LL-L: "Monarchs" LOWLANDS-L, 31.MAY.2000 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Monarchs

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: "Monarchs"

> From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
> Subject: Monarchs
>
> Colin Wilson wrote, quoting me:
>
> >The current queen is the United Kingdom's first and only reigning
> >Queen Elizabeth.
>
> A subtle point - too subtle perhaps. In the first place, Good
> Queen Bess was
> Queen of Ireland as well. Second, her successor's styles and
> titles begin "Her
> Most Excellent Majesty ELIZABETH THE SECOND ... by the Grace of
> God, of the
> United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her
> other Realms
> and Territories Queen, ..." so she evidently has a firm opinion on
the
> subject.

You're missing the point of this title, John - it's declaring her Queen
Elizabeth II _of the United Kingdom of Great Britain_ &c. However, she
is
Queen Elizabeth of Scotland. You can see this in action in the royal
ensigna
(or whatever it's called - am I thinking of Superman?!) which in
England (eg
on post boxes and post office vans, in police stations &c) is EIIR,
whereas
in Scotland it's always simply ER. Just as Jamie the Saxt was James I &
VI,
Liz is Elizabeth II & I.

And Prince Charles will be George the whatth? It's going to get even
more confusing!

> From: Jan De Craemere [rycobel at compuserve.com]
> Subject: LL-L: "Monarchs" (was "Spiritual aspects") LOWLANDS-L,
> 30.MAY.2000
> (01) [E]
>
> Jan De Craemere wrote:
>
> Is it not like this:
>
> Britain = England + Wales
> Great Britain = Britain + Scotland
> United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) = Great
Britain +
> Northern Ireland
> ?

I'm really not sure about this - one clue is that "Britain" is these
days a
vague term, though the idea of using "Britain" to mean Wales and
England was
used in those days (taking from the Roman "Britannica" as opposed to
"Hibernia" and "Caledonia"?)

Up until the 1970's the border of England and Wales wasn't clearly
established - mapmakers simply included the counties of Herefordshire
and
Monmouthshire into England and/or Wales at whim. In the 1970's the
Comservative government redrew the county map of the UK (following an
economic theory that seems to have been unsound), establishing
Monmouthshire
as Welsh and Herefordshire as English. The old counties have been
restored
to a great extent now, but a lasting result of the economic
"rationalisation" is that the Anglo-Welsh border is now clearly
defined. As
for the English-Scottish border, I'm still not too sure about
Berwick-upon-Tweed - nobody ever seems to mention it!

Anyway, I think the modern terminology seems to work best from a
top-down
viewpoint. The "British Isles" is the collection of islands on the
continental shelf, "Great Britain" is the largest of the islands, the
"United Kingdom" is the area of the islands sitting below the crown.

The precise modern meaning of the term "Britain" escapes me!

(Sorry for the long absence, by the way - my computer was struck by
lightening three weeks ago and I've only just got up and running
again!).

Sandy
http://scotstext.org

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