Apart from the Union, the great achievement of Anne's reign was the peaceful transition to the Hanoverians after her death in 1714. The lure (and legitimacy) of the Stuarts had confused and compromised some leading figures, but no amount of glamour made up for their lack of organisation, money and both broadbased support. When the time came, so did George I, and with his accession the character of the British monarchy changed. Whereas Queen Anne could still command enough popular mystique to continue the magical practice of "touching for the King's evil", the moment the Hanoverians arrived the monarchy assumed a truly constitutional air. It became irremediably dull, and this has been its strength. Too law-abiding and orderly ever to do much more than flirt with extending their powers, long-lived when it mattered and too stolid ever to be more than conventional mistress-takers, with the possible exception of George IV, the Hanoverians never invited more than passing unpopularity and never courted danger. 

By a stroke of luck, 1714 also marked the beginning of the long Whig supremacy that lasted until the 1790s. Queen Anne had favoured the Tories. In the natural change of administration when George I arrived, the Whigs therefore took over the government. The Whigs were a self-confident lot. Arguably one reason why Britain did not have a revolution in the 18th century was precisely because of this monarchical dullness and a ruling elite that was forward-looking and flexible enough to allow for some forms of change. The combination meant that the regime neither crumbled from within nor stood rigid in the face of outside pressures. 

The success of Queen Anne, as Anne Somerset makes clear, lay in living long enough to be an effective transitional monarch. In her heritage she was the last of the Stuarts; in her demeanour she was the first of the Hanoverians. With the possible exception of the Prince Regent — who luckily arrived on the throne too late to be anything but a cipher — Charles II was England's last glamorous monarch. Anne, the Hanoverians and their Germanic successors proved much less compelling but much better suited to the self-sacrificial strait-jacket of constitutional monarchy. To Anne, then, must go some of the credit for the survival of the British crown, and that in itself is reason enough to recognise her importance.