Edward the Confessor, a model of piety, was a surprisingly effective ruler

This seems an unfair summary - there is no reason to evaluate a period 1000 years ago using contemporary sociological mores; and the author presents their conclusion - as expected - in summary.

There's a long and rich tradition of scholarship on what constitutes a "good king" in medieval English history that is important (but missing) context for this article. Usually, scholars rate kings in terms of their effectiveness as rulers, rather than according to modern conceptions of morality in order to avoid anachronistically imposing a modern mindset on medieval rulers. So taking an English king and assessing his success and failures according to what his contemporaries would have considered success and failure. Often that consists of some version of these: maintaining a secure and prosperous realm, keeping fractious nobles and peasants in line, acquiring new lands for his followers, building up the church, screwing over the French and Scots, and securing a smooth succession after his death, ideally to his own male child.

The article's title (though less its content) challenges a common generalization about English kings: the more pious they were, they less effective they tended to be. A certain minimum of respect for Christianity was expected (e.g., when Henry II was forced to prostrate himself before the church to beg forgiveness for the murder of Thomas Becket), but on the other extreme, some notoriously ineffective monarchs devoted themselves to Christian worship to an extent that it undermined their ability to engage with the pragmatic, worldly concerns of ruling. Henry III and Henry VI, and to a lesser extent Edward II come to mind as the most obvious examples. Henry III and Edward II spent too much money and time building beautiful churches, neglecting the management of military and more pragmatic fiscal affairs. Henry VI was literally insane, and spent most of his time praying rather than ruling, which directly caused the first of the Wars of the Roses.

Sometimes Edward the Confessor gets lumped in with this crowd, because he was famed for his piety and he failed at the most essential task of any medieval English king: ensuring a smooth succession. Which in turn invited the Norman Conquest and thus the Harrying of the North and a near genocide of the Anglo-Saxon people Edward ruled (and failed to protect by not ensuring a smooth succession).

Ultimately, the generalization is probably flawed anyway (too few examples to identify a real trend, and too many confounding explanations like piety being an adaptation to severe mental illness), but this article does a bad job challenging even the lesser premise that the general rule applies to Edward the Confessor.

I think by point of the piece is that Edward maintained power in spite of coups, rebellious nobles, and political chaos. I don't know why the subhead is "Edward the Confessor, a model of medieval piety, was a surprisingly effective ruler." Probably an editor who wanted to summarize and did a bad job.

> A good king is one who lets their kingdom unravel to be replaced by something a bit more democratic in a more-peaceful-than-the-French-Revolution style.

That's a rather shocking statement. Letting a kingdom unravel is a recipe for chaos and therefore intrinsically opposed to the peace and the common good of the society governed. A king who would do that would ipso facto be a bad king. A transition to a more republican style of government is so a plausible consideration, but this would not be the unraveling of the kingdom, but a reform. (Of course, sometimes tyrannical forces within a kingdom may gather enough strength to force armed resistance against them, but then it is not the king who causes violence, but rather those tyrannical forces, and the king is right to defend his people against them in proportion to the threat they pose. On other occasions, that tyrant is the king himself and thus one who must be opposed in proportional manner.)

I also wish to note that whatever the flaws of the ancien regime, the French Revolution was a despicable orgy of violence and that our Jacobin school textbooks ought to edited to reflect this fact.

Henry IV of France [1] seems a good king to me, even from a 2020 perspective.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France

I see absolutely no reason to measure some medieval ruler based on current (ever changing) morals - ie if we want to measure them by treatment of LBGT+ community they are all utter failures no matter how their states flourished on other aspects. And subsequently at least 95% of the whole mankind that ever lived are barbaric primitives for many reasons we may pick up today, which leads to pointless dismissal pretty quickly.

The title says “effective ruler” and I’m not sure how you got so far off track. You should be thinking of Machiavelli, not Juan Carlos. Edward was able to hold on to power despite the strength of a true rival... things that would lead him to get help from William, and we all know how that story goes. But a lesser king could have easily found himself on a pike in the eleventh century.

The problem with democracies is they are not efficient in the long run at competing with powerful and organized empires or kingdoms. A good king might bring the country toward democracy but a wise king would take steps to make sure that will not lead to the collapse of the kingdom and possibly not do it if there is a high risk of it leading to serious consequences. Democracies are relatively new and thus are still experimental. The oldest and longest lived empires were usually monarchies. It’s a lot simpler to get things done when the ruler can command the entire nation to change according to their will and thus they will always have the upper hand when at war with a democratic nation of equal power and resources that is limited by their due process. Monarchs only have to worry about invasion, collapse of the economy, natural disasters and uprisings. Democratic rulers have to worry about all that and being liked by anyone that can vote. The bottom line is when you don’t have to worry about what people think or who owns what resources and can issue orders with no questions asked you are more effective at leading an army. The advantage however only applies when the monarch is intelligent enough to plan effectively or has a very wise and trusted council who can do this for them.

The issue of piety doesn't even come up once in the whole article.

same here, scanned for 'effectiveness', but then the article ended...

I think you'll be interested in Simon De Montfort, although not technically a king. His image is enshrined on the ceiling at the Capitol in Washington

His son was a let down though.