Who would you have supported in the English Civil War?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Fwiw Cromwell does strike me as genuinely troubled by the powers that he kept amassing, to the extent that he goes through cycles of discarding powers and trying to recall legislatures before his religious devotions bring him back in. If anything, he reminds me less of the cynical glory hound Napoleon and more a less blood-soaked Robespierre - and heck, Robespierre's philosophy and persona often strike me as a sort of secular Puritanism. I'll expand on this point if need be.

The downfall the Commonwealth came ultimately from the utter failure of the Rump Parliament to dissolve itself; if anything Cromwell literally was the only thing keeping the egos of the Rump and the Army destroying the entire project. Maybe if Lambert hadn't fallen out with Cromwell he could have kept it going, but that didn't happen and so you have the farce of Arthur Haselrig and his echo chamber.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The big issue with the Levellers is though they are right in retrospect, they were completely inflexible political idiots who quickly threw their briefly quite strong leverage away. (Rather fitting, given they arose in opposition to the biggest political idiot in British history)