King Henry II-1/2 or King Henry IIB - which do you prefer?

[M.Sjostrom]

Occasionally, a portion (minority, however) of
medieval European monarchs factually used, also
officially, a regnal ordinal.
(often it was used in following way: "King Frederick,
third of that name")

Seemingly however a majority of medieval European
monarchs did never use nor were known to
contemporaries with any regnal ordinal.

Because of the first-mentioned fact (i.e, some
monarchs factually used), I cannot regard it silly or
useless to study which were factual regnal ordinals,
which are restrospective assignations, and so forth.
On the contrary, such study would be somewhat useful
to widen our understanding of evolution of historical
views on monarchy and legitimate succession.

For example, the monarch who in modern literature is
occasionally mentioned as Magnus VI of Norway (lived
in 13th century), himself apparently historically used
on occasion the regnal name king Magnus IV.
This seemingly reflects that he and his dynasty did
not recognize two previous rulers of the same name as
legitimate monarchs, i.e king Magnus Sigurdson (Magnus
IV) and Magnus Erlingson (Magnus V). Modern Norwegian
historiography and the government of the country
and/or royal court throughout past couple centuries
however seem to recognize them as rulers as others,
thus retrospectively making the mentioned historical
'Magnus IV' as 'Magnus VI'.




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