Abstract
This brief chapter summarises the diverse experiences of monarchs in the Great War, and the impact of those experiences on their own individual reputations and the robustness of the monarchic institutions in the countries over which they ruled (symbolically or actively). It reinforces the challenge to the traditional view that monarchy was, after 1918, considered irrelevant by contemporaries by pointing to the choices of monarchical government in a number of ‘new’ post-war states, such as Jordan, Iraq and what became Yugoslavia, as well as the survival of monarchies in locations such as Bulgaria. It emphasises the extent to which individual actions and personalities, combined with pre-existing tensions and problems, brought down monarchies—notably in Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary and eventually the Ottoman Empire. But it also rejects the notion that these indicate a general weakness in the monarchical form of government, in some form or another. It also challenges scholars to revisit modern monarchies afresh, taking them seriously rather than dismissing them as irrelevant.
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Notes
- 1.
Otto 1 was crowned Emperor and successor to Charlemagne in 962AD; the Habsburg Empire grew out of that after the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. The Romanovs were the second dynasty to rule Russia, succeeding in the seventeenth century to the Rurik dynasty, which had established itself around 862AD.
- 2.
Generally, it is accepted that it was at its zenith in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Paul Lockhard (2007) Denmark 1513–1660. The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance Monarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
- 3.
Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham, and Michael Kandiah, eds (2016) The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the Present: Long to Reign Over Us? (Basingstoke: Palgrave).
- 4.
Under the Statute of Westminster 1931, the monarch is head of these states quite independently of her role as Queen of the UK and head of the Commonwealth. The divisibility of the British Crown was confirmed by the Royal Titles Act 1953. See Vernon Bogdanor (1997) The Monarchy and the Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp255–6; 267–70.
- 5.
The Japanese dynasty is perhaps the prime example of a ruling House that has, because of historical negative associations, chosen to avoid the appearance of cultivating links with the Japanese military even years after the ending of the Second World War. See Kenneth Ruoff (2001) The People’s Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy 1945–1995 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) p131.
- 6.
See, for instance, ‘King Abdullah of Jordan: A warrior and a biker but is he a statesman?’ Daily Telegraph, 5 February 2015.
- 7.
‘Prince Harry’s ex-army chief blasts “slander” from Labour MP’, Daily Express, 28 September 2017; ‘Angela Rayner defends Prince Harry’, Guardian, 25 September 2017; ‘Labour MP Emma Dent Coad faces backlash’, Standard, 27 September 2017.
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Rowbotham, J., Glencross, M. (2018). Epilogue. In: Glencross, M., Rowbotham, J. (eds) Monarchies and the Great War. Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89515-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89515-4_11
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