‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part 2)
Edward II and Edward V were murdered in prison. So probably were Richard II and Henry VI. Richard III was killed in battle. Charles I was executed. But kingship brings perks: power, wealth, adulation. The throne gives you the right to whack foreigners, which Henry V, after a misspent youth, found he was good at.
Henry II’s empire stretched from the Pyrenees to Scotland. You don’t rule that realm by being fluffy. Like Richard I (who asset stripped England), Henry II spent nearly all his reign across the Channel. The crusading Richard (a nasty piece of work) didn’t speak English, like many kings before and after. George I never bothered to learn. The main threat to sovereigns (apart from foreigners) were barons and churchmen intent on preserving their lands and rights (Henry VIII crushed the latter). The people were less of a bother, until the Peasants Revolt of 1381 when they got uppity. It was put down. Monarchy depended on a social contract between king and people. James II broke it by his overt Catholicism, and had to scarper when the (bloodless) Glorious Revolution of 1688 brought William and Mary to the throne. A Bill of Rights (1689) barred Roman Catholics from ever ruling again.
Civil war prompted King John to sign Magna Carta in 1215, confirming that the king was not above the law. John wasn’t as nasty as Henry VIII who, says my Ladybird Book, was ‘a brutal man, unfit to mix with decent people.’ History is written by the victors. The Yorkist Richard III, killed at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) by Henry Tudor (Henry VII) – a Lancastrian with an iffy claim to the throne – looks like a shifty hunchback in posthumous portraits. Henry’s marriage to Elizabeth of York effectively ended the disastrous Wars of the Roses (1455–87), between York and Lancaster. Liz lost money playing cards. Henry played tennis. And lost.
Elizabeth I (famous for beating the Spanish Armada and, fastidiously, having one bath a month) died childless. James VI of Scotland (‘slovenly and ungainly’), the first of the Stuarts, became James I of Great Britain (1603). English and Scottish parliaments were united under the last Stuart, Queen Anne, in 1707 (Act of Union). When she died, also childless, the Elector of Hanover (great grandson of James I) was crowned George I. Thackeray wrote: ‘His heart was in Hanover… we laughed at his uncouth German ways, and sneered at him. He took our loyalty for what it was worth; laid hands on what money he could…’ Three Georges followed (‘When from earth the Fourth descended / God be praised the Georges ended’). A contemporary called George IV ‘an inveterate voluptuary, a spoiled, selfish, odious beast’. But he had gusto, and taste (particularly for buildings). He read Jane Austen. He played the cello. He was, however, financially incontinent. And, like Charles II and Edward VII (‘Edward the Caresser’), grabby. He liked women, older women, and lots of them. [Times change – Norman kings were expected to have mistresses.] His arranged marriage (for money) to his cousin Caroline of Brunswick was disastrous. When he met her, he was appalled (like Henry VIII on meeting his bride Anne of Cleves, the ‘Flanders Mare’) and demanded a restorative brandy. Caroline was coarse and dirty. She found him gross. They soon hated each other. He was so drunk at his wedding that he was held up by two dukes. Like George, she was promiscuous. She flaunted her affair with her ‘servant’, Bartolomeo Pergami (‘a foreigner of low station’). Queen Victoria loved sex too. After her wedding night with ‘Darling Albert’ she cooed – ‘I NEVER, NEVER spent such an evening!’ She also adored pies, cakes and tarts. A doctor said the young Victoria looked ‘more like a barrel’. The German Prince Albert, according to a ballad, came ‘to take for better or for worse / England’s fat queen and England’s fatter purse’. 
George V was called a ‘dunderhead’ who ‘did nothing at all but kill animals and stick stamps in albums’ (George III, when not mad, made buttons). Edward VIII fulfilled his father’s prophecy that ‘after I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months.’ Monarchy has faced several near fatal crises: the reckless dissipation of George IV, Victoria’s isolation after Prince Albert’s death in 1861 and Edward VIII’s abdication (1936). Monarchy is a fragile institution because its members are chosen by accident of birth. Edward Gibbon observed that ‘hereditary monarchy presents the fairest scope for ridicule.’ The late Queen knew that: ‘Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.’ Charles I lacked her modesty (and pragmatism), and lost his head, after his defeat in the devastating English Civil Wars (1642-51). But worse followed during Cromwell’s pious rule – a ban on maypoles. And Christmas! No wonder the English welcomed Charles II who admitted: ‘I always admired virtue – but could never imitate it.’
