Did anyone else ever wonder how come we have a German royal family here in England?

[BlueTitSmilingAtMe]

I did, and idly googling have found out the answer.

They just didn't want a Catholic monarch! Fascinating stuff:

www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/hanover.htm

Did you get taught this in school? I didn't.

The whole thing is stupid isn’t it? There’s been so much chopping and changing. I’ve watched at least 3 episodes of who do you think you are where they’ve been directly descended from kings and thought it was weird until dh pointed out that quite a lot of people are descended from royalty so any of them could have been the monarch instead. I don’t know why we are supposed to think the current royals have some sort of pedigree.

Brutus is the first king of Britinnia and he was from what is now known as Turkey. It is said he won a ar against the giants who inhabitated these lands.

Although it is said before that it was Albion, favoured son of the God Neptune.

Regardless, there has not been a British king since as far back as we know. Even 'British' kings likely had roman heritage. It is believed Britain was tribal before the Romans, be it humans, giants or both....

Royal family is a total waste of time and extremely boring these days. I'll gain interest again in the very unlikely event someone else takes the the throne from them. But anyway, point being, I don't believe there has ever been a British ruler.

No, he was Catholic but broke from the rule of Rome and made himself head of the church instead. There was a lot of protestant influence in Henry's decisions but Heny remained Catholic- it was his son Edward who was raised under the influence of his protestant Seymour family that made the switch to protestantism.

It isn't really chopping and changing though - that is how inheritance and dynasties work - pure accidents of birth.

For example, I inherited a very small amount of money a few years ago for my dad's cousin - a man I had never met, nor knew nothing about. It is what makes family trees and genealogy so interesting. Even in two or three generations your branch will have changed and moved on from that of a second cousin.

I would say that the last time the royal family 'chopped and changed' was when Queen Anne, the daughter of James II died. Her younger brother would have been king before both her and her sister, but was excluded because he was Catholic - as it happened that particular line died out anyway as Bonnie Prince Charlie was the last in the line and had no legitimate descendants. When Anne died in 1714 the throne went to the closest male Protestant relative she had - George 1.

Of course the current monarch would be a totally different person if the law had always allowed the first child to be the next in line - male or female, and if it had not excluded Catholics.

But the OPs assertion that Queen is German is simply not true.

Are you sure you didn't cover this in school? It's pretty standard to cover the succession rules as part of the history curriculum.

I didn't either. Depends on the school I suppose. So much time was spent dealing with the naughty kids, as an adult I realised I had a lot of gaps. I went to state schools in deprived areas. Probably if I were state educated in a middle class area I would have had less gaps.

That’s absurd. My great, great grandparents came here from Roscommon during the potato famine, I’ve never felt anything but British.

In name only, he was a devout catholic to the end. But he raised Edward and Elizabeth as protestants, Mary was deeply catholic and remained so. So if you were old enough to live through the end of Henry, then Edward's reign, then Mary, then Elizabeth, your head would have been spinning trying to keep up with what you were meant to do in church!

I didnt either, this was late 80s. We did tudor history and then the industrial revolution.

That makes me German too hmmm my great grandfather came to Britain in 1900, the rest of my relatives are English.

Traditionally royal families intermarried so yes they are a hotchpotch of European decent. But they often married English spouses, or greek in Prince Philip's case

Yeah, that was a load of rubbish. The Scots knew they were Scots, Welsh the Welsh and English the English for a lot longer than that. The nations evolved parallel and in opposition to each other for various reasons for centuries: England’s been England since the Viking invasions and Wessex hegemony. There was a big flowering of distinctly English culture with the birth of the modern state in Tudor times for various reasons, notably the end of civil war and Henry VII being a capable king wanting unity. Beats me why people expect the past to be simple, and people then to have been unable to notice language differences, among other things.

I hate these many-nested quotes.

1800s were industrial and Empire times.

Wait until you start googling European history OP, it's going to blow your mind! 🤔

Amazed that your were never taught this at school btw.

Being royal is a nationality of it own.

The Plantagenets were French, the Tudors were Welsh, the Stewarts were Scottish, William was Dutch, and the current lot are of German decent.

What's interesting is that a sense of national identity is a relatively recent phenomenon and many of Europe's ruling houses would not necessarily thought of themselves as English or German or French etc.

I did know this, but I can’t remember if I learned it in school or from my mum (who has a history degree and likes talking about the royals, but usually just the old dead ones- she’s not interested in the alive ones).

Honestly anyone who believes in the monarchy’s “right” to rule baffles me- you think other people are divinely chosen and better than you because they’ve spent hundreds of years shagging their cousins??

I find the thing about passing fiancés on to the next brother if the heir dies a weird little tradition, and it didn't just happen to the Tudors, Brenda's grandmother started off engaged to her cousin and then to his younger brother.

If you look at the last Russian Czar there are a few interesting quirks, he married his German cousin but they spoke and wrote to each other in English even after she had learned Russian, of course they were also cousins of the UK's royal family.

If you look at the UK line of succession I think you get to Danish and then Norwegian royalty.

Traditionally royal families intermarried so yes they are a hotchpotch of European decent. But they often married English spouses, or greek in Prince Philip's case

I think Philip was more Danish than Greek.

I learned very little history at a good grammar school. The fashion when I was growing up (80s/90s) was to teach a lot about investigative methods and very little of the facts. I found it dull and dropped it in favour of geography and an additional language as I went into my GCSEs. It's a shame as I find things like the points being discussed on this thread fascinating. I hope history teaching has improved now.

It's that bit around the nose and cheekbones; they all look the same in that area. Here

Richard the Lionheart spent practically no time in England whilst King. And the ruling classes at that time all spoke French.

They still do. The Queen is fluent in French as was her late husband Prince Phillip. So are Prince Charles, Prince William, Kate Middleton, Princess Anne, and Prince Andrew.

He basically asset stripped the country to finance the Crusades, and somehow ended up being perceived as "greatest king evah"

I think if you start looking into family trees that every royal family in Europe has a big share of German ancestry. It was a famous cliche that when some prince somewhere in Europe wanted to get married, there were always a bunch of German princesses to choose from.

Although, if we were going to be really pedantic "germany" didn't really exist until fairly recently- same with a lot of European countries. There were a lot of city states and territories that all had there own royal houses.