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Been thinking about Sarah’s history of English royalty since William t he Conquerer. Let me know if I left anything important out:

Succession crisis -> civil war.

Civil war resolved, negotiated succession.

Descendant of negotiated successor pisses everyone off -> civil war.

Descendant forced to accept terms.

Stability for a bit while they’re busy fighting other people.

Succession crisis -> civil war.

Civil war resolved violently.

Succession crisis (religion). Civil war narrowly averted.

Dynasty goes extinct. Succession negotiated.

Descendant of negotiated successor pisses everyone off -> civil war.

Civil war resolved through decapitation.

Succession crisis. Civil war averted via negotiated succession.

Succession crisis -> civil war fizzles

Dynasty goes extinct (yes, Charlie, it did. Shut up)

Parliament is finally utterly fucking sick of this lot starting civil wars, installs German puppets. The end.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Ben Curthoys
Ben Curthoys
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Until the last year or so, I had believed something more or less along the lines of "England has been uniquely stable over the past 1000 years. Other countries have had bloody revolutions (France, Russia) or pulled themselves together out of fragmented parts (Germany, Italy) but England has missed out on all that, the elites here have always known how and when to soften and to give up a little power in order to avoid those excesses".
in reply to Ben Curthoys

Ben Curthoys
Ben Curthoys
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@goatsarah Listening through The Rest Is History podcast has disabused me of this idiotic idea. We've had just as many usurpers, revolutions and civil wars as anywhere else, it's just that the English have had better marketing.
@Sarah
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Ben Curthoys

BashStKid
BashStKid
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@bencurthoys @goatsarah Fair. I think most of that view derives from Britain being the odd one out while everyone else was doing 1848/midcentury civil wars. We wrote that up as ‘look how stable we are as we loot the rest of the world’ and it was never internally criticised.
@Sarah @Ben Curthoys
in reply to Ben Curthoys

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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@Ben Curthoys lol, yeah. The Anarchy, 1st barons war, 2nd barons war, Wars of the Roses, Mary marches on London, 1st civil war, 2nd civil war, Restoration, Glorious Revolution, Jacobite Rising. Probably missed some.
@Ben Curthoys

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