think it's likely that he will stick with the name windsor so um and that direct mail line goes back to christian the ninth of denmark uh who is often called the father-in-law of europe christian ix and queen victoria between the two of them are basically the ancestor of every royal family in europe today and that's not back all that far so it's pretty pretty cool based on his mother's wishes so that was a look at every king and queen of england great britain and the united kingdom from alfred the great to queen elizabeth ii once again if you'd like to see the tree of some earlier scottish monarchs i've got a separate video on that so i think i'm gonna order one of these and put it up somewhere because i love that that's very cool and i'm just impressed that they're able to put all those royal families and time all together and the design must have taken forever but if you're into this kind of thing at all definitely check out useful charts i put the link in the description for this video great stuff i hope you enjoyed this kind of rambling on my part where i talk about two of my passions the british monarchy and genealogy all in one don't forget if you're interested in learning more about genealogy research the email is up there and i'm gonna do some videos uh in the near future just showing you some basic tips on how to get started on researching your family tree definitely something i want to be able to pass on that knowledge to you guys so be watching for that very soon maybe even do some streams on that but thanks for watching hit that like button if you would we'll see you again soon

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 79,085

Keywords: alternative history, british monarchy, british monarchy documentary, royal family history, useful charts reaction, history reaction, useful charts, blogging through history, history guy gaming, historian reacts, history british monarchy, kings of england, queens of england

Id: 4wYjfNX1aQg

Length: 35min 39sec (2139 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021