Was Queen Elizabeth II the worst ruler in history?

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Any list of the worst rulers in history tend to include those leaders whose reign was marked by decreased standards of living, loss of territory, decline in prestige, weakening of power projection, and frequent rebellion. All of these are exemplified in the decades long rule of Queen Elizabeth II. When she came to the throne, Britain was the number three power after only the United States and USSR, ruling over 1/4 of the world's surface area and population.

Yet in her lifetime, the British Empire lost practically every single one of these territories besides a few minor islands. Her military and naval power declined to nothing, while her once great literary achievements were replaced by "Dr. Who" and "Harry Potter", surpassed entirely by Americans. The average British citizen in 2022 is little better off than their grandparents as Britain suffers heavy unemployment, having become entirely dependent on the United States. Perhaps the second largest industrial power at the start of Elizabeth II's rule, Britain has mostly deindustrialized. The White Dominions care little for the British, being caught between Chinese and American subversion. The British are being replaced in their own country by citizens of their former dominions who often victimize the native population with impunity.

Are there any rulers of a great empire who can possibly match this incredible decline?

 

[Dyn]

Bro there were great empires who had their cities dismantled brick by brick, their fields sown with salt and the royal children forced into sex slavery.

 

[Bogliacci]

Bro there were great empires who had their cities dismantled brick by brick, their fields sown with salt and the royal children forced into sex slavery.

But were they conquered by force or did they willingly dismantle themselves

 

[soy_king]

You're living in the same world where Elagabalus, Nicholas II, and Pol Pot were rulers, and you're trying to tell us some old lady who was about as close to power as Keffals is to being a real woman is one of the worst rulers in history? fuck off with your contrarian nonsense

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Elegabalus was just a dumb queer, he wasn't really that much worse than the less queer emperors in the Crisis of the Third of Century.

Nicholas II was pretty shit but it took the largest war ever seen to overthrow him and his successors. Further, his rule actually had an improvement in living standards and the Russian economy which was growing like China is today. Besides, Russia only permanently lost their occupation zone in northern Iran, Poland (plus a chunk of Belarus and Ukraine), Finland, and the Baltic states and they got all of that back sans the Iranian occupation zone and 90% of Finland thanks to Stalin.

Cambodia was already pretty shit and wasn't a major country, all Pol Pot did was kill like 1/4 of the population and get his nation occupied by Vietnam for decades. That's bad, but nothing quite like going from ruling 25% of the world's population to 0.8% in 2020 and having your country become a glorified American vassal state.

 

[Kornheiser]

It was already on the way out with granting India independence before she ascended the throne. The people didnt want to fight to maintain the colonies after the second world war and the British economy was broke. There is a reason why British monarchs tend to be boring.

 

[Suburban Bastard]

No retard, the British empire was not going to last, she and many others recognized this and allowed nations to separate one by one peacefully, and some of them still maintain the British monarch as a head of state in a way. Compared to say France who tried to re-assert their colonial controls and got into a bloody war in indochina that ended up humiliating them. Or Portugal with their african subjects.

 

[Kenya Jones]

Does Ronald Reagan count? Because if he does he is.

 

[soy_king]

Elegabalus was just a dumb queer, he wasn't really that much worse than the less queer emperors in the Crisis of the Third of Century.

Nicholas II was pretty shit but it took the largest war ever seen to overthrow him and his successors. Further, his rule actually had an improvement in living standards and the Russian economy which was growing like China is today. Besides, Russia only permanently lost their occupation zone in northern Iran, Poland (plus a chunk of Belarus and Ukraine), Finland, and the Baltic states and they got all of that back sans the Iranian occupation zone and 90% of Finland thanks to Stalin.

Cambodia was already pretty shit and wasn't a major country, all Pol Pot did was kill like 1/4 of the population and get his nation occupied by Vietnam for decades. That's bad, but nothing quite like going from ruling 25% of the world's population to 0.8% in 2020 and having your country become a glorified American vassal state.

Elagabalus pissed off enough people by being a degenerate retard that he got himself killed and ushered in years of instability. Nicholas destroyed a 300 year+ dynasty by being hilariously incompetent and listening to his psycho wife and her cavalcade of mystic quacks, resulting in the destruction of the Russian nation and millions of deaths. Pol Pot is self explanatory. And this isn't including nutjobs and trainwrecks like Amin, Bokassa, Papa Doc, Hoxha, Commodus, Ferdinand VII, and so on.

 

[Gamercat]

The monarch and their immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. As the monarchy is constitutional, the monarch is limited to functions such as bestowing honours and appointing the prime minister

how can someone be this stupid

 

[kartofel]

No, her being the worst ruler implies she was a ruler at all. British monarchs are mostly symbolic figureheads at this point. Constitutional monarchies are fake and gay versions of actual monarchies.

 

[Boss Hawg]

No, but she did oversee the dissolution of the Empire and the influx of millions of non-British peoples that will very soon outnumber the native British population. So take of that what you will.

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

Yes. She didn't even have any measurements printed on her. How the fuck were you supposed to use her as a ruler?

 

[SCSI]

I get the point you're trying to make, but I agree with @Kornheiser and @Suburban Bastard -- the dissolution of the colonial holdings was inevitable. I don't think a queen recognizing that and declining to tilt at windmills makes her a bad ruler. I'd say it was a savvy move as it preserved the soft power of the British crown in the subsequent years. If she'd tried to cling to those holdings, it would've required massive violence and suppression of popular liberation uprisings and made Great Britain a pariah state like apartheid-era South Africa. Pointless, avoidable damage to diplomatic power and probably economic health as well, as sanctions and BDS movements would have kicked in.

While we're nominating world-class failures of rulers, I'd like to suggest the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He's the absolute retard who dismantled China's powerhouse of a navy, banned sea trade, and started it on the path of becoming a decaying hermit kingdom. He also consolidated power to an extreme in the monarchy, and even triggered a limited revival of human sacrifice at his death. As if all that wasn't bad enough, he even wrote his navy ban into the Ancestral Injunctions body of law, binding future emperors into continuing this suicidal policy. There's no one single cause of China's post-Ming decline, but I would put this idiot and his policies high on the list of factors that, if they hadn't existed, the British and the Communists would've had a much harder time eventually dominating China, and that the country wouldn't have fallen as far behind the West in development as it did, cut off as it was from outside ideas and technology.

 

[Niggernerd]

Biden or Merkel

 

[Ancient Pioneer]

I wouldn't claim she was the worst, standards of living for the people on the home islands actually increased dramatically with the death of the empire, only declining sharply in the late 2000s or early 2010s. There also has to be consideration to the state of the empire that she inherited, the empire was effectively bankrupt and at the mercy of the IMF, something that buckled their knees during the Suez Crisis. I also think people are rather mistaken about her role as well. She was a monarch of both the colonial subjects equally with the home islands, there is some delusional strain of thought on /pol/ that makes people believe propaganda about monarchs being above petty politics and would somehow value their white homelands to the detriment of subjects abroad. This has never occurred in history, the "white homelands" are denuded of wealth towards the goal of defending spit of land that has entered the monarch's demesne.

Not that any of that matters, she was a ceremonial figure who had no say in governance, she could request certain things be done but ultimately had no binding power for it to happen, it was as useful as voting is for Americans. The political figures do whatever they want and the population suffers.

 

[WhiteNight]

Queen Elizabeth II wasn't a ruler.

 

[Dyn]

Elegabalus was just a dumb queer, he wasn't really that much worse than the less queer emperors in the Crisis of the Third of Century.

Elagabalus was easily the worst Emperor in Roman history. The queer shit doesn't even factor in, he managed to aggressively hatefuck literally every taboo and cultural norm Rome had to the point you have to wonder if he was just deliberately daring the people to rise up and lynch him.

GG Allin would have made a better US President than Elagabalus made a Roman Emperor.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Yes. She didn't even have any measurements printed on her. How the fuck were you supposed to use her as a ruler?

First you lay her out flat.

I guess it'll take another 90-odd years to carry out the next step.

Also, op is a fag.

 

[beet644]

Yes was powerless but I feel a lot of it is by choice. If I was her I would of slowey tried to grab Back power.