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30 Jun 12 | Re: Royal epithets

OBN overload in the Spectator’s leading article this morning: we should start calling our queeen “Elizabeth the Great” as “a fitting tribute to an incomparable queen”. Except that she is comparable. Specifically, she is comparable to the other Queen Elizabeth, than whom she is not obviously greater. I think someone is getting rather carried away. I suspect it is Charles Moore.

Of course it was easier in the days of Alfred the Great, when the one historian in the country could just decide to call him that, and that was his name. These days, who is even empowered to make these decisions? I wasn’t aware that royal nicknames could be decreed - I rather thought it was something that would need to just start happening organically. And it never does, which is why the last monarch to have a nickname was ... Bloody Mary, I suppose. But that was just put about by anti-Catholics. The last proper one must be Edward I, aka Edward Longshanks, back in the thirteenth century. His shanks were long, there’s no denying that.

Anyway, here are my names for the last century’s monarchs: Victoria The Black, Edward The Edwardian, George The Moustachioed, Edward The Nazi, George Off Of That Film, and now, Elizabeth the Coordinated. Let’s hope they catch on soon.

Posted by OLD PYJAMS at 11:02

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