Talk:Lists of monarchs in the British Isles/Archive 1

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I combined this with List_of_kings_of_England (previously United_Kingdom/Relationships), which appears to be historically[*] unrelated to this list. I don't know who started all of this "his son" stuff, which is available in the individuals' articles (although in some cases, I had to do some piecing together to figure things out when I editted these). If people don't want it, I won't feel bad if they go away, as long as my detective work (such as it is) is recorded in individuals' articles, which I can do if asked.

[*]In the sense of Wikipedia's history, that is.

— Toby Bartels, Thursday, June 27, 2002


Moved from Talk:George I of the United Kingdom since I wasn't getting any feedback there:

Is the "of the United Kingdom" in this title correct? According to United Kingdom/History, the United Kingdom per se was formed in 1801 with "the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland". That being 84 years after George's death, I'm suspicious of his claim to its throne...

Although the List of British monarchs claims the "United Kingdom of Great Britain" was formed in 1707, numerous other sources agree with United Kingdom/History and say that the entity then created was solely "Great Britain", and that only from 1801 was there a "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland".

--Brion VIBBER

I did a lot of work cleaning up this page and combining it with another, including enforcing a level of consistency and (I hoped) accuracy in this matter (among others). But I got my information on the proper title only from what was already on the pages that I was editing. So I mention this to say that nobody should think that I might know an authority that agrees with the usage here; other than Wikipedia itself (and then only this very page), I don't. In fact, I'll even make the changes myself as soon as somebody says that they're certain that Brion's suspicions are correct.

I did do some reading of other articles to try to sort out which Saxon kings were Bretwalda and which were King of England, but I didn't think that the Act of Union would be controversial. Although, now that I think of it, Act of Union agrees with this page as it is now. — Toby 17:35 Jul 26, 2002 (PDT)

Aha, I've finally found the text of the Act of Union! (An annotated version on a pro-Scottish Independence website, a most amusing read...) "...the two kingdoms of Scotland and England shall, upon the 1st day of May next ensuing the date hereof, and for ever after, be united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain, and that the ensigns armorial of the said United Kingdom be such as Her Majesty shall appoint..." In the remainder of the Act, the new kingdom is referred to variously as "the United Kingdom of Great Britain", "Great Britain", and "the United Kingdom". Parliament is only "to be styled the Parliament of Great Britain", but the proper name to use for the monarch never seems to come up. With what I see so far, I would consider "of the United Kingdom" to be sufficiently correct, and I withdraw my objection. --Brion VIBBER

Perhaps "United Kingdom" was an informal term at the beginning, much like "United States" was. (Both were capitalised, of course, but that didn't mean then what it means now.) — Toby 08:21 Jul 27, 2002 (PDT)

Brion has repeated the research which I originally did back in 1976 when I first became interested in this area and which meant that I used the term 'of the United Kingdom' for the monarchs last year without even considering that it would be a controversial choice. It's only in use for disambiguation purposes after all. -- Derek Ross

I would do it if i had time. But doing other prodjects on wikipedia. I think someone should create a nice table form of the list of kings and queens of soctland\england and great britain. — Fonzy

Actually, I'd avoid that if the list is easily readable as it is now. (Perhaps it isn't, but it seems to be to me.) This is because tables can only be coded in HTML so far, and thus are difficult to edit. I'd revisit your suggestion after we get a nice wiki markup for tables, hopefully soon. — Toby 02:52 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

Is it appropriate to number the pre-Norman Edwards the way that other pre-Norman kings are numbered? We can't do this in the title of the articles, of course, so we use their cognomens instead. But the way that the article now stands, we have nicknamed Edwards mixed in with other numbered kings, and then a numbered Edward appearing suddenly out of the blue. The text already explains that the numbering restarts at the Norman Conquest, even specifically pointing out that this affects the Edwards. So there should be no confusion — if it's valid to use numbers in the first place. OTOH, all of the numbered guys have cognomens, except the one that we're only listing as a Bretwalda anyway. Is the entire numbering conceit an anachronism? Whatever the case, we should strive for some level of consistency. (See also Wikipedia:History standards.) — Toby 21:49 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

Is it "Lord Protectors" or "Lords Protector"? -- Zoe

Lords JHK

Why do we use ordinal numbers where there is only one king/queen of that name (for example John I of England)? Should there ever be another King John (or Victoria, or whatever) it's easy to move the page to the new location. In the meantime, the article has a title that surely nobody uses (Google seems to confirm this). Furthermore, it's not even done consistently (see Edgar of England for instance). --Camembert

You are quite correct that it is a solecism to call someone Victoria I until there is a Victoria II, for the same reason it wasn't the First World War until there was a second one. (A certain Spaniard to the contrary notwithstanding.) You will find that the unique names are now to be found at Victoria of the United Kingdom and so forth, with the old Victoria I of the United Kingdom as a redirect. I also omitted the numeral when composing the little navigation bars at the bottom. user:Montrealais

Yes, I agree with this change. I was quite concerned when I noticed that "Matilda I of England" had been added - in the unlikely event of a future Matilda coming to the British throne, she would still be the first, as "Matilda I" is not recognised as a former monarch. Deb

I think that the reason for this is to make the article title clear that it's the name of a monarch. That's probably not a very good reason, but I may be wrong about it too. This would be a good point of discussion for Wikipedia:History standards. — Toby 07:41 Sep 20, 2002 (UTC)

Why aren't the rulers of Wales listed here, too, please? -- isis 27 Aug 2002

- From my knowledege Wales has never really had a King of all wales. Altough I believ there have been one or two. Have a book somewhere saying ceratin kings and princes of wales.

Ok found it here is what it says(abridged): powerful kings eventually forged 3 main units: Gwynedd (in north Wales), Powys (in north central Wales) and Deheubarth (in south west Wales). By the early 1200s Welsh Kings had been reduced to lords and princes owing homaged to the king of England. in 1282 the last independent prince of wales was killed. Also ceratin kings are unkown about. - fonzy

I know Wales didn't have "kings" and doesn't even have real princes anymore, but all those guys listed in the article as early kings weren't kings of England either. They were the rulers of certain parts of what became England, and Wales was a separate country, with its own rulers for a long time, that became part of Great Britain (and then the United Kingdom) just as Essex and Wessex and Sussex, etc. did, so it seems to me they should be listed here, too. -- isis 8 Sep 2002
Not quite true. Wales was several separate principalities, whose borders changed with monotonous regularity over the years (owing to the system of gavelkind as opposed to primogeniture). Hardly any individuals ever ruled the whole of Wales at the same time - I've done articles on some of the more important ones but have lots to get through. --Deb 8 Sept
Right, but that's not any different from the situation in Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, etc., whose rulers are listed. And as a matter of fact, Deb, knowing of your interest in British rulers and Welsh history, I was hoping you'd be the one to add the Welsh ones here. -- isis 8 Sep 2002
I could, but it would be exceedingly complicated. It differs from the Kent, Mercia, etc, situation, in that Kent and Mercia, though their borders may have changed at times, were recognised kingdoms and reasonably stable during the time that they existed. That just wasn't the situation in Wales, and we could end up listing all kinds of minor rulers who ruled tiny areas and simply aren't of any significance - where does one draw the line? Furthermore, because of the patronymic naming system, there would be a heck of a lot of disambiguation involved. So my preference would be to use the History of Wales article and just mention the most important ones there with links to articles on them. -- Deb
How about if we just use the ones on The Kings and Queens of Great Britain genealogical chart compiled by the Richmond Herald of Arms and the Unicorn Pursuivant of Arms? (ISBN 0 517 50344 1) It starts with Ethil, the grandmother of "Rhodri, c 844-d 878, Mawr (The Great) First to combine almost all Wales" and ends with "Owen Tudor, ex 1461, m(2) Queen Catherine," where it merges into the English kings. -- isis 8 Sep 2002
Sounds a bit excessive to me - how many are on it? Owen Tudor wasn't a ruler of any kind. Deb 9 Sept
Nobody said Owen was, and neither was Rhodri's grandmother -- it's a genealogical chart that shows all the family connections of all the kings and queens in Great Britain since about 800. It looks like three major Welsh ones (the same sized type as the Saxon and Danish kings of England already listed in the 'pedia article) and about a dozen rulers of "almost all Wales" in between. It just seems to me that if recognized experts of this caliber included these guys in their "Kings and Queens of Great Britain," we should, too, and I don't see what's "excessive" about including however many there were in a list that purports to include all of them. -- isis 9 Sep 2002
That's fine then, as long as you're happy for there to be gaps in the line. You'll probably find about five individual articles there, ready for the ones you plan to list. Nice to know that you are so interested in such a small country as mine. Deb 9 Sept
Some members of my large family think our ancestors came from Wales (the others think it was County Mayo, Ireland, and they could both be right). The two Shearin brothers who were transported to Virginia for their involvement in the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion in 1685 lived in Stepney/London, but the question is where their ancestors came from. Physically, the Shearins tend to be short and stout with dark hair and blue eyes; temperamentally, we tend to stand up for our rights and not be awed by authority figures. So I'm in the contingent that thinks we were originally Welsh, and that's how I got interested in the history of Wales. -- isis 10 Sep 2002


Okay, I've put the bare list of Welsh rulers in, but I can't promise there are no typos in the spellings, and I hope somebody will conform them to whatever spellings and name conventions have already been used for them in the 'peida anyhow. I did not have time to research Trahaearn (or "Trahern") ap Caradog of Gwynedd (1075-1081) any further and still don't know where he fits into the family tree, but I suspect he married a female descendent of one of the earlier rulers listed. I'm already behind on getting my work done by my deadline next week, so I can't do any more with this any time soon and would be happy for anyone else to work on it. (Did I hear a volunteer, Deb?) isis 11 Sep 2002


This article is getting very long -- maybe it will need splitting into list pages for England, Scotland, Wales, and a UK list from the merge point. But then the cut-off point will cause debate... sigh. isis wrote: How about if we just use the ones on The Kings and Queens of Great Britain genealogical chart compiled by the Richmond Herald of Arms and the Unicorn Pursuivant of Arms? -- can't we just use the one from 1066 and All That? It's so much more memorable ;-) I'm confused about what happens to Scotland during the time of Cromwell, since Charles was king there too, and the articles about the civil war state that Cromwell went to war against Scotland... -- Tarquin 15:22 Sep 11, 2002 (UTC)

Don't you think people are going to keep splitting it up and putting it back together again forever? It really doesn't matter one way or the other, as long as the info doesn't get lost in the transitions. I'd be happier with a list of the countries/areas and ruling houses on this page and links to the separate lists of rulers. On the other hand, I don't think this list is going to get much longer, because there aren't any more units to list rulers of, are there? -- isis 11 Sep 2002
Had a quick look, and I think we have several people on there who are of very minor importance. I'll go into it more deeply when I've got time. -- Deb
Isn't that why they're on a list, because they're never going to merit articles of their own and are here just for the sake of completeness? -- isis 11 Sep 2002
Perfectly true. However, there are lots of others who were of equal importance - at least another 30, by my calculations. The original idea was just to list those who ruled all or most of Wales. There's a lot to be said for starting a separate article on the principalities of Wales, and just cross-referring from "List of British Monarchs". -- Deb
I was hoping you'd come to that conclusion, so I've been scouting out places for it to go, and there's that list of places that don't exist anymore, besides this article and the one for Wales itself, so I think it would tie in very nicely. And then maybe whoever's been doing such a nice job on the Saxons and Danes here would do the same for them, too. -- isis 11 Sep 2002
Not sure I know what list of places you mean (Wales still existed, last time I looked) but I've made a start under "List of rulers of Wales" (only done Gwynedd so far). If you want to move it somewhere else, feel free - as long as I can find it again. -- Deb
I think I mean List of extinct countries, empires, etc., which I ran across while looking for something else the other day and said to myself that would be a perfect jumping-off place for the rulers of the separate principalities of Wales. Isn't that what we've been discussing, that the separate local entities each had their own line of top guys that every few generations got to be head of the larger coalition? The separate units don't exist anymore, and even Wales itself no longer has any separate line of rulers from the United Kingdom, so I see it as fitting into the list of extinct entities in the article. -- isis 11 Sep 2002
Yes, that's true, but take care, as some of the names are now used for administrative districts of Wales. -- Deb

OK, this may not be the best place for it, but I've come to hold the opinion that we shouldn't use numbers for any pre-Norman kings of England. The reason was essentially mentioned by Deb earlier in this talk page: Should another king arise with the same name, the new one would be "I" all over again (just as has in fact happened with the "Edward"s). Luckily for us, all of the ambiguous pre-Norman kings have standard cognomens (even the Danes, although they would get to keep their numbers in their articles' titles, because their Danish kingship takes precedence there). This is precisely what we do with the pre-Norman "Edward"s now.

Alternatively, we could avoid conflict with the History standards by declaring pre-Norman England a "country that no longer exists" and changing their articles' names from "of England" to "of the Anglo-Saxons". That doesn't sound quite right, however, and I'd prefer to ditch the history standards in that case. (I'll put a link to this discussion at that page too.)

If we go with this, I'll volunteer to edit the individual kings' articles to fit whichever new style we adopt.

Thoughts? — Toby 02:11 Sep 29, 2002 (UTC)

I understand your reasoning, though I'm not sure I agree. Books tend to list those pre-Norman kings as "Edmund I", etc, despite the inconsistency. I think it's assumed that there will never be another Edmund or Ethelred - possibly the royal family would avoid those names, simply because of the possibility of such a question arising. Deb Sept 29

OK. I'm not familiar with the literature (I only got sucked into this page by chance), so I trust you on that. I guess that this means that things stay as they are — lucky us ^_^. — Toby 10:37 Sep 29, 2002 (UTC)

Edward Balliol 1332-1338 why is he not listed with the scottish mohachs?? - fonzy

It's just an oversight. After all he was basically a puppet of Edward III, he only lasted a couple of months on the throne before David II's supporters forced him to flee and although he kept pressing his claim for the next six years, he never got anywhere. It's a very similar case to Lulach or James VIII and III who claimed to be the rightful king but never had any effective power because the throne was already in the hands of others. He probably should be added since he was crowned at Scone and he was John Balliol's heir. -- Derek Ross

Two points - David II didn't stop being king just because he had to flee the country and Edward Balliol certainly wasn't a member of the House of Bruce. I've edited the article to make this clearer -- Derek Ross 23:16 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

Not my area, to say the least, but someone interested in British monarchs should look at the James disambiguation page, as it is out of sync with this list in a big way. Since the naming and numbering of Britosh monarchs named James is such a big deal, that page needs improvement. Ortolan88

Admittedly, the disambiguation page isn't very well-written, but I'm not sure what it is that you object to, from the point of view of monarchs. There will always be problems with James I/VI and II/VII, but it seemed to me it had been reasonably well sorted out. Could you be more specific about what you wanted done? Deb

Looks like Fonzy fixed it today after I looked at it and before you did. Thanks for checking. Ortolan88 22:43 Nov 17, 2002 (UTC)

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