In the spirit of the King's Birthday

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨tetris11@feddit.uk⁩ to ⁨unitedkingdom@feddit.uk⁩

https://feddit.uk/pictrs/image/20bb4e4c-4bc1-4da5-a779-08c0afdd8c09.webp

From Historia Civilis’ video, Reform or Revolution? (1830 to 1832)

The greatest thing that George IV ever did was die at the exact right time. That’s a mean thing to say, but the people at the time were way meaner.

In their obituary, The Times described their dead King, “the character of which rose little higher than animal indulgence.”

The people hated him. He was a glutton and an ostentatious spender during bad economic times.

A couple of days later, the paper couldn’t resist going back to get one last kick in, “there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased King.”

(Stop, he’s already dead!)

George had 10 children, but none with his actual wife, (you had one job, idiot) and so the Crown passed to his 64 year old brother William.

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tetris11@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The reason being, that when the king dies, it’s been tradition to dissolve parliament and call for a new election. The conservatives at the time did not like this because they lost 100 seats (after, um, killing 500 people at a peaceful protest in Manchester)

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- Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I don’t think that happened in September 2022 unfortunately. It would have been a great time to.
  
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huf@hexbear.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
IIRC william was an unusually politically savvy king.

he did his coronation on the cheap so as to ease public sentiment. and then when told “sire, the peasants are revolting”, he did not say “yes, of course”, but (eventually) put pressure on the conservatives to get the reform bill passed.

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- Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  George V was also pretty based. Essentially, the House of Lords kept rejecting the Common’s bills to limit the Lords so he threatened to fill the Lords with people who won’t reject it.
  
  We’ve been pretty good with monarchs in recent history anyway, barring Edward VIII
  
  Sure, you can complain about the system, but now we have a funny old man who likes nature and pedestrian based affordable towns who’s worst flaw is that he cheated on his wife compared to his clownterpart across the pond who’s done it several times.
  
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  - tetris11@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I dont like the monarchy, in the same way that I dont like the BBC.
    
    But to remove them and replace them with something far far worse? No thank you.
    
    I’m weirdly glad that some of my taxes goes towards experimental green towns, or part of my license fee goes towards high quality educational kids shows.
    
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- tetris11@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Heh. And yeah the conservatives at the time sounded almost as bad as the ones we have today – wielding the power of counties with almost no constituents (e.g. the empty ancient city of Sarum had 2 MPs, the undersea city of Dunwich had huge voting power, and the Isle of Wight transparently bribed the few sparse voters it had because of how large it was)
  
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  - huf@hexbear.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    and also, their only idea to solve the crisis was to commit a thousand more peterloos, which doesnt seem like a great idea in the long run…
    
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