Kings and Queens of England and Great Britain
Egbert is generally considered England's first king, having unified the realms of Wessex, Cornwall, Mercia, Kent, Sussex, Essex and East Anglia in the 9th century. His descendants ruled until the Danish king Canute the Great assumed control. After the brief Saxon restoration under Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror became the first Norman king in 1066, introducing French language and continental Germanic names that permanently altered English culture. Subsequent ruling houses — Anjou, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Hanover, and Windsor — all interrelated, governed England through the centuries. Oliver Cromwell briefly ruled after the English Civil War (1642-1648). The 1707 Act of Union formally merged the English and Scottish kingdoms into the United Kingdom of Great Britain, with monarchical powers gradually reduced to a largely ceremonial role.
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