Remaining monarch for 70 years is a pretty unusual achievement, actually
On some extremely long reigns.
A version of this post first appeared in the subscriber-only bit of the newsletter around the Platinum Jubilee in June. For this edition, I’ve updated the numbers, changed a few tenses, and cut a couple of jokes that might get me a book sales-boosting but otherwise unpleasant stint as the target of the Daily Mail’s daily hate (though probably not because, let’s be honest, I’m white). Should you wish to, you can find the original version here.
Back in the early weeks of this summer, there was a general sense abroad, at least in the parts of the internet I generally inhabit, that, in the way it’s celebrating the Queen’s platinum jubilee, the United Kingdom had gone round the bend. In the suburbs, people were breaking out the bunting and the bad clip art as they planned their street parties. On the BBC’s iPlayer, you could find two feature length documentaries about the Queen, in one of which I’m assuming three different queens team up, as well as an eight part series called God Shave the Queens, which, no wait hang on that was something totally different.
Meanwhile Stonehenge, Britain’s oldest monument, which dates from relatively early in the Queen’s reign, produced a “spellbinding homage to Her Majesty”. It involved projecting eight different pictures of her onto some very old bits of rock. Like I said: round the bend.
Image: English Heritage.
With the Queen’s death last week, followed by the cancellation of apparently everything and the replacement of BBC One with some kind of rolling monarchy channel, things are currently even round-the-bend-ier. But – is the UK’s current forelock-tugging enthusiasm really all that weird? Okay, earlier this year, Denmark celebrated the golden jubilee of Margrethe II in a relatively sedate fashion; and neither the golden (2002) nor diamond (2012) jubiles of the late Queen Elizabeth got quite this treatment. On the other hand, though, a reign lasting 50 years is an achievement, but hardly a rarity. One that beats 70 – well, that hardly ever happens.
In fact we can quantify it. Here are the 10 longest reigning monarchs in British (as opposed to UK; this difference is important) history.
1. Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (70 years, 214 days)
2. Victoria of the United Kingdom (63 years, 216 days)
3. George III of the United Kingdom (59 years, 96 days)
4. James VI of Scotland (57 years, 246 days)
5. Henry III of England (56 years, 19 days)
6. Edward III of England (50 years, 147 days)
7. William I of Scotland (48 years, 360 days)
8. Llywelyn of Gwynedd (c44-5 years; his exact dates are disputed)
9. Elizabeth I of England (44 years, 127 days)
10. David II of Scotland (41 years, 260 days)
Britain’s most recent queen is a long, long way out ahead. Okay, six of these monarchs have made it past their golden jubilee, including three of the 12 who have ruled since the UK was created in 1707. But the only other monarch to get past her diamond jubilee – even including the Scottish and Welsh monarchs that you are, even now, feeling embarrassed not to have heard of – was Victoria, who Elizabeth overtook in September 2015. A reign that lasts for 70 years is an unusual achievement.
(The Kingdom of Gwynedd, incidentally, survived from the mid 5th century, only a few decades after the Romans pulled out, until Llywelyn the Great, as he’s also known, became a strong enough overlord to declare himself Prince of all Wales in 1216. The “44-45 year” figure combines both sides of his tenure. So, now you know.)
It’s so unusual in fact, that only four monarchs of sovereign states anywhere are certain to have done it. Here they are, along with their nearest competitors:
1. Louis XIV of France (72 years, 110 days)
2. Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand (70 years, 214 days)
3. Rama IX of Thailand (70 years, 126 days)
4. Johann II of Liechtenstein (70 years, 91 days)
5. Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal of Palenque (68 years, 33 days)
6. Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary (67 years, 355 days)
7. Ferinand III of the Two Sicilies (65 years, 90 days)
8. Victoria of the United Kingdom (63 years, 216 days)
9. James I of Aragon (62 years, 319 days)
10. Hirohito of Japan (62 years, 13 days)
Is anybody else surprised that there wasn’t more coverage in early May, when the Queen overtook Johann II of Liechtenstein to take 3rd place? Or mid June, when she passed Rama IX, who took himself out of the competition in 2016 by dying?
Alas, getting the very top spot, and overtaking the Sun King, Louis XIV – who dominated European politics for nearly a century and its hair styles for a whole lot longer than that – would have required the queen to survive until 27th May 2024. When I wrote the first version of this piece, I noted that this was plausible; but that “given the obvious panic that passes through the entire British establishment every time she so much as sneezes, can’t be taken for granted”. As it turned out, that panic was not entirely misplaced. Oh well.
The other name worth noting on this list, I think, is Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal, who ruled over a Mayan city state of Palenque for much of the 7th century. Given that the earliest of those ahead of him in the rankings was Louis again – the others all ruled at least partly in the 20th century – that means that Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal was, for nearly a thousand years, the longest reigning monarch in all recorded history. This would have been a great comfort to the Mayans after their civilisation began to collapse in the 9th century, I’m sure.
Actually, of course, those words “recorded history” are problematic anyway. Nobody in Mexico knew of the old world, or vice versa, until several centuries after the Mayan collapse: what I’m really saying here is that these are regnal dates that historians feel confident about in our own time. There may well have been longer reigning monarchs who we just can’t verify, because we don’t have the records. The Wikipedia lists I’m drawing on here contain a whole list of rulers from the distant past whose dates cannot be verified.
These include Pepi II Neferkare, a pharaoh of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, who may have reigned for 94 years in the 23rd and 22nd centuries BCE, only we can’t be sure because come on, it was the 23rd and 22nd centuries BCE. My favourite, though, is Emperor Nintoku of Japan, who is traditionally given the regnal dates of 313 to 399: everyone agrees he existed, but his dates are so disputed that one historian, William George Aston, has suggested that the traditional “timeframe is inaccurate as Nintoku would be 312 years old in his 78th year of reign”. This does, indeed, seem a little unlikely.
Anyway, we can’t be certain. Something we can be certain of are the 22 different non-sovereign monarchs who lasted longer than 70 years. One of them, Sobhuza II of Swaziland (today’s Eswatini), reigned for over 82 years, until 1982. The reason that nobody on that list places above Louis XIV is on the technicality that they were outranked by more powerful monarchs for part or all of their reign (in Sobhuza’s case, the British monarch, who doubled as emperor, and who for the last 30 years of his reign was the Elizabeth II we were just talking about a few paragraphs back).
What we can say with some certainty, though, is that very few monarchs make it to their platinum jubilee. What’s more, amid all the pageantry was the knowledge that, in 2032, the government was extremely unlikely to be scrambling around trying to work out what metal came next. The Platinum Jubilee was conducted in the full knowledge that it was the last celebration of Queen Elizabeth II which she’d still be around to see.
So even went nuts – is, even now, going nuts again – in a way that feels a bit gross in the middle of a cost of living crisis, remember this: it’s a last gasp. Rest assured, it’s not a thing you’re going to have to watch again any time soon.
Look, who are you and why are you in my inbox?
The article above is an extract from the archive of the Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything, a weekly newsletter which goes out every Wednesday at 4pm. Sign up, and for just £4 a month or £40 a year you’ll start receiving it this week, plus be able to read the roughly 80% of the newsletter I never take out from behind the paywall.
That said, times are tough: if you can’t currently justify paying for some nerd’s substack (unemployed, underemployed, impoverished student, and so forth), just hit reply and I’ll give you a complimentary subscription, no questions asked.
Or here are two things you can read completely free:
“Is a nationwide black-out on fun really what Her Majesty would have wanted?” My latest New Statesman column;
A lot of nonsense I’ve written about Doctor Who, which you can find here.