'A little like Game of Thrones': How the Royal Family came to rule

We may associate the Royal Family with strict protocols and stiff upper lips, but King Charles III and the House of Windsor can trace their lineage back through centuries of bloody wars and brutal power struggles to 1066, when the illegitimate son of a duke and grandson of a tanner ascended the throne.

William the Conqueror was crowned on Christmas Day, 956 years ago in Westminster Abbey. Known as “William the Bastard” in his day, his father was the Duke Robert I of Normandy and his mother, Herleve, was the daughter of a tanner, according to the Royal Family's website. 

Born around 1028, he became heir to the duchy following the death of his father in 1035 and was knighted at 15 by King Henry I of France – an ally who unsuccessfully tried to invade Normandy a decade later.

“The history of the British monarchy is a little like Game of Thrones, only real,” Graham Broad, an associate professor of history and department chair with King's University College at Western University, said in a phone interview on Friday.

“Defenders of the monarchy, their core argument is that it promotes stability, but for centuries in medieval Britain, in medieval Europe, the reality was almost incessant war over questions of dynastic lineage, dynastic succession…Monarchs who were unable to furnish a male heir always felt precarious and vulnerable.”

Since the High Middle Ages, or the end of the Viking era, European countries have taken hereditary succession and primogeniture very seriously, according to Daniel Woolf, author and professor of history at Queen's University. England was especially serious about it, and when it was “set aside” – as it was in 1399 when Richard II was deposed by his cousin, who became Henry IV – things got extremely ugly.

“That deposition essentially precipitated 100 years of almost Game of Thrones-like struggle – what we now call the War of the Roses,” Woolf said in a phone interview on Friday.

Even marriages were no guarantee for peace. Edward II, who reigned from 1307 to 1327, for example, “had few of the qualities that made a successful medieval king,” according to his biography on the Royal Family website. His own wife, Isabella of France, led an invasion against him in 1326. Within a year, he was murdered after being forced to pass the crown to his son.

“Marriage throughout the Middle Ages up to the 19th century was very much part of diplomatic alliances and deal making and very much arranged,” Woolf said.

“There was so much intermarriage between the royal houses of Europe that it would be difficult to find anybody who isn't actually descended, at least in part, from a whole bunch of famous people from a thousand years ago.”

Stability finally came after Britain became a constitutional monarchy following the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

“Only once in the last 350 years has a British monarch overturned a piece of legislation, for example, and that was over 300 years ago,” Broad said.

“So at this point, you've really got a stable dynastic succession because no one's going to go to war anymore over a figurehead position.”

Monarchists today argue that knowing who's going to be the next monarch for decades to come through a system of succession promotes stability, he added.

TRACING THE WINDSORS BACK TO WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

To follow King Charles III's family tree back nearly a thousand years is a complicated and convoluted exercise involving royal houses, cadet branches of other houses, beheadings, conquests, and of course, marriages and alliances.

“It's about 34 generations – depending on how you count them, but you can actually trace a direct line from William the Conqueror to Charles III,” Woolf said.

“There's all sorts of jumps and changes in family name along the way, as you may imagine.”

The Windsors became the reigning royal family when King Edward VII ascended the throne in 1901. They are descended from the Hanoverians, which was the line that took power in 1714. The House of Hanover, with its German origins, had succeeded the Stuarts, who ruled Scotland for centuries until 1603 when Scotland's James VI became the King of England and Ireland as James I.

James I had succeeded Elizabeth I, famously known as the Virgin Queen. She was the last member to reign from the House of Tudor, the ruling royal family of the 16th century in England.

“When Elizabeth I died, that line was extinct. So basically it went to Elizabeth's cousin who was King of Scotland. He in turn, was a great grandson of Henry VII, the first Tudor king,” explained Woolf.

Henry VII could trace his ancestry to Edward III in the 14th century, who in turn was a descendent of Henry II in the 12th century. Henry II was the great grandson of William the Conqueror.

William managed to survive childhood and became known for his military successes.

“Lots of people were trying to get rid of him because it's rough being a child and inheriting the duchy,” said Woolf.

His online royal biography describes him as “a very experienced and ruthless military commander, ruler and administrator who had unified Normandy and inspired fear and respect outside his duchy.”

William spent more than half a year preparing his invasion of England, bringing a force of around 7,000 men across the Channel via some 600 ships. He claimed that Edward the Confessor, a distant cousin, had promised him the throne, and that Harold II, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon English king, was a usurper.

With the support of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and the approval of the Pope, William and his fleet of invaders landed in England in 1066. It was a closely fought battle that William eventually won after Harold and two of his brothers were killed.

“This created a change in who all British monarchs will be going forward,” Broad said.

“But it also created a link between the thrones of France and England that would, in the centuries to come, be the source of great tension and even long periods of war because eventually the kings of England would come to claim the throne of France.”

It also took centuries before the English were willing to admit that William the Conqueror's invasion had actually been a conquest, Woolf added.

“They kept to this kind of myth that William had actually had a legitimate right...It's really quite a complicated and neat story. But if the Battle of Hastings had gone a different way, there might have been no Norman conquest and we might all still be speaking Old English.”