Game of Thrones and old english

[Razgovory]

But for godsake man Longshanks was a Anglo-Frenchie, a French speaking descendent of the Dukes of Anjou.

But he's the embodiment of the English King, along with Arthur.  Most of England's greatest kings weren't really English (as we'd define it today), I suppose.  Wasn't it around the War of the Roses that French was totally abandonned in favour of English along the nobility?

I've never heard anyone call Arthur an English King.

[OttoVonBismarck]

But he's the embodiment of the English King, along with Arthur.  Most of England's greatest kings weren't really English (as we'd define it today), I suppose.  Wasn't it around the War of the Roses that French was totally abandonned in favour of English along the nobility?

Actually I'd say Henry VIII is the embodiment of a true English King, for that matter he was the penultimate true English King, and embodied the best and the worst of the Kings of England.

[viper37]

But for godsake man Longshanks was a Anglo-Frenchie, a French speaking descendent of the Dukes of Anjou.

But he's the embodiment of the English King, along with Arthur.  Most of England's greatest kings weren't really English (as we'd define it today), I suppose.  Wasn't it around the War of the Roses that French was totally abandonned in favour of English along the nobility?

I've never heard anyone call Arthur an English King.

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries  (source: Wikipedia)Didn't medieval English kings traced their genealogy back to King Arthur?  I thought I read that somewhere.

[viper37]

But he's the embodiment of the English King, along with Arthur.  Most of England's greatest kings weren't really English (as we'd define it today), I suppose.  Wasn't it around the War of the Roses that French was totally abandonned in favour of English along the nobility?

Actually I'd say Henry VIII is the embodiment of a true English King, for that matter he was the penultimate true English King, and embodied the best and the worst of the Kings of England.

Because he was married as often as Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard)?

[Razgovory]

But for godsake man Longshanks was a Anglo-Frenchie, a French speaking descendent of the Dukes of Anjou.

But he's the embodiment of the English King, along with Arthur.  Most of England's greatest kings weren't really English (as we'd define it today), I suppose.  Wasn't it around the War of the Roses that French was totally abandonned in favour of English along the nobility?

I've never heard anyone call Arthur an English King.

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries  (source: Wikipedia)Didn't medieval English kings traced their genealogy back to King Arthur?  I thought I read that somewhere.

King Arthur fought the English.  The Norman Kings of England did emphasis their ties to King Arthur because William the Conqueror was part Breton.  In fact I suspect that's why the story became so popular.  Poets and historians were encouraged to promulgate the story of the Heroic Arthur fighting off the invading Anglo-Saxons and create parallels with Bastard Bill taking back Britain from the English.

[Razgovory]

But he's the embodiment of the English King, along with Arthur.  Most of England's greatest kings weren't really English (as we'd define it today), I suppose.  Wasn't it around the War of the Roses that French was totally abandonned in favour of English along the nobility?

Actually I'd say Henry VIII is the embodiment of a true English King, for that matter he was the penultimate true English King, and embodied the best and the worst of the Kings of England.

Because he was married as often as Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard)?

No clue what Otto is on about.  Henry VIII was perhaps the most Tyrannical King of England.

[Jaron]

If Henry VIII was the penultimate, who would the ultimate be?

[dps]

Searching on "one-and-twenty" I find poems by Samuel Johnson, Robert Burns and A E Housman that use the expression.

Then there is always the nursery rhyme :

"    Sing a song of sixpence,
    A pocket full of rye.
    Four and twenty blackbirds,
    Baked in a pie.

     ......."

Ahem.  "Four score and seven years ago...". 

I have no idea if people actually talked that way back then, or if such phrases were only used in literature, speachifyin' and the like.

[Razgovory]

I suspect people wrote more formally then they wrote.

[OttoVonBismarck]

If Henry VIII was the penultimate, who would the ultimate be?

Penultimate just means second to last, Henry VIII was literally the second to last English King of England. He was followed by his son Edward and after that a few Queens and then after that the monarch of England was a series of Scottish guys and then the daughter of one of those Scottish guys and a Dutch guy, followed by another daughter of the same Scottish guy followed by our current line of Hessians.

But in terms of Henry VIII being the "embodiment of an English King" I think it's accurate. He was a brutal, monstrous tyrant, self-serving, covetous of power, disdainful towards his nobles and people. That's a not uncommon set of traits in English Kings up until Henry VIII, but he sort of was the real embodiment of all of those things.

He was also a learned man, a musician, an artist, an athlete, a patron of the arts and sciences and men of letters. A man who had lofty ideals and beliefs (that he never really even came close to adhering to), and a genuinely devout Christian. Henry VIII is easy to write off as a tyrant, but there are real reasons he is still so well known. The fascination with the number of Queens and the manner in which he dispatched with some of them picked up a lot of steam in the past 150 years or so, but he was a major figure in English history and really his entire reign was a bridge between the true Middle Ages of England and the modern Age.

Henry was also thoroughly English, and proud of it. He was disdainful of the French, and continental Europe in general. He was strongly of the belief that England was the best and had the best of everything (this wasn't true), and that's important because before Henry VIII a lot of English Kings still had their foot halfway in the world of French politics, courts, and intrigue, and depending on which one you look at many of them were basically French guys that were all too happy to rule a big Kingdom with large amounts of resources but who saw England as a cultural and political backwater. A lot of these guys were more emotionally attached to random French holdings than they were to England itself. If there's anyone who should be a biased patriot who blindly supports their country over all others, it would be your King.

[Viking]

But for godsake man Longshanks was a Anglo-Frenchie, a French speaking descendent of the Dukes of Anjou.

But he's the embodiment of the English King, along with Arthur.  Most of England's greatest kings weren't really English (as we'd define it today), I suppose.  Wasn't it around the War of the Roses that French was totally abandonned in favour of English along the nobility?

I've never heard anyone call Arthur an English King.

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries  (source: Wikipedia)Didn't medieval English kings traced their genealogy back to King Arthur?  I thought I read that somewhere.

Not arthur, they trace to Cerdic

[Sheilbh]

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries  (source: Wikipedia)Didn't medieval English kings traced their genealogy back to King Arthur?  I thought I read that somewhere.

Yes.  I think Henry VI has a family tree that goes back to King Arthur as a way of giving himself greater legitimacy.  It's an image of all the Kings before him converging on his coronation.  He had a round table built to rule as Arthur, the model of Kingship.  Didn't work out.

However there's no connection because Arthur was British and William the conqueror was Breton or anything like that.  Arthur doesn't emerge as a major figure until Geoffrey of Monmouth.  So by that time the Normans have more or less gone, the English court is Anglo-Central French.  The story exists but there's not much written about it and the real Kings certainly make no use of it until that time.  With Geoffrey it, and the story of Brutus of Troy as the first King of England, begin to form a part of a national story and of their own legitimacy.  Perhaps because the monarchs aren't very English or British at all.  They are predominately French.  After that it seems to be part of the accepted myth of England until the Jacobean period.

I think the Central French connection at the English court is probably why Arthur then goes to France.  Lots of Medieveal Romances about him are written in France.  When we then get the Morte d'Arthur back in English Malory constantly repeats that he's only translating from 'the Frenshe bookes'.  From what I gather that's not true, he's far more creative than he lets on, but in Medieval texts you're more legitimate if you're transmitting others' knowledge, writing a translation or copying a text than if you're creating one.

[Razgovory]

Eh?  The Normans were still very much there in England when Geoffrey on Monmouth was there. He was writing during the reign of Henry I.  The Angevins don't show up till a bit later. It also helps to remember that Normans are French.

[Sheilbh]

Eh?  The Normans were still very much there in England when Geoffrey on Monmouth was there. He was writing during the reign of Henry I.  The Angevins don't show up till a bit later. It also helps to remember that Normans are French.

Henry II's reign starts the year Geoffrey's work is first published.  He's more English than later Kings but is basically French, he's also rebuilding after a civil war.  I think those reasons are part of the attraction of myths of uniting Kings like Arthur and Brutus.  But the French court in Anjou has Chretien de Troyes writing Arthurian Romance almost immediately after Geoffrey which suggest the myth was already known outside of England as an example of courtly virtues.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I have always thought it a tad simple to refer to every English King from William the Conquerer to Henry IV/V as "French." In 1066 there was no concept of France as a monolithic place, and there were even multiple dialects in France of "Langues d'oïl"; when the Normans conquered England there developed an Anglo-Norman variation of the Old Norman language.

While I'm sure to some degree it was mutually intelligible with other "Langues d'oïl", I don't know to what degree, and I do think it's rightly considered a separate language. When Richard I was King I've read that he knew Occitan (which was another French language, one of the "Langues d'Oc" so even further differentiated from the "Langues d'oïl" that are often collectively known as "Old French") and he knew the Parisian dialect of the Langues d'oïl, but he didn't speak or know the Anglo-Norman dialect.

I'm not sure if the differences were as subtle as "American English vs. British English" or more like "American and British English vs. Jamaican Patois."

The way I've understood it is the initial administrations of Norman conquest England were "Norman." But the royal family continually intermarried heavily with Parisian nobility and royalty strengthening ties both culturally and politically with the court in France (not necessarily meaning the court in France was always an ally or a friend, but the ties were close.)