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Comment by snickerbockers | Hacker News Reader

How much power does the British monarch still have? I'm from America so I didn't learn much in school about British history post-1776, but my understanding is that they never had an event like the French Revolution or American Revolution that suddenly ended their monarchy, just a long series of minor reductions in the royal family's power going back to the Magna Carta.

From my own (admittedly uneducated on this topic) perspective, British government doesn't make any sense as it looks like a modern republic from a distance but they still have lords, kings, dukes, and other titles of nobility that seem incompatible with that.

Does the King still have the ability to order people around and pass his own laws?

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> British government doesn't make any sense as it looks like a modern republic from a distance

A Canadian perspective... Did you know that king has to approve all of Canada's laws? So when Canadians elect their government, and that people-elected govt passes a law, that's not good enough to become law. It has to get Royal Assent from the current king/queen. Canadians even pledge allegiance to the 'King and his heirs' - and that includes Andrew the Pedophile - its part of the citizenship oath. Many Canadian will fight tooth and nail to keep this system intact.

Australia got smart and changed the citizenship oath some time ago. As a result, you no longer have to pledge to a pedophile!!

All aussie MPs and military swear an oath to the monarch.

TECHNICALLY, the monarchy has total veto power. Realistically though there'd probably be a revolution if they really used that in anyway that isn't in line with the purely ceremonial expectations for the role. They also have special laws made just for them like not having to pay any inheritance taxes to ensure the monarchy stays rich

But that's just domestically. The real pragmatic power is actually in foreign affairs and is way overlooked. A single visit of a British monarch to a regime would basically grant instant validity of their status. Imagine if King Charles III visited the Taliban. Obviously that specific situation is extremely unlikely, but I'd argue that Queen Elizabeth has played a really seminal role in keep some pretty fucked up regimes in power

Functionally zero. In theory, the monarch has power, but it is never exerted, because they know that if it was exerted a) it would be ignored, and b) they’d immediately be overthrown.

They act as a head of state in the same way that e.g: Germany has a President.

Noble ranks like Duke and Baron are also completely irrelevant to governance.

Lords _are_ relevant, on the other hand. They form the House of Lords, which plays a role as (simplifying) a check on the power of the House of Commons.

It is not entirely clear they’d be immediately overthrown - in the right situation it could spark a civil war.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing?

Practically, the UK Monarch (or Japanese emperor) has no discretionary political power at all. Republican Parliamentary systems usually leave some discretionary power to the head of state in either emergencies or for the purpose choosing a party to attempt to form a government.

Hereditary Lords (i.e. the noble aristocracy in the UK) have almost no political power. The ninety or so still in the House of Lords are elected by fellow members of the House of Lords. The remainder (600+) of the peers are appointed by the party in power in the commons.

> they never had an event like the French Revolution

English Civil War. Monarchy has been tool parliament ever since.

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