British Royal Eras

By Deane Barker • • tags: uk, royalty • 1 min read •
Updates
This content has been updated 1 time since it was first published. The last update happened .

Several time periods in British history are named for the first names of reigning monarchs of those times:

Other eras are named for family names:

The “family eras” seem to be less well-known.

One of the reasons this naming style took place is that the eras corresponding to slow-moving changes in society. For example, the Victorian era is associated with the increasing modernization of the impending Industrial Revolution. The Georgian era is defined by the advancement of science during The Age of Enlightenment.

The current Windsor era has been dominated by the reign of Queen Elizabeth II from 1952 to 2022. If you consider the changes that happened solely during her lifetime, how would you define that era? The rate of societal change has increased so much that it’s hard to correlate it to a single familial reign. Also, it’s unlikely the House of Windsor will be toppled by war or invasion, so it could theoretically remain in power for hundreds of years to come.

Therefore, the current British reign will likely be too big to neatly correspond to societal changes. As such, it may not need a name.

Why I Looked It Up

I was reading a couple classics, and the name of the various eras came up in the introductions. It suddenly occurred to me that the names of eras (“Victorian”) corresponded to first names (“Victoria”) and these were likely the royal rules of those ages.

Update

Added on

In The Family, when describing Prescott Bush, someone was quoted:

That’s the kind of man he was. Edwardian, in the best sense of the word.

I did a little searching, but I couldn’t find any common reference on what it means to describe a person as “Edwardian.” Most everything referred to the Edwardian era (the first decade of the 20th Century), but didn’t note any personal characteristics that would correspond to that era.

Links from this – The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty September 19, 2024
This is a long look into the Bush family dynasty. Turns out that before George H.W. (the 41st President) and George W. (the 43rd President), there is a long history of powerful people in the Bush clan. The book starts back with Samuel Prescott Bush, in the 1800s. He was a powerful and wealthy...