The first king of all of England was Athelstan (895-939 AD) of the House of Wessex, grandson of Alfred the Great and 30th great-granduncle to Queen Elizabeth II. The Anglo-Saxon king defeated the last of the Viking invaders and consolidated Britain, ruling from 925-939 AD.
The House of Windsor came into being in 1917, when the name was adopted as the British Royal Family's official name by a proclamation of King George V, replacing the historic name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. It remains the family name of the current Royal Family.
The British monarchy traces its origins from the petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval Scotland, which consolidated into the kingdoms of England and Scotland by the 10th century. England was conquered by the Normans in 1066, after which Wales also gradually came under the control of Anglo-Normans.
James I (1603–25) The First King of Great Britain | The Royal Mint.
The oldest monarch at the start of his reign was Charles III aged 73 years, 298 days when he became king in 2022. Prior to this, William IV had held this record since 1830, becoming king aged 64 years, 308 days.
The only time when there was no King or Queen in Britain was when the country was a republic between 1649 and 1660. (In 1649 King Charles I was executed and Britain became a Republic for eleven years. The monarchy was restored in 1660.)
Later Viking raids and rulers
So the Vikings were not permanently defeated – England was to have four Viking kings between 1013 and 1042. The greatest of these was King Cnut, who was king of Denmark as well as of England.
How far does Queen Elizabeth's bloodline go? The bloodline of the current royal family can be traced back some 1,209 years! This covers 37 generations and goes all the way back to the 9th century.
On 7 February 1649, the office of King was formally abolished. The Civil Wars were essentially confrontations between the monarchy and Parliament over the definitions of the powers of the monarchy and Parliament's authority.
MAR 1 Royal Beginnings: King Arthur to William the Conqueror
Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor left lasting marks before William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066 and initiated Normal rule.
The origins of the United Kingdom can be traced to the time of the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan, who in the early 10th century ce secured the allegiance of neighbouring Celtic kingdoms and became “the first to rule what previously many kings shared between them,” in the words of a contemporary chronicle.
SAXON KINGS. Egbert (Ecgherht) was the first monarch to establish a stable and extensive rule over all of Anglo-Saxon England. After returning from exile at the court of Charlemagne in 802, he regained his kingdom of Wessex.
Princess Alice became the oldest known royal in history when she reached the age of 101 years and 269 days on September 20, 2003. She beat the previous record held by Princess Leonilla of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn (Prussia) who lived for 101 years and 268 days.
6. The German-English royal house. The English royal house bore the German name "House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" until 1917. This was because the British Queen Victoria, who belonged to the House of Hanover, had married the German Prince Albert from the noble family of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in the 19th century.
Queen Victoria's mother was originally from Germany, so Victoria spoke only German for the first three years of her life. Furthermore, she was raised by the German baroness Louise Lehzen and also received private German tuition during her school years.
The Danish monarchy has existed for more than 1000 years and is among the oldest royal houses in the world. Read more about the successive monarchs in Denmark all the way from Gorm the Old to the present sovereign, HM Queen Margrethe II.
Answer and Explanation: None of King Henry VIII's children had children of their own, so there are no living direct descendants of King Henry VIII. His sister Margaret, however, is an ancestor of England's current queen, Queen Elizabeth II.
Europe's royal houses have shared close family ties for centuries. The British royals have more German roots than you might think. About 300 years ago, on August 1, 1714 — the English Queen Anne died. As a result, the German Elector George Louis of Hanover was proclaimed king of Great Britain in absentia.
On November 13, A.D. 1002, Æthelred Unræd, ruler of the English kingdom of Wessex, “ordered slain all the Danish men who were in England,” according to a royal charter. This drastic step was not taken on a whim, but was the product of 200 years of Anglo-Saxon frustration and fear.
(Bridgeman Images)A Viking army invaded the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia in 869 and killed its king, Edmund. The murdered monarch would be venerated as one of the great saints of medieval England, but his cult began in Danish East Anglia and was promoted by the people who killed him.
At the battle of Ashdown in 871, Alfred routed the Viking army in a fiercely fought uphill assault.
Queen Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning monarch in British history on 9 September 2015 when she surpassed the reign of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria. On 6 February 2017 she became the first British monarch to celebrate a Sapphire Jubilee, commemorating 65 years on the throne.
Edward VI became king at the age of nine upon the death of his father, Henry VIII, and a Regency was created. Although he was intellectually precocious (fluent in Greek and Latin, he kept a full journal of his reign), he was not, however, physically robust.
In 1649, after the Civil War, the monarchy and the House of Lords are abolished.