All correct apart from the fact we don't have a king. Its Queen Elizabeth the second and Prince Phillip, a queens husband is not a king cos a King supersedes a queen, its sexist yes but at this point its more a technicality.
@Motlias Perhaps you can check how this is in the UK. In the Netherlands, the head of state is automatically the king. So Queen Beatrix was King of The Netherlands and queen at the same time. A bit confusing maybe, but still funny in a way.
@ImportViking our queen is just the Queen... well I say "just" XD it's the head of state (but no actual power since the civil war). she is also the head of the church. We don't have a law banning a queen as head of state like some other places so the queen is the queen and her husband is a prince and she and all their children take the royal name, E2 Prince Phillip, Victoria had Prince Albert
@ImportViking While I have never seen the queen of Denmark called king, the constitution uses only the word king, not queen. Likewise the law of succession, which uses the word queen only in the combination "queen Alexandrine". So legally, the queen is king.
@raqs Not quite, actually. Current requirements do not require having the royal family as head of state. India and Pakistan are both prominent examples of Commonwealth countries that do not recognise the Queen as their head of state.
Now, there's an interesting twist on that. Under the Australian Constitution HM has a variety of powers, but she _can't_ use any of them. She has to appoint a governor-general to exercise them for her. And the governor-general has to take "advice" about how to exercise the powers of HM from the government, not from HM.
The monarch's only powers in Australia come from an act of Parliament, the Royal Powers Act (1953). And that got passed because she was about to visit, and the government wanted her to preside over a meeting of the Federal Executive Council while she was here, but discovered that that as far as the Constitution went she _couldn't_.
Now, HM's powers under state constitutions are not necessarily so limited. The queen of an Australian state can exercise some of her powers herself, rather than compulsorily delegating them to a state governor, but only if she is present in person.
@Mixu To be fair I think the question is why is it a principality more than why a principality has a prince. Principalities tend to be parts of Kingdoms but Monaco isnt.
@Zuperkrunch #9763361
"Prince" was originally the title of a ruler. It still is in some countries. It is also a generic term for kings, emperors and suchlike. That is why Machiavelli's famous book is called The Prince. "Prince", in this sense, is "fyrste" in Danish, as in "fyrsten af Monaco".
A king of England got the bright idea to appoint his eldest son prince of Wales. This they have done ever since. The king of France, not to have his son outranked, appointed all his sons princes. From then on, "prince" has taken the secondary meaning of the son of a king. It is also used for consorts of queens regnant. My native Danish has imported this usage as "prins", as in "prins Christian".
@Dzubur No-one is quite sure, but there is a strong possibility that HM is not only Queen of Australia but also Queen of New South Wales, Queen of Queensland, Queen of South Australia, Queen of Tasmania, Queen of Victoria, and Queen of Western Australia. But she is definitely not Queen of the Northern Territory.
So when the Statute of Westminster required that acts to change the law of succession (in accordance with the Perth Agreement) be passed in all of HM's realms for the change to have effect, we had acts passed by all the Australian state parliaments as well as federal parliament, just to be on the safe side.
Or, Elizabeth, who is the queen of England is ALSO Elizabeth, queen of Australia. It is personal and not connected to the role as queen of England. Important distinction.
@Lommelun #9478881 Actually she is not queen of England. That title was abolished with the creation of Great Britain. And the title queen/king of Great Britain was abolished with the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. And so forth.
@Australian-Person
Well, the Governor General's power HAS been used at least once, with the sacking of the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, so yes, the Queen's representative DID change the government there.
@Australian-Person Technically speaking, that's still power. The GG is formally her representative - if, theoretically speaking, she wanted to get involved in Australian politics, she could do so with the powers of the GG.
In practice, though, it's doubtful she ever will unless things got REALLY bad.
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