Sizzling saga of the British monarchy

Divorced, Beheaded, Died is the name of a British writer's book on Britain's kings and queens, I read recently. The title is certainly no compliment to the rulers of a country which is surmised to have conquered a sizeable part of the world. Oriental races who used to eulogise their royal lineages would call this title even a profligate one. In fact, as the author himself says, the present Britishers have little regard for their kings and queens, especially the ones long dead.

The writer says, "It is slightly unfashionable these days to be taught very much about the kings and queens of Britain which does not pay much attention to its mythological origins or legendary kings." Yet the book gives a few surprises.

For example, the British monarchy line began before Christ. Brutus (1160-1137 BC) is the first ruler of Britain. Do not mix this with Brutus of Et Tu Brutus fame. This Brutus springs much earlier. The author says that they may have called him 'Brut' or 'Brit' directly connected to Britain. And like our Vijaya, the first king, he was a foreigner.

Inhabitants

"Brutus led a group of Trojans and wiped out the native inhabitants, a race of giants." Vijaya vanquished a set of strange humans called Yakshas and Rakshasas and Brutus vanquished giants. Coming from Troy in Greece, Brutus set up his capital on the bank of Thames which he named Roia Nova. It later became the city of London.

Keven Flude, the author, does not give a very sequential history and unlike the authors of our chronicles does not bother to give a "gapless tale of the kings and queens of Britain." So, the next king who earns his attention comes some 200 years later. Bladud (937-917 BC) reminds one of our kings Ravana.

"He founded Bath and became a renowned 'neomancer', experimenting with elemental forces."

Long before the Wright Brothers, he made himself a pair of wings and soared over new Troy but lost control and his Dandu Monara crashed down the temple of Apollo where he was killed. Ravana still soars above us, at least in our fantasies. Our royal line owns four queens who ruled on their own rights and this paucity of females is seen in the list of Britain's rulers too. Boudicca is one of them. I myself have seen her statue near a railway station in London.

It was this book that revealed to me what she was doing there. She had been buried under platform 9 of Kings Cross Street! Needless to say, the platform came up centuries later.

Roman aggression

Boudicca reigned around 60 AD and was more manly than earlier rulers for she successfully repelled Roman aggression which was the disturbing factor in British politics in early times.

While Sri Lanka has never been called a province of India or Asia Britain had once been called a Roman province.

Perhaps it is this that prevents historians presenting a coherent history of Britain since for long periods in recorded history it had been under Roman rule.

The Roman rule had been firmly established in Britain by emperor Claudius's successful invasion in 43 AD. It had led at one time to a Romano-British rule with the 'tribal leaders' of Britain allying themselves with the Roman rulers. This kind of dual rule had continued to the fifth century.

Came the fourth century and Constantine the Great. He was not a native of Britain unlike his mother. It was he who built a magnificent city on the ancient city of Byzantium and named it Constantinople.

He is important for Britain for he had paved the way for the country coming into the fold of Christianity.

All good and bad things come to an end and so Roman Britain also came to an end. In 406 AD the Roman empire had been assailed by barbarian invasions and Roman troops were withdrawn from Britain to protect the empire's heartland. In 407 local British troops declared one of their own, as an emperor. A short stint of Roman rule followed and again local British rule was entrenched.

Kings and Queens

This short essay cannot contain within it the many reigns of kings ad queens that followed, some famous, some infamous.

The author himself writes that some kings such as Henry VIII (1509 -1547) and Queen Victoria gained fame out of proportion to their doings. In fact, it was more notoriety than fame that Henry the VIII garnered. Writing on him, the author says, "Henry the VIII is arguably Britain's most famous monarch but for all the wrong reasons".Historians and even more, literary men wax eloquent on Henry's dealings with women, but minimise the fact that he broke away the country from the mantle of Roman Catholicism whose top men were seeped in corruption at the time.

He played a pivotal role in establishing the Church of England and Anglicans today form a major part of the Christians and a good number of them roam Lanka's earth too. There is many an Anglican boys' and girls' school today in the island.

It was during Henry VIII's reign or just a wee bit prior to it that the Portuguese landed in our island and still the kings of Britain were not exhibiting imperialist interests. It was left to the sea pirates of England to stamp some kind of impression on the high seas. The British traders were quietly sowing the seeds of the British East India company, which attempted to culminate with the conquest of India that happened in Queen Victoria's time.

It was such a marvellous feat that India was called the diadem of the British Empire. The period itself was glorious for Britain.

Popularity

The Georges of the House of Hanover too gained much popularity specially in the Asian colonies. The first kings of this line hailed from Germany are said to have got the job merely because they were Protestants. The earliest, coming from Germany did not know a word of English and one king refused to learn the language in spite of it fast becoming a global language.

It was during George III's reign that the highlands of Lanka fell to Britain. "Divorced, Beheaded, Died." The kings and queens have done and are still doing much more. And I close this with thanks to Keven Flude who has striven to present the history of Britain in "bite-sized chunks"

The book itself was gifted to me by Dr Leel Gunasekera, after a grand tour of England in his 80s (touch wood and may the gods bless him) and I wish I can share his luck and feast my eyes on this mighty repository of history again, which anti-Britishers denounce as minus any history.