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50 free British Monarchs trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
England has had a king or queen more or less continuously since Alfred the Great, and the list reads like a thousand-year soap opera: a king who died of too many lampreys, a queen who reigned for nine days, a monarch found under a car park, a king who lost America and one who gave up the throne for love. This quiz runs the whole line. It opens with the Anglo-Saxons and the Conquest, moves through the Plantagenets and the Wars of the Roses, gives the Tudors and Stuarts their due, and finishes with the Hanoverians and Windsors up to the coronation of Charles III. Along the way you'll meet Magna Carta, the Princes in the Tower, the Gunpowder Plot, the Glorious Revolution, the 'Madness' of George III and the Abdication Crisis. Easy questions ask who won at Hastings and who had six wives. Hard ones ask which king was the last to lead troops in battle and who was styled Lady of the English. Fifty questions, every answer sourced. Long live the quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who is usually counted as the first king to rule the whole of England, from 927?
Æthelstan
Alfred's grandson took York, the last Viking kingdom, and was styled 'King of the English' in a charter of 928.
Q 02Which king is the subject of the legend about burning a peasant woman's cakes?
Alfred the Great
Hiding in the Somerset Levels from the Danes, he was supposedly scolded by the woman who had no idea who he was.
Q 03Which Danish king was the first to call himself 'King of England', in 1016?
Cnut
He is the same king in the famous tale of commanding the tide to halt — which was meant to show his humility, not his arrogance.
Q 04Which king built Westminster Abbey and was buried there the day Harold was crowned?
Edward the Confessor
It was the first Norman Romanesque church in England; his death without an heir triggered the invasions of 1066.
Q 05Weeks before Hastings, Harold Godwinson defeated a Norwegian invasion at which battle?
Stamford Bridge
He killed Harald Hardrada and his own brother Tostig there on 25 September, then marched south to meet William.
Q 06On what date was the Battle of Hastings fought?
14 October 1066
William was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day that year.
Q 07What survey of English landholdings did William order in 1085-86?
The Domesday Book
It listed every holding with its owner before and after the Conquest, county by county.
Q 08Henry I's only legitimate son drowned in which 1120 disaster?
The White Ship
The loss threw the succession into chaos and led to the civil war known as the Anarchy.
Q 09According to a chronicler, Henry I died after eating a surfeit of what?
Lampreys
Henry of Huntingdon says he ignored his physician; historians doubt the fish really killed him.
Q 10Empress Matilda was never crowned queen but held which title during the Anarchy?
Lady of the English
She was driven out of London before her coronation; her son became Henry II, the first Angevin king.
Q 11Which archbishop was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral after clashing with Henry II?
Thomas Becket
Four knights took the king's angry words as an order; Becket was canonized just three years later.
Q 12Richard the Lionheart spent roughly how long in England during his ten-year reign?
Six months
He was on crusade, in captivity or fighting in France; he was entirely absent for his last five years.
Q 13Which king agreed to Magna Carta with his barons in 1215?
John
His father had nicknamed him 'Lackland'; most historians now call the charter a failed peace treaty that became iconic later.
Q 21Edward IV's 1464 marriage to which woman alienated Warwick the Kingmaker?
Elizabeth Woodville
The secret match to a commoner's widow turned his most powerful ally against him in the Wars of the Roses.
Q 22Edward V and his younger brother are remembered by what name?
The Princes in the Tower
They vanished in the Tower of London in 1483; their uncle took the throne as Richard III.
Q 23Richard III was killed at which 1485 battle?
Bosworth Field
His defeat near Market Bosworth is often taken as the end of the Middle Ages in England.
Q 14Edward I's epithet 'Longshanks' referred to what?
His long legs
At 6 ft 2 in he towered over contemporaries; he was also called the Hammer of the Scots and seized the Stone of Scone in 1296.
Q 15Where did Edward II die in 1327 after being forced to give up his crown?
Berkeley Castle
He was probably murdered on the orders of the new regime led by Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella.
Q 16Which order of chivalry did Edward III found around 1348?
The Garter
The same king's claim to the French throne had started the Hundred Years' War in 1337.
Q 17What was the spark of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt that the young Richard II helped crush?
A poll tax
The deeper cause was tension between peasants and landowners after the Black Death had shrunk the workforce.
Q 18Henry IV is also known by what name, after the castle where he was born?
Bolingbroke
He deposed his cousin Richard II in 1399 to become the first Lancastrian king.
Q 19In which year did Henry V win the Battle of Agincourt?
1415
Combined with his conquest of Normandy, it led to the Treaty of Troyes naming him heir to the French throne.
Q 20Who is the youngest person ever to succeed to the English throne?
Henry VI
He was eight months old when his father Henry V died in 1422, and soon inherited a claim to France as well.
Q 24Richard III's remains were found in 2012 beneath what in Leicester?
A car park
Audrey Strange of the Richard III Society had predicted the spot in 1975; he was reburied in Leicester Cathedral.
Q 25Who was the first monarch of the House of Tudor?
Henry VII
He sealed peace with Scotland by marrying his daughter Margaret to James IV — the link that later brought the Stuarts south.
Q 26Which 1534 act declared Henry VIII 'the only Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England'?
The Act of Supremacy
Refusing the accompanying oath became high treason, punishable by death.
Q 27Who was proclaimed queen on 10 July 1553 and deposed nine days later?
Lady Jane Grey
The Privy Council switched its support to Mary; Jane was executed at the Tower in February 1554.
Q 28Mary I became queen consort of which country through her marriage to Philip?
Spain
More than 280 Protestants were burned at the stake in her five-year reign, earning her the later label 'Bloody Mary'.
Q 29In which year was the Spanish Armada defeated during Elizabeth I's reign?
1588
Parma's invasion force never got across the Channel; the 'Virgin Queen' ruled another fifteen years.
Q 30Which king of Scotland inherited the English crown in 1603?
James VI
He styled himself 'King of Great Britain', though no such kingdom legally existed until 1707.