English Monarchy vs. French Monarchy??

Question

My 10 ten year daughter was doing her homework on Queen Elizabeth. We were going over her fight with the French and so on... then I say, the English just have a long line of monarchies and tend to be more popular. She looked at the textbook map and said, "Well France is bigger, why dont they get all the attention? Why does little England get the attention?" I was stumped??

I had no answer. I have no idea why the English get more attention then French Kings and Queens??

any ideas?

Answer 1

The last king of France (Louis 16th) was beheaded in 1793. Since then France has been a republic. England has been a monarchy since time immemorial, except for a brief period in the 17th Century after the English Civil War when Oliver Cromwell was Lord High Protector.

England 'gets lots of attention' because we speak the same language as you and your country exists in the form that it does because we defeated the French to create you.

England might be a small country, but it has had a disproportionate and crucial effect on world affairs and history in general.

We also gave you the Beatles, while the French only gave you Celine Dion via Canada;-)

By the way! A few hundred years ago? The British Empire survived more or less intact until the middle of the 20th Century, although it was heavily weakened by both world wars.

Answer 2

The sun never sets on the british empire.

England had colonies in literally every time zone a few hundred years ago. They ruled much more of an area than conservatively colonizing france.

Answer 3

English anything vs. French anything, England will come out on top. It's just a superior nation.

Answer 4

The French monarchy effectively ended during the French Revolution, although France had both Napoleon's empire, a restoration of the monarchy thereafter, and a second empire after that.  

One reason why Americans have more interest in the British monarchy is that we speak and read the English language and that we were a British colonial possession before the American Revolution.

I think it would be fascinating to encourage your daughter to study history.  And by studying history, I mean both British and French history.  

France was instrumental in our fight for independence from Britain.  If it were not for the French, we may never have become independent from the British.  Also, the philosophical  background of the American Revolution and our concept of democracy comes from the French philosophers of the Enlightenment.   Did you ever wonder why there are so many towns in the United States with the name "Lafayette", "Fayette", or "Fayetteville"?   Those towns were named to honor the Marquis de Lafayette, a French nobleman who came to our country and was a general in Washington's army.  Did you remember the stories about the Bastille from French history?  You may be interested in knowing that you cannot find the key to the Bastille in a museum in France --  it was given to George Washington by Lafayette.  If you want to see it, you will have to go to Mount Vernon, George Washington's home in Virginia.

Answer 5

Because French monarchies don't have a legal rule in polic affairs.

Answer 6

it may be because the French themselves revolted against their monarchy - it was an absolute monarchy that only ruined the land. French Monarchy was ended in the early 18-hundreds. later experiments, like the Empire of Napoleon, also ended fast...

the English Monarchy on the other hand was pretty early forced to give up power, first to the House of Lords, later also to the House of Commons. The English Monarchy, though today purely institutional, is still alive, still having their scandals. France has been a republic for about 200 years, always returning to this form of state.

Answer 7

There is an obvious answer as to why English monarchs get more attention -- they still have one, at least in theory. But that is only part of the answer.

Great Britain more than any other country is the source of many of our customs, our legal system and many of the political theories that gave rise to American democracy. There was of course, considerable influence from French thinkers on political thought in both England and the American colonies. A deeper reading of American history will turn them up although they have little to do with Monarchy.

The existence of a English monarch, who has much money and no real power, is a constant reminder of the the process by which both countries have developed democratic institutions that are a model for the rest of the world.

American journalists have always favored being in London because of the common language and our monied classes for many years married into English nobility with large titles and not enough money. For those of the yellow journalism age, the royals were then as now something akin to Britney Spears and George Bush rolled into one. Britain's empire covered the globe - "the sun never sets on the British empire."

Americans also think they understand the British system better than the government of the French and our relations with Britain have been especially close since World War I when we joined the allies. We became close to France as well, but lacked the shared language to continue for long after the war in popular newspapers and magazines. But it is also true that we paid more attention 50-100 years ago to most of Europe. We were fascinated with the "crowned heads of Europe" in a day when there were so many. But the important remaining monarchies were mostly abolished after that war.

There are those who say the French killed their king (they did) and ended the monarchy and the suggestion is the British did not. Which doesn't answer the question. Monarchs overreached in both countries and there were revolts in both over the centuries.

Recall first that the English monarchy's rule over the British Isles is fairly recent, going back to the Act of Union with Scotland about 400 years ago.

But English kings have for about a thousand years ruled over a easily identified nation than French kings. France was not always bigger, in fact for many years, French kings ruled mostly over the Ile-de-France, the heart of the country around Paris. English kings ruled over large parts of what is now France and controlled its best ports as well as the cross channel trade in wool, a vital element in trade at the time. It was not until Queen Elizabeth I that England lost Calais as a possession. William the Conqueror was not French, but Norman and the Duchy he invaded from was in feudal times identified with England, not France. Europe was for centuries made up of smaller states than today.

But we also remember English kings because the effort to restrain their power are part of our Democratic bankground. King John was forced to grant Magna Carta, the first recognized restraint on a monarch and the first step toward what is now a constitutional monarchy.

The English under Cromwell, executed Charles I and executions were common after Henry VIII as contenders were executed or killed. Numerous kings of Scotland or Wales were killed in battle of executed. And in the Glorious Revolution, the English chose to install William and Mary of the Netherlands rather than to have a Catholic King.

The current royal family is not even English in Ancestry, having adopted the name of Windsor during World War I to replace Saxe-Coburg, which reflected the German origins of the family.

We see dramas frequently on television about English kings (how many Elizabeth I series can we have) while few even consider that the Three Musketeers is about the French Monarch along with the man in the Iron Mask or the Count of Monte Cristo.

Louis XVI, who was executed, is considered the lesser of a series of kings who in one sense ruined the monarchy but also gained great glory for French arms. Louis the XIV was at war for 50 years of his 60+ as king -- modern fortifications and siege warfare come from his period. Louis XV, his grandson, continued the wars. But wars come with a cost and no one, especially the rich who benefited the most wanted to pay for them. Taxes were imposed on the poor and the peasants who worked the land.

Over the centuries, there had been many revolts by the peasants, the sans-culottes, but each was brutally put down -- until the French Revolution when the anger erupted over the same question of taxes. The result was the Terror, which killed perhaps 30,000 people, a lot, but a small massacre compared to others since.

Your daughter talks about how large France is. She might want to look at Joan of Arc and why she is so important to the French. She is the symbol of the French Nation because she is considered the inspiration for what became that large French nation. She became a saint in part because of political pressure after WWI when she again became a symbol of France (Although Marianne is more so). She represented the uniting of France.

The place where she was executed, Rouen, was a long time English city in France and the English were trying to capture much of France to be liege, or subject, to the English King. Joan gave life to the movement to crown a French king again rather than an English puppet. The French were finally able to end the long war and the English were much weakened in their French possession and eventually forced to leave.

What your daughter may not know that is that as recently as 100 years ago,  more than half of the people in france did not speak French, but a local langauge, such as Breton, Occitan or other.

There is a great deal that is interesting about the French monarchy, not all of it pleasant. Paris and France were a center of learning when Britain was mostly squalid. But the British found a way to better government, limiting the power of the conservative monarchy that gathered power to itself.

Napoleon I was not a king, but an emperor if semantics matter. He intended to re-establish a royal or imperial family, but apart from losing the war, didn't do well at children. A relative, Napoleon III became emperor in the Mid 1800s, but he wasn't very smart, wasn't a good general and he lost a war and his job in 1870. But he did put someone in charge of remaking Paris, Baron Haussman, who did a wonderful job.