Most Overrated and Underrated British Monarchs

[Alabama_Indy10]

Who are some of the most overrated and underrated monarchs in British history?

[Spamage]

Overrated: Richard I (despite the romanticization of him as the "Lionheart", he essentially abandoned the Kingdom to go on crusade, massacred thousands of prisoners during said crusade, was imprisoned on the way back, and his subjects were forced to pay a huge ransom for his return)

Underrated: Henry VII (coming to the throne after the extended Wars of the Roses, he established dynastic stability, reformed the English finances, and began to use the middle class in government)

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yeah the Lionheart is definitely the most overrated. So was Henry VIII, who often seems to get a pass for being iconic and interesting - his actual reign was one disaster after another.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

George III is underrated. He had a largely successful reign.

[Yeahsayyeah]

Aethelstan surely has the coolest name.

Victoria is surely very overrated as she was queen in a very decisive period of British history. But by her time, the monarchs were mostly figureheads. But there sill seems to be this "Victoria was a great queen" sentiment everywhere.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Taking 'British monarchs' to include pre-Act of Union England...

Overrated: Elizabeth I, easily. The whole Gloriana nonsense is pure propaganda, by the end of Lizzie's reign the country was absolutely sick of her.
Underrated: Henry I, a forgotten monarch in the popular imagination who reunited England with the Duchy of Normandy and reformed ecclesiastical and royal administration.

[Yeahsayyeah]

The main question is of course, which former monarchs are known by the general public

If I go for "Roman kings and emeperors", it's probably just

Charlemagne

Otto I. (not necessarily, but "they were all named Otto" could stick)
Heinrich IV. (maybe not by name, but "there was this king who was subdued by the pope in front of this castle somewhere")

Barbarosssa ("has a cool name and is sleeping under the Kyffhäuser mountain")

Friedrich II. (not necessarily by name but "there was this king who was only in Italy buliding things and doing falconry and giving all the power north of the Alps to the nobility, because he wanted to have nothing to do with this cold and uncomfortable region"

Rudolf von Habsburg (only for being the first Habsburger on the Roman throne, by sophisticated people maybe for ending the "emperorless time", which had only three wannabe-emperors...)

Sigismund (for killing Jan Hus)

very maybe Maximilian I. (did stuff)
Karl V. (did evil stuff (protestant), did evil stuff but was fighting the Lutheran heresy (catholic))

I don't think anyone remembers the Habsburg emperors after Rudolf, only maybe Franz II. as he was the last.


And of course people know Wilhelm II., and some also Wilhelm I...

[Mr. Smith]

Overrated: William of Orange/Mary II, the whole "Glorious Revolution" wasn't that glorious. It did no favors for anyone who wasn't a Protestant.

Underrated: Henry I, his innovations to the exchequr shouldn't be forgotten, and given how terrible Robert and William I were...

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Overrated: William of Orange/Mary II, the whole "Glorious Revolution" wasn't that glorious. It did no favors for anyone who wasn't a Protestant.

Kind of in a way that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire, the Glorious Revolution was neither Glorious, nor a Revolution.

But I would disagree for two important reasons.

1. It set in motion the evolution that would produce Parliamentary democracy. This was an age of absolute monarchs. And remember, with the Restoration, there were little in the way of tangible changes and in many ways the English Civil War was a big conflict that ended up eating itself French Revolution style, leading to a dictatorship and then a restoration with very little change to the arrangement, prior to except for a profound fear of it being repeated.

With the ascent of William III and Mary II, several things occurred that forever ended the possibility of a return to absolute monarchy. The Parliament was to have regular elections and appropriations were limited to a set number of years (I think two). This meant that the King not only could not raise taxes, he also could not spend money without parliamentary approval. In France Louis XIV was the Sun King, but in England, it was Parliament who signed the checks. There was a "re-affirmation" of English liberties and an acknowledgement of them as natural rights.

2. Finally, Parliament now had the right to determine who was King, and this broke the notion of divine right in favor of the social contract. And yes the motivator was to exclude Catholics, but the principle of exclusion ceded the authority to determine the King to Parliament and the authority to determine the succession.

It is easy to look back and only see the anti-catholicism motivating these actions, and yes that is important to acknowledge, study and learn from. But the implications and effects of them were profound and indeed glorious in their own right, and set the stage for the American Revolution and the evolution of Britain into a Parliamentary Democracy.