Re: OT: Royalty talk

["David Lodge" <dave () cirt net>]

On Mon, 07 May 2007 19:34:39 +0100, Brian Loe <knobdy () gmail com> wrote:
> In it, the
> queen is The Queen even though she was only a Spanish princess before
> marrying The King of England (good ol' Henry VIII). Also, this Henry
> was a Tudor and wasn't he the one that formed the Church of England?

I wonder whether that's due to simplification, so as not to get the  
audience confused..

Henry VIII was responsible for forming the Church of England 'cos he was  
wanting an annullment (not divorce) for his marriage to Catherine. The  
Pope denied this right, forcing ole Hank to make his own church; which is  
confusing as it is probably closer to Catholic than Protestant, even  
though Catholics are not allowed to be a reigning monarch in the UK. Note  
this is one of the reasons why Hank didn't have 5 wives - as the marriage  
was annulled, it technically didn't happen.

> Does this perhaps go back to the original "royal families" of Europe
> (King of England being a cousin of the Kind of France and all that) -
> you would need to come from one of those families to marry and become
> Queen as opposed to being born of a "made" Lord or whatever?

There were many reasons for the mixing up of the different European royal  
families, including good breeding lines, tactical reasons, cementing an  
alliance, forging an alliance and last and least, 'cos they liked each  
other. Oh course, for most of the middle ages (really up until the start  
of the 20th century) the majority of Europe was composed of tiny kingdoms  
all over the shop. The large country concept it really a modern thing.

> Going to have to go read up on him after all - the tv show is just
> entertainment...Anne Boleyn (sp?) is even attractive where as I
> thought she was supposed to be quite ugly (but perhaps that was
> because the English People loved Catherine so much?).

I doubt the latter - at those times there was a very strong class divide  
and the nobility didn't care about the peasants or what they thought...  
Cue one civil war later and it was realised that what the English vox  
populi really wanted was a monarch to behave like a monarch and not a  
puritanical dictator (like Cromwell).

dave
_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.