Calling monarchs by their first names makes them seem cuddly
I’m listening to this excellent podcast episode about Anne Boleyn.
It occurs to me that part of the reason that King Henry VIII isnt always seen as the monster that he was is that we refer to our monarchs by their first names
You wouldn’t often hear a historian refer to ‘Benito’, or ‘Joseph’ or ‘Adolf’, but Henry Tudor is typically just ‘Henry’
It puts us on first name terms.
I wouldn’t compare the two, but it reminds me of the argument that people shouldn’t have called Boris Johnson just ‘Boris’, as it made him seem more mate-y and cuddly than he actually was
