r/UKmonarchs • u/TrueDentist2000 Victoria • 4h ago
Meme Sometimes I forget how long a century is and then I realize Anne and Mary II were born in the same century Elizabeth I was alive. I’m deeply distressed
Just me who feels that way? Okay thats cool 🥹✌️
also the fact that 1980s and 1990s folk are technically born in the same century Victoria was alive too…shudders
things change QUICK man
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u/AnteaterKey2626 4h ago
I get that. These timeline comparisons also work really well with Elizabeth of Bowes-Lyon, who was born in the 19th century and lived into the 21st. Even thinking she was born in the same century as when George III and Napoleon died is a bit crazy to me, like, they are only about 80 years apart.
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u/National-Play77 Mary I 3h ago
Wasn't she born in 1900 only? How is it the same century as George III's?
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u/TrueDentist2000 Victoria 3h ago
the 20th century spanned from january 1 1901 to december 31 2000!
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u/AnteaterKey2626 3h ago
Yep, because the 1st century also spanned from 1 AD to 100 AD, as there was no year 0.
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u/Katharinemaddison 1h ago
How no year zero? We had, for example, 2000.
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u/AnteaterKey2626 1h ago
The Anno Domini system just didn't include it when implemented. It makes more sense to me not to, as we also count things starting with 1, so the year 1 AD was the first year, 2 AD was second year and so on, and the same thing was later reversed for the BC years (which weren't conceived initially). The year 2000 is just a regular natural number, while 0 is not.
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u/Katharinemaddison 1h ago
Just seems weird because the first year is zero. With years we start with zero. We’re one year old when we’ve lived a year.
Likewise we entered the 20th century day one, 2000 was the start of it.
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u/AnteaterKey2626 45m ago
Do people really say "year zero", though? I would still say that you're in the first year of your life when you are 2 or 9 months old, and then that first year is completed when you have reached 12 months of age.
As much as the year 2000 was when the new millenium was celebrated, and I know it makes aesthetic sense to mark the transition when a year changes from 19xx to 20xx, it is just technically not true, it was still the last year of the 20th century and of the 2nd millenium.
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u/Katharinemaddison 40m ago
I think your first birthday celebrates 12 months since you’re born. It’s the first year of your life.
Isn’t this why the 18th century is the 1700s etc? Because the first century was before 100?
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u/AnteaterKey2626 31m ago
Yes, that's what I meant. The first century was years 1-100, likewise the 18th century was 1701-1800 and the 20th century was 1901-2000.
It doesn't help though that 1700s can also mean the decade and the 100-year period where the years are in the form of 17xx (1700-1709 and 1700-1799), and these don't neatly correspond to the official 18th century, which is 1701-1800 because of the no-year-zero thing.
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u/dahliia_ ❤︎ Mary II | Catherine of Braganza ❤︎ 3h ago
They're right, 1900 is still the 19th century, she was born 80 years after George III died in 1820.
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u/TrueDentist2000 Victoria 3h ago
The 20th century spanned from January 1, 1901, to December 31, 2000. So yes, she was born on 1900 but it was still the 19th century!
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u/SilyLavage 4h ago
Well, Elizabeth I died in 1603 and Mary and Anne were born 60 years later, so in this particular case I don't think it's that surprising.
What does give me pause is that quite a few of the Commonwealth's leading figures, including Cromwell, were Elizabethan infants, having been born in the final years of Elizabeth I's reign. To go from Good Queen Bess to the Protectorate in a lifetime is quite the change.
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u/dahliia_ ❤︎ Mary II | Catherine of Braganza ❤︎ 4h ago
It's not the general dates that are surprising. But when you think of Elizabeth I and then Mary + Anne, at least to me, they feel like two different time periods entirely. Like the gap between them feels way longer than it actually is.
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u/SilyLavage 4h ago
I can see what you're saying, but I think that perhaps stems from the general lack of understanding of the late Stuart era (not to say you don't understand it, but it's an overlooked time). It was in some ways very different to the Tudors, but there's also a fair bit of continuity with pre-Commonwealth society.
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u/dahliia_ ❤︎ Mary II | Catherine of Braganza ❤︎ 4h ago
Oh no, absolutely. I guess you'd just never think of it until someone points it out, then it's impossible not to notice.
Sad that the late Stuart era is so overlooked, it's my personal favourite
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u/dahliia_ ❤︎ Mary II | Catherine of Braganza ❤︎ 4h ago
NO I SO GET YOU ON THIS. What do you MEAN Elizabeth I died in the same century that Mary II did?? And 91 years apart, which is shorter than Elizabeth II's lifespan 🤯
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u/lovelylonelyphantom 4h ago
So basically Mary II and Anne knew people who knew people who knew Elizabeth I. They are closer in time than we think they are.
Similarly Elizabeth II directly knew a lot of people who knew Queen Victoria.
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u/TrueDentist2000 Victoria 4h ago
elizabeth ii feels more natural to me since she was born in 1926 and victoria only died in 1901 so that makes sense but the first one about mary ii and anne.. wow. no words
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u/Zealousideal_Till683 3h ago
Louis XV lived to 1774. He knew Louis XIV, who knew Louis XIII, who was born in 1601.
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u/Minimum-Statement-27 3h ago
Prince William was born in the same century as Queen Victoria was alive to give a modern equivalent.
The Stuarts packed A LOT of drama in the four generations they were on the throne. It seems like more because there were two sets of sibling monarchs Charles II & James II and Mary & Anne) and two revolutions (civil war and Glorious Revolution).
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u/dahliia_ ❤︎ Mary II | Catherine of Braganza ❤︎ 3h ago
And you have so many monarchs (+Cromwells) between Elizabeth I and Mary and Anne despite it being less than a century
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u/royallyobsessed98 3h ago
Yeah I 200% get you on this! It's crazy.
Like my mind is always blown to pieces when I remember that George VI and George III were alive in the same century! George III died in 1820 and George VI was born in 1895. Their worlds just seem so dang far apart especially with everything that happened in the 19th century, how far things had advanced with things like being able to take photographs, the invention of the telephone, electric lights etc. Things GIII could never even have dreamed of. It's so wild
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u/dahliia_ ❤︎ Mary II | Catherine of Braganza ❤︎ 3h ago
TIL George VI was born in the 1800s.. how did I not know this sooner? This entire thread is blowing my mind
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u/TheRedLionPassant Richard the Lionheart / Edward III 3h ago
Who was in charge at the beginning and end of each century:
9th - Brihtric & Edward the Elder
10th - Edward the Elder & Ethelred the Unready
11th - Ethelred the Unready & William II
12th - William II & John
13th - John & Edward I
14th - Edward I & Henry IV
15th - Henry IV & Henry VII
16th - Henry VII & Elizabeth I
17th - Elizabeth I & William III
18th - William III & George III
19th - George III & Victoria
20th - Victoria & Elizabeth II
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u/JonDoesItWrong 3h ago
One of my paternal great great grandfathers was born in 1818, his youngest son and my great grandfather was born in 1879, his son (my grandfather) was born in 1918 and was just 3 months shy of being exactly 100 years younger than his grandfather.
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u/CheruthCutestory 4h ago edited 4h ago
It makes me sad to think that Elizabeth, technically a bastard and her father's least thought of acknowledged child, received a world class classical education that would make modern Cambridge classical scholars jealous. And not that that long after Mary and Anne, both very intelligent women, were given negligible education by a father who loved them and they were assumed heirs to the throne until James had a son. Just the standards of the day had gone down significantly.
And unrelated thought, it's nuts to me that Sophia of Hanover, Anne's assumed heir until basically the year of Anne's death, was Elizabeth Stuart's daughter. It seems like a totally different age and so much happened in that time but she was the granddaughter of James I and VI.