People of England/UK, answer me this please?

[dannazgui]

I'm have a fascination about ancient and medieval history as most of us do since play these games....

But there's one thing I never understood completely on the history of England.... The frist kings were the Aenglish, Anglo-saxons... Which gave the name of Englaland or England when Athelstan unified the territory. Then you guys had a period of Viking Kings with Cnut the Great.

1066 the history of Angeving Kings started, the first was the norman king William the Conqueror. And from there the Angvings kings kept ruling... But my question is.... The English we know today, the culture and all and the one the game offers when the Normans complete their conquest..... When that was formed and who was the first King to be the modern english? The longbowmen from your history it's an immersion from the Welsh, right? So... How exactly the ENglish we know in medieval times of the french king came to be?

 

[The Shacks]

Henry IV, whose reign inaugurated the 15th century, was the first English king to speak English as his first language, making him another good answer to the question.

Who Was The First English King to Speak English? - The ...​

(England was heavily Norman/Anglo-Norman for much longer than we like to think in popular history. Some Plantagenet kings such as Richard the Lionheart did not speak English and barely spent anytime in this country. We were a cashcow for a lot of them.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

I'm have a fascination about ancient and medieval history as most of us do since play these games....

But there's one thing I never understood completely on the history of England.... The frist kings were the Aenglish, Anglo-saxons... Which gave the name of Englaland or England when Athelstan unified the territory.

The name is used by at least Alfred the Great, and its a shift from the Welsh form of Bretwalda, although that might be a histiographic fake. It can be seen as a claim like the russian tsar, to be above all other anglo saxon kings and expressing the desire to unify all anglo saxons

Then you guys had a period of Viking Kings with Cnut the Great.

Its seen as the anglo norse period, because no longer was danegeld being levied but full rule, the huscarls with their daneaxs might have come from this era along with a fondness for shieldwalls or this mightve been how anglo saxons fought anyway. Godwin, father of the Harold Godwinson, is Cnut's viceroy basically, and Harold is able to interfere with most of the Confessor's plans, like granting some castles to Normans, due to the wealth accumulated from his father.

1066 the history of Angeving Kings started,

If correct it would be angevin, but its not, as William de Normandie was Norman not Angevin (of Anjou), so there's 90 years until the Angevins start

the first was the norman king William the Conqueror. And from there the Angvings kings kept ruling... But my question is.... The English we know today, the culture and all and the one the game offers when the Normans complete their conquest..... When that was formed and who was the first King to be the modern english?

Depends how you define modern English, English is traditionally divided between old English which is basically anglo saxon, and is used as a term sometimes to avoid anglo saxon due to political reasons; middle English which is more tudor and stuart but largely recognisable to modern eyes, and modern English.
Chaucer is later 14th very early 15th but still quite distinct from the modern language in his original text

There's a knight who is firmly identified as English in like the 12th or 13th century, but to see the first English king you need to look at more plantagenet era

The longbowmen from your history it's an immersion from the Welsh, right

Some sources point to longbowmen at Hastings, as the mercians had even before Alfred been levying tribute on the Welsh, with the normans using relatively new crossbows and failing
But the idea of the longbow in the armies of the king of England come from the successes of the 100YW, following the conquest of Wales, where Southern Wales fell first to offer vassalage to the King of England as well as small wars with the marcher lords of the welsh marches. The southern welsh were profecient in the use of the longbow and were used in many royal armies where other people would learn to be trained in them

? So... How exactly the ENglish we know in medieval times of the french king came to be?

You can see it as a development following John Lackland losing much of his french territory by 1214, and so the nobles of England held more land in just England rather than both sides of the Channel, leading to a fusion between old English and middle French giving us middle English by the 1200s 1300s or so

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I'm have a fascination about ancient and medieval history as most of us do since play these games....

But there's one thing I never understood completely on the history of England.... The frist kings were the Aenglish, Anglo-saxons... Which gave the name of Englaland or England when Athelstan unified the territory. Then you guys had a period of Viking Kings with Cnut the Great.

1066 the history of Angeving Kings started, the first was the norman king William the Conqueror. And from there the Angvings kings kept ruling... But my question is.... The English we know today, the culture and all and the one the game offers when the Normans complete their conquest..... When that was formed and who was the first King to be the modern english? The longbowmen from your history it's an immersion from the Welsh, right? So... How exactly the ENglish we know in medieval times of the french king came to be?

It's tricky.

Athelstan claimed to be "King of all Britain" and "King of the English" around 925 or 927. The name "English" is older than this of course, and had been applied to most of current England as a broad term since the Saxon conquest, but it had been divided into (traditionally 7, but in practice a wildly varying number) smaller kingdoms which battled amongst each other for supremacy.

Later we fell under Danish kings for a short period, until an English king (as in Old English/Anglo-Saxon) was elected.

Edward the Confessor then sets us up for Hastings and the Norman Conquest - but that wasn't the Angevins.
The Angevins (or Plantagents) are sort of retroactively declared to be a thing a couple of kings after Henry II takes charge.

"Modern" English is a difficult concept to pin down. For some it's comes with the later Angevin/Plantagent rule, for others it's after the War of the Roses when we get into the Tudors. Some even place "Early Modern" English as still forming when we join with Scotland under the Stuarts.
Personally I'd place the first "modern" English king around Henry VII or VIII, or possibly James VI and I, with the English as opposed to Anglo-Norman kings being "Middle English", but I'm not a historian.

 

[m0xxY]

Personally I'd place the first "modern" English king around Henry VII or VIII, or possibly James VI and I, with the English as opposed to Anglo-Norman kings being "Middle English", but I'm not a historian.

You'd place the first English king as a man who was Scottish?

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

You'd place the first English king as a man who was Scottish?

It's complicated, because the English and Scottish royal houses were quite tangled at this stage, hence his inheritance of England after Elisabeth dies childless. I'd suggest that potentially his attempts to unite the two thrones and his apparent favouritism towards England (ruling from there, attempting to merge the parliaments and centre everything in London) would lead to him eventually adopting or creating the modern identity. But I'm not sure because it's such a nebulous concept.

"Modern English" is a tricky thing to define, and it's possible to place the last pieces of the identity coming together under him, with the problem that the culture and the language don't entirely coincide with when they came together.

The formation of the identity is kind of blurred. You can look at things before it formed, and it it had definitely formed, but there's no easy way to point at the act of it forming.

 

[fcc56]

It's actually quite a challenge to pin down an actual "English" English/British monarch. By origin, the Angles and Saxons were German, the Danes were Danes, the Normans were French descendants of Viking raiders/settlers, the Angevins and Plantagenets were French, the Tudors were Welsh, the Stuarts were Scots, William III was Dutch, The Hanoverians (George I–Victoria) were German, and the Windsors (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha prior to WWI) are German also in their ancestry.
With other lines mixed in of course: Albert was German (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) and Philip was Greek, Russian, & Danish.

In more practical terms, the first British monarch to use the term "Great Britain" was James I (James VI of Scotland).

But to answer this specific question: "the first King to be the modern english" I'd say George III. Anne was a Stuart and the first two Georges were very German.

 

[m0xxY]

In more practical terms, the first British monarch to use the term "Great Britain" was James I (James VI of Scotland).

True. He also personally designed the Union Flag, although it was only used on ships until the Acts of Union were passed in 1707 (long after James' death).

 

[The Shacks]

Poor guy. See the utter barrage of different answers we gave him. As you can see its very complicated and you could quite easily arrive at any of them. But as a fella next to me said definitively saying its ATLEAST AFTER John Lackland due to his loosing of the Angevin Empire, forcing a Normano-English monarch for the first time to really focus on England and develop the resources there (He also had a real good crack at the welsh and irish and scots as he wasent concentrating on France) Before this everything was very much a sideshow to mainland france and the families from there.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Complicated indeed. And the worst is that all the responses are probably somewhat correct, and defendable depending on what you mean by "modern". :|

 

[dannazgui]

I see...Probably one the most thing in all European nations is to put a definite answer in the history, since you guys are closer to everyone and depending on the place if you cross a street is already in another country. But thanks, people @AvengedK1ng @The Shacks @DreadLindwyrm for a more complete history and other people as well. I always thought was transitioned the angle-saxon, nromans, anglo-normans, and the agenvins were the period of multicultural and the famous trademark of England on the battlefield, the Long Bow