1917: The Year Britain's Royal Family Survived While Every Other Empire Fell

1917: The Year Britain's Royal Family Survived While Every Other Empire Fell On July 17th, 1917, King George V erased his family's German name and created the House of Windsor. Exactly one year later, on July 17th, 1918, his cousin Tsar Nicholas II was executed with his entire family in a basement in Yekaterinburg. Two cousins, two crowns, one year apart. One man kept his throne. The other lost everything. By the end of the First World War, the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs and soon the Ottoman sultans were gone. Families that had ruled for centuries collapsed almost overnight. So how did Britain's royal family survive when every other empire fell? This video argues that the answer isn't luck, tradition or pageantry. At every crisis for eight hundred years, the British crown survived by cutting something off: a power, a privilege, a name, a cousin, even a king. The dynasties that refused to give anything up lost everything. The one that kept giving things away is still here. In this video: • The 1913 Berlin wedding of three royal cousins, and the truth about how they were related • Magna Carta and the first limits on the English crown • The English Civil War and the execution of Charles I • The Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights of 1689 • Why giving away power also meant giving away blame • The fall of Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution • The Gotha bombers, the House of Windsor, and the asylum offer George V withdrew • The abdication of Edward VIII and the Blitz • Elizabeth II, the Commonwealth, the televised coronation, 1992 and 1997 • King Charles III, the Crown Estate, and the decision to strip Andrew of his titles • Can the monarchy keep adapting fast enough to survive the next hundred years? Do you think the British monarchy will still be standing in a hundred years? Tell us in the comments. Subscribe for more stories about power, survival, and the moments that decide who lasts. #BritishRoyalFamily #HouseOfWindsor #KingGeorgeV #TsarNicholasII #Romanovs #BritishMonarchy #RoyalHistory #WW1History