Some monarchical nicknames (English edition)
Yeah, “peaceable” isn’t as nice as it sounds, sorry.
This is your final reminder that The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything is being reprinted with some new material this very week – and that you can get a signed copy from Backstory here! Or you can press this button, if you want.
If you do, you’ll get a weekly dose of stuff like this, which went to paid subscribers in May.
Everything is awful, so I’m returning to my comfort zone of learning about terrible things done by the leaders of centuries ago, rather than the ones that are still moving about. Having explored the nicknames of monarchs in both Russia and the Byzantine Empire, I figured it was time I did the same for my native land, because a) I’ve been wondering about some of the more colourful Anglo Saxon ones for decades1, and b) some of them are great.
That last word is a joke. Look:
Alfred the Great (871-899). An epithet inherited from the Romans, who got it from Alexander of Macedon, who borrowed it from the Persians, starting with Cyrus II, a man who ruled long enough ago that Alfred is actually closer to us than he was to him. Anyway: Alfred became known as such a few centuries after his death – partly because he led the fightback against the Viking invaders and began the process of unifying what would become England2; partly because he was smart enough to employ a monk named Asser to write a flattering biography while he was still alive. Either way, he’s the only native-born English king to get the title. Good for him.
Edward the Elder (899-924). Just means “the older one”. First used at the end of the 10th century, to distinguish from another Edward who’d reigned in the meantime, and who we’ll get to shortly.
Edmund the Magnificent (939-946). Also “Edmund the Deed Do-er”, which is a bit less impressive. I would never claim to be magnificent but I’m doing deeds all the time. Anyway: Edmund did a magnificent job at retaking lost lands and defeating Vikings! Less magnificently, got killed in a brawl in Gloucestershire. Oh well.
Eadwig All-Fair (955-959). Phwoar.
Edgar the Peaceful or Peaceable (959-975). My favourite one, and a big reason I wanted to do this, because it means the exact opposite of what you think. Basically, if you caused trouble, Edgar would have the lads f*ck you up. This would, among other things, keep the peace.
Edward the Martyr (975-978). Another slightly misleading one. Perhaps thinking of his namesake who five centuries later would be a Prince in the Tower, I’ve always imagined an innocent child – but he was a lairy teenager who some contemporary accounts make sound like a right prick. At any rate, he came to power in the midst of a row about whether the next king should be him or his half-brother, and found himself murdered by Æthelred’s faction just a couple of years into his reign. His death had very little to do with religion, but killing a king was something you weren’t really supposed to do, so he’s remembered as a martyr all the same.
Æthelred the Unready (979-1013, 1014-1016).3 Not unready in the sense we’d understand it, but “ill-advised”. Æthelred means “well-advised”. It’s a funny joke, see.
Sweyn Forkbeard (1013-14). You can probably guess this one, if I’m honest. A Danish king who conquered England and was being all pleased with himself when he died, five weeks later. Well done there, you cleft-bearded loser.
Edmund Ironside (1016). Impressed everyone with how bravely he tried to resist yet another Danish invasion. Died in the attempt. But still, looked well ‘ard trying.
Cnut the Great (1016-1035). His greatness lay in both his extensive North Sea Empire, and the fact that, having conquered England, he did a pretty good job of running it. The thing about Alfred being the only “Great” native-born king still holds because Cnut was a foreign.
Harold Harefoot (1035-1040). “Fleet of foot”. “Fast”, basically – because he claimed the crown before anyone could stop him. David Mitchell, in his infuriatingly good book Unruly, describes this as a back-handed compliment, like being known as “Harold First-at-the-Buffet”.
Edward the Confessor (1042-1066). Really liked god. Did not really like his wife. Thus failed to have a child, leading to yet another succession crisis, this one a really big one.
Harold Godwinson (1066). The facts that a) he had a surname and b) it was a patronymic, taken from his extremely powerful dad, the social climber Earl Godwin, do suggest a reason why his claim on the throne might have been a little bit tenuous. No wonder he was followed by:
William the Conquerer (1066-1087). I’m not going to explain that, because if you don’t know what happened in 1066 to give him this name then I frankly don’t understand how you ended up subscribing to this newsletter. (Glad you did, though!) He was also known as William the Bastard, a reference to his illegitimacy, though also possibly, since he was mainly referred to as such by non-Norman sources, a reference to the fact he was a complete bastard.
Actually, I say William followed Harold, and he probably did. But there’s also:
Edgar Ætheling (1066, possibly). Grandson of Edmund Ironside, probably born in exile in Hungary. An “Ætheling” was not, as I for too long believed, a name for a child, but a label for a royal prince potentially eligible for the throne: as the last surviving male member of the House of Cerdic, the Wessex line that most of the kings I’ve mentioned thus far were drawn from, Edgar may have been proclaimed king by the part of the English ruling class which survived the Battle of Hastings.
If he was though, it wasn’t for very long. And despite periodic attempts at rebellion and the fact he was on occasion the king’s prisoner, Edgar seems to have lived until at least the 1120s. Perhaps William wasn’t that big a bastard after all.
William Rufus (1087-1100). Latin for “the red”. Probably either his hair or complexion, depending on how rude you wish to be.
Henry Beauclerc (1100-1135). French for “fine scholar”, meaning “educated” or possibly “a swot”. As the youngest of the Conqueror’s three sons, he was probably on course to be a bishop, while his older brothers William Rufus and Robert Curthose (“short stockings”; short-arse, probably) got England and Normandy respectively. Henry, though, might have been implicated in the death of the former, and definitely defeated, deposed and locked up the latter. See? That’s what a good education can do for you.
Empress Matilda (1141, maybe). Another disputed one: Henry’s daughter, not allowed to reign despite being her father’s only surviving legitimate daughter and nominated successor. (Her brother William Adelin – Ætheling again – died in the White Ship disaster, it was a whole thing.) Matilda called herself “empress” because, well, she’d been an empress, married briefly to Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. He died; she kept the title. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
Henry Curtmantle (1154-1199). Better – much better – known as Henry II. “Curtmantle” means “short-cloak”, a reference to his preference for the short cloak favoured in his native Anjou.
Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199). A brave crusader. Okay, he didn’t give the slightest shit about England and was essentially a professional Islamophobe. But he did it very bravely.
John Lackland (1199-1216). Another insult: as Henry’s youngest son, John wasn’t expected to get any part of his empire. Ha, ha! Began to seem extra appropriate once he came to the throne and ruled so badly that he lost all the French lands painstakingly assembled by better English kings over the previous 150 years. Given that these were the only bits his older brother Richard had cared about, this must have felt intensely embarrassing, which is why John spent the rest of his reign taxing the hell out of the English nobility to fund a military campaign, and the rest is Magna Carta.
Edward Longshanks (1272-1307). Him with the long legs. Towered over most contemporaries, at an estimated 6’2” – which, given people were shorter then, probably translates to an estimated 6’4” in today’s money. That was useful when riding a horse or fighting with a sword.
It’s notable that the nicknames dry up after that. The next few monarchs are sometimes referred to by place names – just as Matilda’s rival Stephen had been Stephen of Blois, Edward II is sometimes Edward of Caernarfon and Henry IV was Henry Bolingbroke because of which castles they happened to be born in. Later on there are a handful like Bloody Mary (killed a lot of protestants, though as the first queen regnant we may also be looking at a touch of misogyny here), or William of Orange (Dutchman referred to by his house, in part because he invaded).
Generally speaking, though, later monarchs are known by number, rather than nickname. That’s a habit that may have kicked in at least partly because Edward Longshanks was followed by two other Edwards, so they became Edwards first to third – even though normal human counting would suggest they should have been fourth to sixth.
In some ways this is a shame: just as the Bakerloo Line is more fun than Line 14, a good nickname can provide colour, telling you something about these distant figures. On the other hand though it does at least spare us the likes of Edward the Nazi, George the Stammerer or Charles Sausage-Fingers, so perhaps we should be grateful.
That’s enough of that.
And if you like this sort of nonsense I can recommend a great book.
Ever since my much-missed maternal granddad Wally presented me with a royal family tree sometime in the late 1980s, and my mind was blown by the fact there was history before the Norman Conquest. I mean, wow.
This process would mostly be completed in the time of Alfred’s grandson, Athelstan (924-939), which means he sometimes gets the title of “first English monarch”. I go back and forth on whether that’s better, but currently think starting the count with Alfred is right: England’s borders wouldn’t be finalised for centuries, which makes Athelstan a fairly arbitrary place to draw the line, suggesting that e.g. Yorkshire matters more than Cumbria; the union of Wessex and English Mercia is the real starting point of England; and anyway, this way we got a whole extra king Edward.
Sometimes referred to as Æthelred II which annoys me almost as much as the numbering of the eleven king Edwards, because he definitely wasn’t. The first Æthelred immediately preceded Alfred but he was only king of Wessex, and that doesn’t count, sorry.