A lighter, if geekier topic...

[orichalcum]

Forthcoming when I finish it - a review of the only Pulitzer-Prize winning novel to reference "Queen of the Demonweb Pits," as far as I know. It's kind of impressive when a mainstream novel (one assigned as mandatory reading for all the frosh at my college, at that, which is why I'm reading it) outgeeks me, and I have to keep asking CP questions like "Who's Uatu the Watcher, honey?"

On the request of meepodeekin, my random ponderings on the question of "Which English monarch's name has the highest average success rate?" where "success" is defined as "generally considered a good king by historians/the random public/tourist displays in the Tower of London."


So, Ill-Starred Monarch names are easy:
John (Despite the Disney refrain, he was in fact not too late to be known as John the First).
Ethelred (Ain't never gonna be an Ethelred II)
Charles (beheaded or a kinda useless rake)
Richard (Yes, I love R III too, but when none of the three died peacefully and all had highly checkered reigns, it's not such a good omen.)

Then there's the Boring But Popular Category:
George
William

And then we get to the really popular names, and the real showoff: (rated from ++ to --) (Please comment on the ratings!)
Edward Vs. Henry

We'll take the Edwards first, counting the pre-Norman Conquest ones:
Edward the Elder: Extended control of Wessex over Norse, Scots, and Welsh: +
Edward the Martyr: Religious/secular conflict, murdered and left land in chaos: --
E Confessor: Patron saint of difficult marriages! Sentenced his mom to trial by ordeal! Reign of peace and prosperity, but left land in chaos/civil war. 0
E I (Longshanks): Successful conqueror, but really, really nasty guy: -
EII: Abdicated on grounds of incompetence, murdered, played favorites: --
EIII: Reigned for 50 years, conducted successful war, instituted Justices of the Peace, good family man: ++
EIV: Restored peace and order after civil war to England, brilliant general., not good at dealing with conspiracies: +
EV: Prince in the Tower. Unsuccessful reign not his fault: -
EVI: Child monarch, apparently very smart, established Protestantism more fully in England.: +
EVII: Liberal, peacemakers, instituted military reforms, good constitutional monarch: ++
EVIII: Pro-Nazi, abdicated due to personal reasons: -
Total: 0

And now the Henrys:
H1: Restored peace and order, lots of administrative reforms, messy succession, 23 kids: +
HII: Ended civil war, lots of reforms, messy succession (largely own fault): +
HIII: Weak, erratic king, anti-Semitic: -
HIV: Usurper, but generally fairly strong king: +
HV: Great military leader, restored peace and order, invented passport: ++
HVI: Insane, led kingdom into civil war: --
HVII: Effective but nasty, miserly usurper: -
HVIII: Increased power of monarchy and wealth, messy personal life: 0
Total: +

I'm not really sure we get a definitive verdict here. Opinions?

Comments

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

RI spent six months of his entire reign in England, bankrupted the country, left it without a stable succession, and engaged in a series of unnecessary and devastating wars. He's still used as a boogey-man figure in the Middle East to scare Arab children, who are told that Malik Ric will come and eat them up if they don't behave.

Yeah, I liked him as a kid, too. :(

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

Your point? *grin*

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

I'm a Roman social historian. I tend to rate "success" as "raised the average quality of life for citizens/subjects." :)

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I think spawning the entire Robin Hood opus by your persistent failure to govern should get you some literature credits.

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Actually, he can't even be credited for that!

The earliest Robin Hood stories date from the early 14th century, and mention a King Edward. (Which makes it difficult to date them, because around the year 1300 there were three Edwards in quick succession :) Also, one of the earliest members of Robin Hood's group is Friar Tuck, and there weren't any friars until several decades after R1's death.

It was Sir Walter Scott who put Robin Hood during the reign of R1, in Ivanhoe. Which I like because the awesomest character in it is named Rebecca, but otherwise, not historically accurate At All.

I'm still a fan of R1, though - I kinda have to be, since he made up such a large part of my dissertation! And any historical figure who's got that many myths around him is an awesome resource for a medievalist who works on discourse and representation :)

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but you can be a fan without thinking he's a successful monarch. I mean, I think the Emperor Domitian threw really neat parties. :)

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

See, I told you I should have stayed out of this thread on grounds of ignorance. :) Of course, all of my knowledge of the whole story comes from Robin McKinley's The Outlaws of Sherwood, so I blame her.

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Sorry! Robin Hood just happens to be a pet thing of mine. And I was thinking of staying out of this thread on grounds of 'it's my job' :)

But all is good in exchanging random trivia among friends!

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

It is so not your job to make judgments about the average success of eponymous English monarchs. :)

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Thppppppt! You know what I mean! :)

Although my job would be a heck of a lot easier if it were. "Good King!" "Bad King!" "Tenure!" Wheeeee!

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Especially if you could chop the heads off of their paper dolls or something during the committee meetings. :)

[ellinor.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong that I see this as a viable conference paper idea? I mean, it would take some tweaking.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Chopping the heads off of English monarch paper dolls? I mean, I'm all for multimedia and interactivity, but that might be pushing the envelope a little. :)

There are some possible interesting arguments that later monarchs try to deliberately emulate their namesakes as role models, a la Edward the Confessor. I don't have enough data to make an argument there. (Also, Not My Era.)

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I wonder if this could work for me. "After a great deal of thought I have found that this is a Good Differential Equation (TM)." Plz to have tenure now, thx!