I’m sitting here with a glass of Scottish mineral water thinking about the differences between the Russian civilisation state and the European civilisation. And one of my thoughts is that while European kings are calling themselves kings of a people, the Russians already have the concept of the Russian Land.

So I think to ask Grok.

First question: “When did the King of England stop being called Rex Anglorum and become Rex Angliae?”. Answer: King John (1200s), with lots of details.

Second question. Ditto for Rex Francorum and Rex Franciae. Answer (again lots of intelligent detail): Louis IX (1200s).

Third question. Русская Земля . Answer 800s.

That’s pretty impressive. I left out the very detailed and intelligent discussions of the questions and the developments over time. Do it yourself.

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My experience with Grok has been that it gives you the mean sea level answer to your question. But I guess that is to be expected, given that it is sifting the Web which is polluted by the MSM. But it’s much faster than Googling it and then figuring out the answer from the various pieces of information. (Let alone the good old days of spending hours in a library. I spent hours and hours in the Public Record Office when it was on Chancery Lane. Gadzooks – let’s see if Grok can do my PhD thesis!)

But as always – and if there is a golden rule to the Net, this is it – you have to have a solid basis of knowledge in your own head to start with to give context and, as well, the ability to sift wheat from chaff.

For those of you who fell asleep in language classes: King of the English, King of England, King of the French, King of France, Russian Land.

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A thought. Thanks to Grok, I write this short burble. In the Google days it would have been an essay. In the archive days, it would have been a thesis.