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[Poll #1490404]
Inspired by last night when I asked Alex to pick out a medieval This Sceptred Isle for me. He read out the dates on the box and I said sleepily "So, Elizabeth I and James I probably" and he was very impressed that I actually knew that from the dates. I asked him which century Henry VIII reigned in and he found it hard. So am I weird for knowing this stuff, or is he unusual for not knowing it. I can't really remember where I got taught it, I just kind of picked it up. I can also name all the Kings and Queens since William I in order, given a little thinking time, which I know is weird.
Inspired by last night when I asked Alex to pick out a medieval This Sceptred Isle for me. He read out the dates on the box and I said sleepily "So, Elizabeth I and James I probably" and he was very impressed that I actually knew that from the dates. I asked him which century Henry VIII reigned in and he found it hard. So am I weird for knowing this stuff, or is he unusual for not knowing it. I can't really remember where I got taught it, I just kind of picked it up. I can also name all the Kings and Queens since William I in order, given a little thinking time, which I know is weird.
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no subject
Date: November 25th, 2009 10:33 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 09:26 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 09:47 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 25th, 2009 11:13 pm (UTC)From:I was also aware that she was older than she appeared to be in Blackadder 2 which I believe was set 1551-1556.
Better than today's Osney Island newsletter that referred to a cowboy builder active in 20008.
no subject
Date: December 1st, 2009 10:01 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 12:27 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 12:36 am (UTC)From:You can go back quite some way listing the monarchs (I can go back to Richard III, though I might get some regnal numbers wrong - I'm impressed that you remember all those Plantaganets), since they come in groups (eg. lots of Georges) and a reign usually lasts quite a long time.
But as a republican (small r), I somehow think it's more important to know the Prime Ministers. They usually come much more quickly, so was embarrassed recently (when listening to This Sceptred Isle, 20th Century) to have forgotten some even in the last century. I could go a little further back with US Presidents, but its still poor.
no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 09:29 am (UTC)From:Still I'm impressed you can do PMs - I could probably do all of them but only if you accept that the first PM was in about 1904 (as QI claimed).
no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 09:35 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 12:37 pm (UTC)From:The Hanoverian Georges and the like make it easier to remember the monarchs, which is one reason I can go back as far as Richard III, but start to dry up before that.
Also, my embarrassment was that I didn't remember all the the PMs, even though I think that is more important than poxy Kings. Bonar Law is the least of my problems: there are all the PMs that came back to confuse the issue (IIRC, there were only two monarchs who did that, switching roles: Wikipedia reminds me that they were Henry VI and Edward IV).
no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 05:23 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 01:32 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 01:48 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 05:23 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 03:57 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 07:15 am (UTC)From:I'm pretty sure about those dates
Date: November 26th, 2009 08:01 am (UTC)From:I could still easily have done the century and had no doubt about that; the decade would have been a little trickier but I would have got fairly close.
My history knowledge is from reading non-fiction subsequent to school and university, and more than that, from reading historical fiction.
[ETA - Except! I mis-remembered the date when remembering it from the book above - instead of 1558 I remembered 1588. D'oh.]
no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 09:25 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 11:04 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 10:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 11:05 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 02:17 pm (UTC)From:My school year seemed to repeatedly learn the same topics (Elizabethan England being one of them) when the newish national curriculum changed its mind over what age things should be studied a few times so I have a very oddly patchy knowledge of history eg we never studied the civil war which seems rather important and I can instead discuss the Rebecca riots. Now I've picked up a Shakepearean interpretation of the Wars of the Roses and a Neal Stephenson interpretation of the restoration etc to further confuse matters :-)
I used to have an illustrated wallchart inside my wardrobe which later hung in my Granny's loo with all the kings and queens on but I would be hard-pressed to get them right and would be even worse on PMs.
--
Angharadxxx
no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 04:36 pm (UTC)From:None of this comes from school though (except insofar as that's where I caught the quiz bug)- I didn't do History O Level, and we did the Stuarts not the Tudors.
no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 04:38 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 06:44 pm (UTC)From:Mary Tudor can refer to either Henry VIII's sister (French queen, later Duchess of Suffolk) or his daughter by Catherine of Aragon, though the one that reigned as Queen of England was his daughter of course. Mary, Queen of Scots, never sat on the English throne though she was briefly a French queen (during which time she first pressed her supposed right to the English crown) and of course the Scottish queen, at least until her lords ran her out of the country and into exile in England where she was later executed for treason by her cousin (via her mother, Margaret Tudor) Elizabeth I.
Yeah, bit of a Tudor nut over here. :3
no subject
Date: November 26th, 2009 07:48 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 27th, 2009 01:00 am (UTC)From:I'm guessing answering an LJ poll isn't what he had in mind though :D
no subject
Date: November 28th, 2009 01:26 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: November 28th, 2009 06:28 am (UTC)From:I was drawing a blank until I remembered that Catherine of Aragon was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and of course my American education has left me with the year 1492 to associate with them. So I knew Elizabeth must have taken the throne some time in the 16th century. The decade was a lucky estimate based on a vague memory from the books that Henry and Catherine were married in the first decade of the 16th century.
no subject
Date: November 28th, 2009 01:25 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: December 1st, 2009 04:39 am (UTC)From: