The English monarchy's first thousand years, told by historian David Starkey across six episodes that run from the collapse of Roman Britain to the execution of Charles I. Starkey narrates on location at Westminster Abbey, Bosworth Field, and the Tower of London, using each site to anchor a specific reign or crisis rather than a general timeline. The series moves from "The Early Kings" and "Medieval Monarchs" through the Tudor consolidation of power in "A New Dynasty" and "The Imperial King," then into the succession crises and civil war covered in "A Question of Succession" and "Revolution and the Republic." Starkey's focus stays on individual monarchs as political actors: their marriages, executions, and wars read as attempts to answer one recurring question, whether a king rules by force or by the consent of nobles and parliament. The series treats that tension as the throughline connecting William the Conqueror to the beheading of a king six centuries later, with each episode picking up a different stage of the argument.