The French, the Scots, Parliament... Who wants to be an English king?

As I enjoyed David Starkey's program about Henry VIII which was shown in one of our more learned TV channels, I bought the whole series Monarchy featuring Starkey when shopping in New York, thinking I'd probably get through it in a leisurely pace as the evenings where I feel ambitious and eager to learn new things can be easily counted.

Unexpectedly, I was completely hooked. This is as fun as watching a costume drama. It's the kind of history that got me interested in the subject in the first place. Personalities, that's what grips you - not the invention of the stirrup, or horrid agricultural reforms, though I realise they were fearfully important to a lot of people. The problem about the courses I studied in History at University is that even when they did grudgingly mention kings and queens - "political history" as it was called - they made it purposely as dull as possible so as to leave young minds with the impression that, yawn, it really is all about dates and battles. However, if the strategy was supposed to kindle our enthusiasm for the lives of peasants instead, it didn't work. The lives of peasants were still boring, no matter how you dressed it up.

Not even Starkey dares to admit that his series is all about kings and queens. No, it has a greater theme: the uniqueness of the English monarchy as an institution. And to be fair, he does say quite a lot about this. His argument is that the English monarchy has always had limited power, and been all the better for it. But this doesn't hide the fact that there is a lot of personal stuff about the various monarchs crammed into the series, and this is what makes it so watchable. The donnish matter-of-factness of Starkey, even when he's imparting gossip, is a hoot. One minute he's trying to sort out the different religious factions in the Civil War - another he's stating, poker-faced, "The only thing rigid about Charles [II]..." and ends the sentence the way you would expect, but would not think a professional historian would dare to.

Not that I'm any wiser as to what makes a good king, though. Starkey is too much of a historian to make his personal likes and dislikes too plain. As for what makes a king (or queen, for that matter) popular in the eyes of his/her contemporaries, the answer is depressing: if you're successful in war, then basically you're home, even if you're a thug like Henry V. Here are some dos and don'ts of English kingship (or equivalent) as I can make out:

DO:
1) Whack the French.
2) Whack the Scots.
3) Whack the Spaniards if they attack - otherwise they're not worth your time.

DON'T
1) Get beaten by the French, or make peace with them, or form an alliance with them.
2) Get beaten by the Scots. Don't form an alliance with them either, because once you do they'll suddenly start to lose.
3) Declare war on the Dutch - one, because they'll beat you, and two, because they're not really the enemy. Unlike the French.
4) Think that just because you're the Head of the Church of England, that means you actually have a say about religious issues.
5) Dissolve Parliament every fortnight, not even when they are being really annoying and denying you money for obvious things such as the defence of the realm. If you have to dissolve Parliament, do it in a manly, decisive way so as not to seem petulant (I'm not sure this helps with the contemporaries, but it helps with Starkey).
6) Have a sarcastic boyfriend.

So the "don't" list turns out to be rather longer than the drearily martial "do" list. I do sometimes wonder when watching Monarchy: is there no other way to become great than on the battlefield? What about some cracking laws? Or an impressive state administration (well, I am a bureaucrat by trade)? And most of all, why would anyone want to bother with it all - uppity Parliamentarians, gruff nobles who criticise your love life, men of the church who always seem to be against the doctrines you favour yourself - just for an English-style, limited monarchy?

Well, that's the monarchs' problem: I enjoy just seeing them fight it out best they can, poor beasts. I'm not always in agreement with Starkey - he's convinced Richard III murdered the Princes, for instances, and he's a bit severe on the Charleses - but then no-one is perfect. Let's see if I can stand watching the Napoleonic war episode without hurling things at the screen, though. As already established, whacking the French, in whatever context, for whatever motive and with whatever consequences, always seems to be considered a good thing by the English.