Timeline of Kings and Queens, page 20
By the age of 36 he had two doctorate degrees and became a professor of ethics. He became cardinal at the age of 47 and led a force in Poland to try and counter communism.
In October 1978, Wojtyla became the first Slavic pope ever and the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, taking the name John Paul II. Within months of his election, he returned to his homeland and some historians say he helped bring about the end of the Cold War.
He survived an assassination attempt in May 1981 and had to spend more than two months recovering in a hospital in Rome. Amazingly he could communicate his messages in eight different languages. Pope John Paul II died at the age of 84 in his private apartment at the Vatican on 3 April 2005.
2007
United Kingdom James, viscount Severn, son of the earl of Wessex, is born; he is eighth in line of succession to the throne.
2008
United Kingdom Prince Harry becomes the first member of the Royal Family in 25 years to serve on the front line, in Afghanistan. Prince Charles becomes the first Prince of Wales to reach the age of 60 without becoming monarch.
Appendix
Albania
Following many years as a Roman province, Albania was ruled successively by Normans, Serbians and Bulgarians. It became an autonomous state for a brief spell before being overrun by the Ottoman Turks, who ruled for almost 500 years.
In 1912, following the Balkan War, Albania became a principality, before becoming a republic in 1925. This lasted only three years before a monarchy was introduced.
Italy annexed the country in 1939. After the Second World War, in 1946, it became a communist republic under the leadership of Enver Hoxha, who ruled for four decades, dying in 1985.
Aragón
Aragón was a small county in north-east Spain. Following its absorption by Navarre in the 10th century, it was revived as an independent monarchy in 1035 by Sancho the Great, king of Navarre, who, having done his utmost to unite the kingdoms of Spain, divided his kingdom between his three sons. His illegitimate son, Ramiro, became king of Aragón. In January 1516, Ferdinand of Aragón became the first king of a united Spain.
Austria
Austria – the Osterreich, or eastern state of Bavaria – was a duchy from the middle of the 12th century. In 1267, Rudolf of Habsburg took possession of it, and, as territories were added to it over the years, it became the Habsburg Empire.
On the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire by Napoleon I, in 1806, Archduke Franz of Austria took the title, emperor of Austria.
In 1867, the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was created, being dissolved at the end of the First World War. The central section became the country of Austria, and the remainder became Hungary and Czechoslovakia or was absorbed by Italy, Romania, Poland and Yugoslavia.
Bavaria
Bavaria was a kingdom located in southern Germany, at one time the second largest state in the German Empire, in terms of both population and area.
The House of Wittelsbach provided the rulers of the Duchy of Bavaria from 1375. In 1623, it became an electorate and, finally, in 1805 it became a kingdom. The last king, Ludwig III, fell from power after the First World War, ending 538 years of rule by the House of Wittelsbach.
Belgium
Belgium was for centuries known as the Southern Netherlands. Provinces such as Flanders, Brabant, Limburg and Hainault often came under German rule. The 1815 Congress of Vienna, which reorganized Europe at the end of the Napoleonic wars, created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, uniting Belgium and Holland. William I of the House of Orange-Nassau became king.
In 1830, following a revolution, the Kingdom of Belgium was formed, under the Coburg family; Leopold I became king in 1831, and his descendants still rule today.
Bohemia
The greater part of what was once the Kingdom of Bohemia is now part of the Czech Republic. It was established as a duchy in the 9th century and then combined with Moravia to become a suzerain state of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1198, it became a kingdom, with Ottokar I becoming the first king of the Premyslid dynasty.
After being ruled by various families, in 1562 Bohemia was inherited by the Habsburgs, who retained possession until the end of the First World War, when the state of Czechoslovakia was created from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Bosnia
Bosnia was ruled from the 12th until the 14th century by Slavic bans, or noblemen. The first Bosnian state was established by the Ban Kulin, in the 12th century, and reached its most powerful point under the rule of King Tvrtko, towards the end of the 14th century.
After 1463, when Bosnia was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, it remained within the Ottoman Empire for four centuries. The Ottomans ceded administration of the country to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878, and it was formally annexed by the empire in 1908.
Following the First World War, Bosnia was incorporated into the new Slavic Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The Bulgarian Empire
A khanate, Great Bulgaria, collapsed in the 7th century, and the Volgar Bulgars who had lived there moved to the area of the Lower Danube, which was annexed by the Byzantine Empire, remaining this way until the Asen brothers created a powerful kingdom there. The first ruler to use the name tsar (emperor) was Simeon I, after his crushing defeat of the army of the Byzantine Empire, in 913. His successors styled themselves this way until the country fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1396.
When Bulgaria was finally freed from Ottoman rule, almost 500 years later, in 1878, Alexander I, of the Coburg family, first monarch of the newly liberated nation, adopted the title ‘kniaz’. Then, when complete independence was achieved in 1908, his successor, Ferdinand, changed the title once more to tsar. This was the title used by him and his successor, Boris III, until the abolition of the monarchy by the communist regime, which established a republic in 1946.
Burgundy
The original Burgundians were Germans who settled the eastern area of France in the 5h century ad, only to be conquered by the Franks a century later.
The last Burgundian king was Conrad II, who was also Holy Roman Emperor. The kingdom was divided up and eventually absorbed by the French monarchy.
Denmark
The Danish monarchy is one of the oldest monarchies in the world, with only the Japanese monarchy having been in existence longer. The first ruling dynasty was that of Gorm the Old, founded in 960, a dynasty that ruled until 1448.
The House of Oldenburg then reigned from 1448 to 1863, when the crown passed to the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, another branch of the same house, which enjoyed a line of descent from King Christian III. The kingdom had been nominally elective, but was, in practice, hereditary and absolutist.
The House of Oldenburg occupies the throne to this day.
Denmark has been involved in various unions with its Scandinavian neighbours. From 1380 to 1397 it was joined with Norway; from 1397 to 1536, it was part of the Kalmar Union when it joined, with some interruptions, with Norway (with Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Shetland and Orkney) and Sweden (including part of Finland) under a single monarch; from 1536 to 1814 it was part of the Kingdom of Denmark and Norway.
England
The Kingdom of England existed from the 9th or 10th century until 1707, when it became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Its history, however, stretches back far beyond the 9th century. Part of the Roman Empire, it was then overrun by Teutonic invaders from northern Germany, the indigenous Celts being driven westwards. These Anglo-Saxons took control of the richer lands of southern and south-east England and created a number of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Now and then, a powerful ruler would arise who would, for a time, gain supremacy over the others, kings such as Offa of Mercia, who ruled towards the end of the 8th century.
When Viking invaders from Scandinavia began to threaten the country’s independence and prosperity, there was a growing necessity for the English to unite to repel them. At the end of the 9th century, Alfred, king of Wessex, and his descendants who ruled for the next 100 years, led the resistance.
In the 11th century, West Saxon and Danish kings ruled, and succession was irregular. The Normans seized the throne in the mid 11th century, with the slaying of the English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.
Since 1066, six families have ruled England, both on their own and as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Following the reign of the Normans, the English throne passed to the Plantagenets, from Anjou in France. The wars of the roses brought an end to the Plantagenet dynasty when Welshman Henry Tudor deposed Richard III. The Scottish Stuarts came to the throne when Elizabeth I died childless, and the crowns of England and Scotland were united under James I of England and VI of Scotland.
In 1714, the first king of German origin took the throne, George I of the House of Hanover. When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, another German family arrived. During the First World War, the royal family changed its name to the more English-sounding Windsor, and the present queen, Elizabeth II, and her family are of the House of Windsor.
Etruria
Etruria is also known as Tuscia, from which originates the modern name of Tuscany.
In 1800, Napoleon I dispossessed the grand duke, Ferdinand, whose family had ruled since 1531, and restyled the Grand Duchy of Tuscany as the Kingdom of Etruria. The crown prince of Parma was crowned the first of two kings who reigned before Ferdinand was restored in 1814. In 1860, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy.
France
Although it is not entirely certain when the Kingdom of France came into being, the name France comes from a Germanic tribe known as the Franks. The first rulers were chieftains, the oldest known of whom is Pharamond Clovis I, who was the first to become a king. Around the time of his rule, about 486, the last Roman official was defeated and driven from Gaul, and Clovis ruled a Merovingian Frankish Kingdom that existed until the Treaty of Verdun in 843, whereby the Frankish Kingdom splintered and three great states were created – the Eastern Kingdom would become Germany; the Middle Kingdom became Lotharingia, later part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Western Kingdom became France, with Charles the Bald as its first truly independent ruler. It was the Carolingian kings who eventually united the Frankish kingdom for the first time since Clovis, becoming the first true French monarchy.
In 987 Hugh Capet became king, and members of the Capet family would rule France until 1328.
The monarch was called king of the Franks until around the reign of Philippe IV, who came to power in 1285, but the title was also used later for the brief period during the French Revolution, when the Constitution of 1791 was in effect, and after the 1830 Revolution, when the king was styled ‘King of the French’ instead of king of France, in something of a public relations effort to link the monarch in the popular mind to the people of France rather than to the country.
For centuries, the power of the French kings was not consolidated in their own realm, exemplified by the fact that, in 1340, Edward II of England called himself king of France as well as England. Again, in 1420, Henry V called himself Regens Franciae.
Germany
After the fall of Rome, the Franks, Agilulfings and the Carolingians divided Germany between them. This remained in place until 800, when Charlemagne created the Holy Roman Empire.
Germany became a powerful force in Europe, but was hampered by being divided into a number of duchies and minor states, such as Swabia, Saxony and Franconia. By the 16th century, the Habsburgs were in power, but it was not until 1871 that national unity was created with the formation of the German Empire by the Hohenzollern family, who controlled most of northern Germany. Wilhelm I, who had been king of Prussia for 10 years, was persuaded, against his better judgement, to accept the title of kaiser (emperor).
After the end of the First World War, Wilhelm became a private citizen, living the last 23 years of his life in Holland.
Great Moravia
The Principality of Great Moravia came into existence in 833, when Mojmír I unified the two neighbouring states, Nitra and Moravia. Although occasionally, during its brief existence, its leaders would submit to the king of the East Franks, it endeavoured, on the whole, to maintain its independence.
Internal strife and incessant war with the Carolingian Empire weakened the country, and eventually it was overrun by the Magyars around 896. Great Moravia disappeared later when it was shared between Poland, Hungary, Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire.
Greece
Greece finally threw off the shackles of centuries of Ottoman rule in the 1820s. The new kingdom, founded in 1829, lasted until 1967, when a military coup ousted the last king, Constantine II, from power to live in exile.
Hanover
Hanover became a kingdom by the Treaty of Vienna in 1814, following the Napoleonic wars. Prior to that date, the rulers had been styled elector.
The country’s first three kings were also kings of Britain – George III, George IV and William IV.
Hanover was separated from Britain on the death of William IV, making it an autonomous country, with Ernest-Augustus – the duke of Cumberland – as king.
Cumberland’s son, George V, was the last king of Hanover; the kingdom was annexed by Prussia in 1866 and George went into exile in Paris.
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire consisted, in the beginning, of the Kingdom of Germany and the Kingdom of Italy, which incorporated the north of the country. The emperor was elected by seven German prince-electors and, following his election, had to travel to Italy to be crowned king and then to Rome for his coronation as emperor, by the current pope.
The elected Holy Roman Emperor used the title ‘king of the Romans’, until his coronation, which was usually performed by the pope in Rome. Coming into common usage in the 11th century, during the reign of Henry IV who ruled as emperor, but had still not been crowned by the pope, it later came to be used by the heir to the imperial throne, who was elected during the lifetime of his predecessor.
The question of succession was always a thorny issue, due to the fact that it was an elective monarchy, but, once crowned, the emperor was free to pursue the election of his heir as king. The heir would become king of the Romans.
The Habsburgs effectively took possession of the title of Holy Roman Emperor following the election of Charles V in 1500. The Habsburg heir-apparent became king of Rome or king of the Romans, and after 1556 the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire no longer sought coronation by the pope. They styled themselves emperor-elect on assuming the throne. ‘King of the Romans’ ceased, therefore, to be used by reigning monarchs.
Napoleon I revived the title king of the Romans for his son and heir, Napoleon II, although after 1815 he was more commonly known as the duke of Reichstadt.
Hungary
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, various tribes occupied the land that would become Hungary, until the empire of Attila the Hun was centred there. By the middle of the 10th century, however, the warlike Magyars were in control, eventually seizing Croatia, too, in 1095, and stretching the country’s borders all the way to the Adriatic.
The Arpad family ruled until 1301, when Wenceslaus of Bohemia became king. Two hundred years later, the Ottoman Turks took over, remaining in power until the end of the 17th century, when the Habsburgs gained control. It was then one half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until its dissolution at the end of the First World War.
Ireland
From 500 until 900, there were numerous kingdoms and hundreds of kings in Ireland. In the 9th century the Vikings controlled the country, founding small kingdoms centred on Dublin and other parts of the country. They were expelled in 1014. The Normans wiped out the remaining Irish kingdoms, and from 1170 the island was a lordship until it was attached to the English crown in 1541.
Italy
The Scirian Kingdom that followed the fall of the Roman Empire lasted until the end of the 5th century, being replaced by the Ostrogoths. Italy was then briefly part of the Byzantine Empire, and from 951 the Holy Roman Emperor also styled himself king of Italy.
The country was divided into small states over the next two and a half centuries, before being unified, in 1860, under the House of Savoy.
The king of Sardinia, Vittorio Emanuele II, became king in 1861, and the last king, Umberto II, abdicated in 1946, after reigning for a matter of weeks. A referendum had shown that the Italian people had had enough of the monarchy.
León and Asturias/ León and Castile
León, a city in north-west Spain, became a kingdom under Garcia, when his father, Alfonso III, divided his kingdom between his sons, around 910.
In 1035 it merged with Castile when Ferdinand I killed Vermudo III at the Battle of Tamaron.
Naples
Naples was, at one time, part of the Kingdom of Sicily. Following the revolt known as the Sicilian Vespers, when the Anjous were ousted from Sicily, they retained control of Naples. In December 1816, Naples and Sicily were absorbed into the new Kingdom of Italy.
Navarre
The Kingdom of Pamplona, later Navarre, occupied the strategically important southern slope of the western Pyrenees and a section of coastline of the Bay of Biscay. Following Roman occupation, neither the Visigoths nor the Arabs managed to establish a permanent occupation. The Franks tried several times to establish control over the area, but in 842 the Basque chieftain Íñigo Arista was chosen as king of Pamplona. The state expanded under his successors into the Kingdom of Navarre.
