Most powerful & important British rulers? (Monarchs, Prime Ministers, etc.)

[Blue3]

Who were the most powerful & important rulers in Great Britain?

Winston Churchill, Queen Victoria, King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I, King John, Mary Queen of Scots, Lord Protector Cromwell, William the Conqueror, Margaret Thatcher, King Arthur (what we know of the real man), etcetera... all British rulers are potential candidates.

[RosettaStoned]

 Other: William Pitt the Younger.

[DemPGH]

Henry II and Edward IV come to mind. Oliver Cromwell also.

Edward IV was a fantastic wartime king and should have ended the Wars of the Roses at Tewkesbury. The House of York won twice as many battles (by my count, anyway) as Lancaster during the said wars, and Edward IV owns a big part of that credit. I don't think he ever lost a major engagement and is remembered as a fine military commander.

Henry Tudor's chances were very slim at Bosworth, which should be remembered as an obscure battle where some guy named Tudor was routed, but because the Stanley brothers betrayed Richard III at said battle and because Richard acted impulsively, he barely lost the battle. Henry Tudor would have been demolished by Edward IV. Henry wouldn't have attempted it, actually. But Richard split the House of York in a couple of ways, though (Well, Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was controversial).

[Potatoe]

I can name two queens who were majorly important: Queens Victoria Saxe Coburg Gotha and Liz Tudor, though Bloody Mary is quite remembered as well.

As for kings? The various Henries and Georges.

PMs? Now you're talking my language, Disraeli was a key man for Vicky, and I feel that he's unfortunately left in the pages of obscure History Books.

And we all know Churchill, he was an icon in Britain, even until his death in the '60s, weird how literally no one cares about Attlee.


I'll probably write more tomorrow, I'm a bit tired.

[DemPGH]

Who were the most powerful & important rulers in Great Britain?

King John

Meant to comment on him. Check out King John by W.L. Warren.

I would regard him as the worst; he beats out Stephen. His reign started an end to the high Feudal times because of his petty brutality and inability to fight wars. Stephen and John were high Feudal kings who only survived because it was the 12th and very early 13th centuries. Stephen's reign is baffling, and oh, did the peasants suffer due to his inability to control his barons, but John was horrid.

John certainly had a number of emotional and psychological issues (paranoia, maybe bipolar), and was prone to distrust everyone he bestowed gifts upon. There were a number of reasons for the Magna Carta, which limited the ability of the king to do literally anything he wanted for literally any reason, which John reneged on, and which caused his barons to declare war on him, but chief among them, I would argue, was his destruction of the de Braose family. They were highly regarded nobility, at least by Gerald of Wales. John built them up and then destroyed them, which dissolved any remaining trust the nobility may have had. The nobility seems to have started plotting against John after that.

John, however, lost every major engagement in which he was involved, and was appropriately nicknamed "John Lackland." Had the LionHeart not been such a chivalrous adventurer, there might never have been a King John.

[Cassius]

No-one's mentioned Edward I. I've always thought he was a pretty powerful (indeed one of the most powerful) monarch, especially given the situation he inherited and the period in which he lived. After all, he did (after a fashion) bring Wales (if not the Welsh) under English control, and made a good go of doing the same in Scotland. More to the point, I don't think there was ever a serious rebellion by the barons during his reign, which is pretty telling given what happened to his predecessors and his son.

[Lincoln Republican]

King Henry V has to be regarded as one of England's greatest kings.

His domestic policies were successful and in foreign affairs he came close to becoming king of France as well.