In the very beginning, how did the very first king become the king?
And how far back does Queen Elizabeth II’s family go back?
From the thread Mythic origins of the British nation (quoting Burke’s Peerage (1949)):
All English monarchs since the 11th century are descended from William of Normandy, who conquered the country in 1066. It hasn’t always been a direct line of descent, and occasionally they had to bring in distant cousins from out of the country, but all of the Royals have some degree of Norman blood.
Germany.
In my literature classes, I learned that one Brutus was the founder of Britain, he being a descendant of Aeneas, the refugee from Troy who founded Rome. It’s made up, but it’s a good story. 
All European royalty is related to each other in one way or another, and has been since the dark ages.
It’s all about the inbreeding (and the genetic defects, but that’s a whole other discussion), since marriages were based on political expediency and forging alliances. Nobody married commoners, and most married relatives.
For example, Queen Victoria’s children and grandchildren married into the royal families of Germany, Russia and Spain as well as England, and don’t forget that Victoria’s husband Albert was her cousin, who was also a German prince.
Sometimes you get cousins inheriting the title when there is no legitimate direct male heir (i.e. James I inheriting the title from Elizabeth 1, Victoria from her uncle William IV), but it never went far.
Thus modern British royals can trace their lineage back to the Normans, and in some cases further back.
Try this site for more:http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/British_monarchy
Queen Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of Queen Victoria. The name of the Royal House was changed to Windsor from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1917 since it didn’t seem advisable to have such a Germanic name whilst being at war with the Hun.
Here is a genealogical chart of the monarchs of England from William I to Elizabeth II.
Also it was the Romans who encouraged the early germanic tribes to elect kings among themselves:
The Romans wanted to deal with one major guy instead of with a lot of minor guys.
When a King loves a Queen very much, they hold each other very close, and a while later, a little royal is born!
Britannia had various Celtic tribes with monarchs occupying relatively small areas of the country. (Norfolk-and-Suffolk, Cornwall-and-Devon, and Gwynedd are typical former kingdoms now one or two shires.) Occasionally some of these would ally together under the king of one of them, who functioned as warlord for the combined kingdoms; to the extent Arthur was historical, it seems fairly clear that that was his role.
Several waves of “Low German” incursion were a result of the Volkerwanderung on the Continent. When the dust settled, there were seven main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and eight to ten Brythonic-Celtic kingdoms occupying England, Wales, and southern Scotland. Except for those in what is now Wales and Strathclyde, the A/S kingdoms slowly eroded away the B/C ones.
Viking incursions, principally but not exclusively by Danish kings, overthrew the northern and eastern A/S kingdoms and largely extinguished their royal families, leaving only the House of Wessex. As noted at Wikipedia, there was a short union of England to Denmark and Norway under Canute and his sons, followed by restoration of the House of Wessex for about 25 years. With the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066, the throne was claimed by three men: the King of Norway (Harald Hardrada), the son of the man who had been King Edward’s head of government (Harold Godwinson), and the Duke of Normandy (William the Bastard). Each had tenuous legal and/or dynastic claim, but it came down to two battles, in which first Harold G. defeated and killed Harald H., and then was defeated and killed by William the B.)
William I’s reign, dating from the Battle of Hastings in 1066, marks the beginning of the modern English sequence of kings and queens. He was succeeded by two sons in order, the second of which (Henry I) was married to Matilda, the heiress of the House of Wessex, bringing them back into the picture. However, his son died without offspring during his lifetime. On his death, there was a civil war between the two claimants: Matilda, daughter of Henry and Matilda, widow of a Holy Roman Emperor, and currently married to Count Geoffrey of Anjoi (called Plantagenet); and Count Stephen of Blois, son of William I’s daughter Adela. This was finally settled by an agreement that Stephen would continue as king during his lifetime, but be succeeded not by his son but by Matilda’s son Henry.
Henry’s male lineage continued on the throne from 1154 until 1485, with the period from 1399 until the end being disputed between two branches of the family, the Houses of Lancaster and York (so named after the honorary dukedoms held by their founders) in the Wars of the Roses.
King Edward III’s son John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, married three times, the first giving rise to the three Lancastrian kings, Henry IV, V, and VI (father, son and grandson). The third marriage was to a mistress by whom he had already had illegitimate children whom he legitimated, the Beaufort family. Eventually the Beaufort heiress was Margaret who married Edmund Tudor and had a son Henry.
Meanwhile the heirs to two of Edward III’s other sons, Lionel Duke of Clarence and Edmund Duke of York, had married to leave Richard Duke of York as a claimant with not only the right of primogeniture and direct male lineage from Edward III but also popular support and clear sanity and leadership, neither of which King Henry VI had. After battles in which Richard and his eldest son were killed, his heir took the throne as Edward IV, deposing decrepit Henry VI. After more complex shifts of allegiance, Edward’s brother Richard III was overthrown by Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII. Henry married Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth in an effort to reunite Yorkist and Lancastrian, was succeeded by his son Henry VIII and the latter’s three children, none of whom left children of their own. The Tudors were descended from one of the Welsh royal families in their own right, though this hardly mattered since the Plantagenets had conquered most of Wales already.
Meanwhile Kenneth MacAlpin had, back around 850, united the two main Scottish kingdoms, and his heirs, in an equally complicated sequence, held the Scots throne until 1290. After internecine rivalry and wars with England, Robert the Bruce took the throne as Robert I. His son David became an exile in France, and power in Scotland was exercised largely by Robert Stewart, who was Robert the Bruce’s grandson by a daughter. On David’s death he became King Robert II, and his descendants (changing the spelling to Stuart) ruled Scotland until 1603.
King James V of Scotland had married a daughter of Henry VII of England, and when Henry’s granddaughter Elizabeth I died without children, James’s grandson James VI of Scotland was her heir as James I of England. High-handed claims and tactics by James and his son Charles I led to a civil war, the experiment of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the restoration of Charles’s sons as Charles II and James (VII of Scots and) II, his overthrow in favor of his elder daughter and her husband (who was also his nephew) William and Mary, and finally James’s younger daughter Anne.
Under Anne the two kingdoms were united as the Kingdom of Great Britain. But all of Anne’s 17 children predeceased her. Her close heirs were all Roman Catholics, and neither England nor Scotland wanted a Catholic monarch. So the throne was offered to Sophia, a great-granddaughter of James I by female descent who was married to the Elector of Hanover. However, Sophia, an elderly lady, died a few months before Anne, and her son George of Hanover became heir to the throne.
The House of Hanover continued on the throne for over 100 years, with the eventual heiress being Victoria, daughter of George III’s third son. She married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and their son Edward VII succeeded, followed by his son George V, under whom during World War I the present title House of Windsor was adopted for the royal family. George V was the present Queen’s grandfather.
Elizabeth, of course, married Philip, a Prince of Greece whose mother was part of the Battenberg family (who changed their name to Mountbatten in the anti-German moves of WWI). The Greek royal family, however, was a cadet line of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, the Danish royal house, in direct descent from Gorm the Old and the Danes who tried to conquer England back before the Norman Conquest. Ironically, when Prince Charles or Prince William succeeds, he will be the first British monarch since Hardhacnut in 1040 to be of male Danish lineage.
The concept of “kingship” evolved from tribal chieftains. As a society becomes larger, more complex, and adopts advanced technologies (such as high-yield agriculture), and gets involved in large-scale warfare, a military organisation is needed.
Prior to Roman occupation of Britain, most British peoples were organised in a fashion more akin to tribal cheiftainships. After the withdrawal of Roman administration, technology and culture had advanced to the point that kingship was developing. There were dozens of “kings” from various tribes from each of the major ethnic groups occupying the island (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Cumbrians, Welsh, Cornish, Anglo-Scots, Scots, Norns, etc.).
Eventually, the kingdom of Wessex (West Saxons) became powerful enough to claim to be ruler of all England (Angle-land), so the House of Wessex is considered to be the first royal family of a more-or-less united England.
In 1066, there were four major contenders to the throne after the death of Edward the Confessor – Harold Godwinson (King Harold II), Harald Hardrada (King of Norway), Edgar the Aetheling (Prince of Wessex), and William of Normandy (King William I). I believe that all four were married in some way, through marriage at least, and that all four were primarily Norsemen by blood.
William won that struggle and all the monarchs of England since then have been his direct descendants. The direct-male line failed at several points, so to get to the current monarch, you have to go through several women.
In order to cut out the Stuart branch of the family, the current line is restricted to descendants of Sophia, the Electress of Hanover (granddaughter of King James I/VI through his daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia).
It makes no more sense to call the royal family “Germans,” than it does to put such labels on any English person who has foreign ancestors more than a few generations back. They’re as English as anyone.
Well, of course all four were married. By marriage if for no other reason. :smack:
But what I meant to say that I believe that all four were related in one way or another, at least relations by marriage.
Also Count of Anjou. I won’t anjoi the nitpicks about my misspelling! :o
< Approaches butler1850 with Mace Of State >
Kneel, Knave!
We shall Knight thee!
ARISE! Sir Loin Of Beef!
WHACK!
ARISE! Sir Cumstantial of Evidence!
WHACK!
ARISE! Earl of Peppermints!
WHACK!
Milk of Magnesea!
WHACK!
Three were of at least partial Norse (viking) descent. Remember that the Normans were descendants of vikings who had settled in France (hence “Northman->Norseman->Norman”).
Harold Godwinsson was the brother of Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor. Often called the “last Anglo-Saxon king”, this isn’t quite true considering he was half-Danish.
William of Normandy was the cousin of Edward the Confessor (who had been half-Norman, and spent much of his early life in Normandy). He was married to Matilda of Flanders, a descendant of Alfred the Great.
Harald Hardraada was a true viking, a member of the royal family of Norway. He planned to take the throne of England by conquest, not by hereditary right, and had no close relation to any of the other claimants.
Edgar the Ætheling was the heir of the old Anglo-Saxon dynasty. As he was a minor in 1066, his rights were ignored in favor of the more powerful claimants. His sister Margaret married King Malcolm III of Scotland, and their daughter married King Henry I of England, thusly bringing the old bloodline back into England.