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The Tudor monarchs, who ruled England from 1485 to 1603, have always attracted a great deal of historical attention; the most studied of them all have been Henry VIII (1509-1549) and Elizabeth I (1558-1603).

Mary has a strong claim to being the most reviled monarch in English history. Whether that is justified or not, the point remains that Elizabeth’s path to the throne was made much easier after Mary’s reign

his has not been commonly understood by later historians, however, for ever since Mary I died in 1558, and her half-sister Elizabeth I succeeded her, historians have focused on the many differences between them, stressing the Catholicism and religious persecution of Mary’s regime, and the Protestantism and (comparative) religious tolerance of Elizabeth’s

Early in the afternoon of April 7th, 1498, Charles VIII of France escorted his queen, Anne of Brittany, to an antiquated gallery at his chateau of Amboise, to watch a game of tennis

After the travails of Valois France during the Hundred Years War and the kingdom's subsequent recovery under Charles VII and Louis XI, few magnates any longer felt inclined to contest the title of a mature heir apparent.

Louis himself had been brought up in relatively impecunious circumstances, thanks partly to the antipathy of the late Louis XI towards him and his house. There were nobles who had felt that the ruler's treatment of them and their kind as well as his alleged general misgovernment warranted conspiracy and even revolt against him. Although Louis d'Orleans had been far too young to engage in that reign's most concerted expression of magnate resentment, the War of the Public Weal, he had rationalised in comparable terms his own behaviour under Charles VIII.

Their reigns were crucial for the solid establishment of the constitutional and political conventions and practices known as the Revolution Settlement after James II and VII’s replacement by William III in 1689. The legislation that made it up (which included the 1701 Act of Settlement enshrining the claim to the British throne of Sophia of Hanover, mother of the future George I was passed from 1689, but much of the political settlement was not solidified until after 1714

Although the consequences of this new polity were less dramatic than those stemming from the personal union of England and Scotland under James VI and I in 1603, this had been by no means clear when the new dynastic personal union was created

Both George I and George II sought to use British resources to help secure gains for Hanover. George I sought to win territories  from the partition of the Swedish empire and to place a westward limit on the expansion of Russian power under Peter the Great. George II pursued Hanoverian territorial interests in neighbouring principalities, especially in Mecklenburg, East Friesland and Osnabrück

2020 was a bad year for butterflies, too. The population of monarch butterflies that migrated to Mexico to ride out the cold winter months in the north fell 26% from a year earlier, according to a new report from the Mexican government and the Word Wildlife Fund.

A combination of logging, falling trees, and drought in the areas where the butterflies roost, as well as a reduction of milkweed in their breeding places, pose threats to the monarch's migration. But the damage wrought by climate change is the biggest factor.

During the spring and summer of 2020, wild weather in the southern United States killed milkweed blossoms--which female monarch butterflies lay their eggs upon. In turn, the development of butterfly eggs and larvae was also impacted, the report said.

In June 1488, just three years after Henry VII’s unlikely victory in the English Midlands, James IV became king on the battlefield of Sauchieburn south of Stirling, close to the spot where Robert Bruce had won his great victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.

James IV was brought up at Stirling Castle by his mother, Margaret of Denmark, alongside his two younger brothers. The queen had produced three healthy sons but she and James III led separate lives after an earlier rebellion in 1482. The king, who had managed to alienate all of his siblings, believed that his wife had sided with his brother, the Duke of Albany, when the duke returned from exile in France and invaded Scotland with the future Richard III of England. James III seems also to have felt that his eldest son was tainted by contact with Albany and perhaps considered barring the boy from the succession

James IV was ruler of a land famously described in a letter written by its own nobility in 1320 to Pope John XXII as ‘the tiny country of Scotia lying on the very edge of the inhabited world’. Scotland was poor, cold and wet. Edinburgh, its capital, held only 12,000 citizens, in contrast to London’s 50,000. Yet, like its new monarch, the country was not inward-looking.  Difficulty of travel by road over rugged terrain meant that it had long relied on sea routes for transport and communication with the wider world. The kings of Scotland were determined not to be overlooked in Europe. They forged trade and political alliances with Scandinavia and were long-standing allies of the French, who viewed Scotland as a brake on the ambitions of England. The two countries that occupied the island of Britain were natural enemies, nowhere more so than in the Borders, where centuries-old feuds and the violence that fuelled them were adjudicated by special courts composed of English and Scots. But James III had attempted a policy of conciliation with England that was unpopular with his aristocracy and Henry VII, a cautious man, did not relish constant war with his northern neighbour. It remained to be seen how James IV would approach Anglo-Scottish relations and how he would develop his ambition to make Scotland a European power.

On June 7th, 1654, Louis XIV was crowned in the traditional manner at the cathedral of Reims

It was indeed one of the least significant events in the whole reign of Loins XIV

The minority had ended at rather an early age, but kings of France were not as ordinary men, in that, among other things, they had the capacity of coming of age prematurely

When Ferdinand II (1479–1516; also known as Ferdinand V of Castile from 1474) succeeded to the Crown of Aragon in 1479, the union of Aragon (roughly eastern Spain) and Castile (roughly western Spain) was finally achieved, and the Trastámara became the second most powerful monarchs in Europe, after the Valois of France.

different royal houses of the Iberian Peninsula had long sought a union of their crowns and had practiced intermarriage for generations.

The reasons that led John II of Aragon to arrange the marriage of his son and heir, Ferdinand, with Isabella of Castile in 1469 were essentially tactical: he needed Castilian support against French aggression

Since the beginnings of recorded history, more than 5000 years ago, the great majority of civilised people have lived under the rule of monarchs.' Only in the fatal decade 1912-1922, in China, Russia, Germany, Austria and Turkey did 'half humanity over- throw its monarchs

The rulers of Russia were originally Vikings, Arab dynasties ruled as far as Indonesia, the Welfs of Hanover and Great Britain were from the same family as the Estes of Modena, the Kings of Poland in the seventeenth century were Vasas from Sweden

the most successful and international of all dynasties is the House of Oldenburg. Since it began to rule the region of Oldenburg in north-west Germany in the thirteenth century it has provided monarchs for Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Norway and Greece. Through Prince Philip a branch of the House of Oldenburg will one day occupy the throne of the United Kingdom

Feudalism was the system in European medieval societies of the 10th to 13th centuries CE whereby a social hierarchy was established based on local administrative control and the distribution of land into units (fiefs). A landowner (lord) gave a fief, along with a promise of military and legal protection, in return for a payment of some kind from the person who received it (vassal).

military service or the regular payment of produce or money

The word ‘feudalism’ derives from the medieval Latin terms feudalis, meaning fee, and feodum, meaning fief

The Spanish Inquisition is commonly associated with torture, cruelty and oppression

The concept of inquisitions to root out religious heretics was not novel when, in 1478, Pope Sixtus IV authorised the creation of a Spanish inquisition

These newly united kingdoms, under joint monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, decided to set up such a body

the dispute will be whether the King of England or of France shall be the Monarch of the West Indies, for the King of Spain cannot hold it long

The wars between the Kings of France and Britain were, on the contrary, waged for supremacy in the Caribbean itself and it was this aspect that gave West Indian history, from Cromwell’s Protectorate to the battle of Trafalgar, its special stamp

a handful of stubborn and self-reliant Commonwealth soldiers within five years got the better of the King of Spain

Courts are a key to understanding European history. Defined as ruling dynasties and their households, courts transformed countries, capitals, constitutions and cultures. Great Britain and Spain, for example, both now threatened with dissolution, were originally united by dynastic marriages; between, respectively, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469; and between Margaret Tudor and James IV King of Scots in 1503, leading to the accession a hundred years later of their great-grandson, James I, to the throne of England. 

The House of Orange was crucial to the formation of the Netherlands, the House of Savoy to the unification of Italy, the House of Hohenzollern to that of Germany. Dynasties provided the leadership and military forces that enabled these states to expand. As Bismarck declared, while asserting the need for royal control over the Prussian army, blood and iron were more decisive than speeches and majority decisions. 

Like previous European conflicts, including the Napoleonic Wars and repeated wars ‘of Succession’, the First World War was in part a dynastic war; between the Karageorgevic rulers of Serbia, whose supporters had murdered the previous monarch from the rival Obrenovic dynasty, and the Habsburgs, determined to oppose Serb expansion, symbolised by another Serbian victim, the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand; and between the Hohenzollerns and Romanovs for domination in Eastern Europe. The fall of four empires in 1917-22 – Romanov, Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman  – was a European cataclysm comparable to the fall of the Roman Empire 1,500 years earlier. 

he Royal Marriage Act of 1772 gave Britain’s monarch the chance to veto any match. But Victoria didn’t stop at just saying no. She thought that she could influence Europe by controlling who her family members married. “Each marriage was a form of soft power,” says Cadbury. Victoria wanted to spread stable constitutional monarchies like Britain’s throughout Europe.

Victoria liked the German princess, who was also a cousin, because of her level headedness, and pressured Albert to marry her even though he was rumored to be gay. He dutifully proposed. Then, tragedy struck and he died suddenly of influenza in 1892.

As the balance of power in Europe threatened to break down, they took sides—sometimes against their own family members. George V opposed Kaiser Wilhelm’s policies (as did Czar Nicholas before his murder), and the diplomatic ties Victoria hoped she had helped form with her meddling matchmaking began to break down.

Louis XII became king of France by accident. Or, more precisely, because of an accident. On April 7th 1498, his cousin, the reigning monarch Charles VIII, stumbled and hit his head on the lintel of a doorway through which he was passing on his way to watch a tennis match in the royal chateau at Amboise. The king had recently been ill. He seemed to be recovering but this final blow in a life full of hard knocks finished him off. Having no surviving male heir, the crown passed to his nearest male relative, Louis duke of Orleans, who was crowned king in Rheims cathedral on 27 May 1498

Louis ended his reign having reformed the French legal system, reduced taxes, having enjoyed some military success in Italy and bearing the loving accolade, 'Father of the People'. In many respects he stands comparison with his contemporary, Henry VII of England

Louis was born in 1462 during the reign of his second cousin Louis XI. His father was Charles duke of Orleans, a celebrated poet and the head of a cadet branch of the royal house of Valois. Louis XI was succeeded by his son, Charles VIII, in 1483

assassinated by one of his own subjects, Henry’s legacy has often been derided

The last of the Valois monarchs to take the throne, Henry III seemed to embody the worst traits of a dynasty in decline, in sharp contrast to his celebrated Bourbon successors

He is now portrayed as an intelligent and cultured individual who sought (but failed) to bring about much-needed financial and judicial reform in his kingdom

Nicholas’ power as an Autocrat was indeed so absolute that any command, even as extreme as the one to march on France, was fully within his power should he choose to exercise it

Throughout his reign, Nicholas jealously guarded the recognized prerogatives of the ruler in all aspects of government and he exercised a more personal control in state affairs than any other ruler since Peter the Great

Only a strong Emperor could bear the crushing burden of such a system of personal government and, as events after 1848 made clear, even Russia’s iron-willed Emperor himself could not bear such a burden in the face of serious crises.

France was then sharply divided by religion. Thousands of Protestants, or Huguenots, had been massacred in Paris and other cities in 1572, but they remained strong in the south and west, while Paris was fiercely Catholic. Though a Catholic himself, Henry III lacked the means to take on the Huguenots in an all-out war.

accused the mignons of destroying Henry III’s virility

Monarchs were used to distributing special favours to certain members of their entourage in return for their loyalty and services. The first French king to do so was Philip III, ‘the Bold’ (1270-85). A long line of favourites can be traced through the succeeding reigns until that of Louis XIV, who had none. Henry III seems to have had more than any other French king. They can be divided into two groups: the first, formed in the 1570s, comprised some 20 young men, roughly of the same age as Henry. They belonged to families of the provincial nobility (or noblesse seconde), which had served the crown for generations. The second group was formed in the 1580s. It consisted of only two men, Anne de Joyeuse, baron d’Arques and Jean-Louis de La Valette. They became far more powerful than their predecessors and were known as the archimignons

The fortunes of the Tudor dynasty were laid by the most romantic mésalliance in English history, the secret betrothal of a Welsh attendant at the Court of Henry VI to the dowager queen

Henry V, the hammer of the Welsh, had continued his father's proscription of the whole nation in punishment for the rebellion

Owain's marriage to Katherine of Valois, although hubristic, was not annulled when discovered, and the fruit of its consummation, the two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were not declared illegitimate.

History may not repeat itself, but there is no gainsaying its fondness for close affinities

When in 1807 Ferdinand, heir to the throne, stood accused by his father, Charles IV of Spain, of sedition and seeking to usurp the royal title, the young prince fearfully recalled the analogous events two hundred and forty years previously

In 1568 Philip II had similarly confronted his recalcitrant son Carlos, resulting in the latter’s imprisonment and mysterious death seven months later

In the seventeenth century, under a succession of outstandingly able soldier kings, Sweden had been a great power but after the death in 1718 of Karl XII, the last and most monomaniacal of the line, the country had become a by-word for weak government, corruption and impotence. Gustav III set himself the task of making Sweden great again. He was assassinated in March 1792 – the third Swedish monarch in 160 years to die of gunshot wounds

Under Karl XII’s successors, his central-German brother-in-law Fredrik I and his north-German second-cousin-once-removed Adolf Fredrik (Prince Bishop of Lubeck before the Swedish Riksdag chose him to be Fredrik’s heir) the country passed through the so-called Age of Liberty

When, shortly after his father’s death in February 1771, Gustav III met his uncle Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great), the latter sneered, ‘If there were Swedes in Sweden they would soon agree to bury their differences; but foreign corruption has so perverted the national spirit that harmony was impossible’. Gustav’s new kingdom was then the second largest in Europe after Russia. It comprised present-day Finland as well as Sweden, and a toe-hold in Germany in northern Pomerania.