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>> Dutch law allowed the throne to pass to a female child, but the Grand Duchy was under different laws and was inherited by a claimant rather than the new Dutch queen. (Monarchy is pretty weird in practice.)

Game of Thrones, with its campy portrayal of regal titles and announcements, kind of drives this point home. European aristocracy, especially those derived from germanic and other barbarian cultures, held titles like collectibles. Lordships accrued rather than expanded. The could be dispersed and often were.

If you watch Queen Elizebeth coronation, the list of titles would shame Daenerys Targaryen. It's quite surreal. Queen of Jamaica, Empress of India, Defender of the faith...

Even the 20th century version was not unrelated to real politics, but as you go back, this reflected real political power and machinations. Every title had different rules, different arbiters, and disputes led to actual wars.

Queen Elizabeth II had so many titles they abbreviated them:

(On accession.) "Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith."

(At death.) "Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, and Sovereign of the Most Noble Order of the Garter."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_titles_and_honours_of_...

Maybe in parts of the ceremony. The footage on replay at london castle has long (20m+) title read.

>Head of the Commonwealth

that is no joke, remember back in 80 or 70, when she recalled the election results in Australia. Then they had the election again, and of course this time the other guy won.

The relevant title for that action would be Queen of Australia, but the reality was considerably more complicated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...

Basically Governor-General (the Queen's representative of a country) John Kerr did it without approval from the Queen.

We have the same system here in Canada but if such a thing happened here there would be riots in the streets. Especially Quebec and First Nations. But really anyone would be very mad and we would probably drop the monarchy that day tradition or not.

Governors General are more than a mere “representative” (though they re described that way in my passport), they are viceroys (vice kings) so exercise royal prerogatives.

Of course monarchy is nonsense but I have a thing for pedantry like this.

TBH the nonsensical nature of monarchy works out for Australia, as it costs essentially nothing and sort of acts as a ground strap to make the idea of “head of state” rather irrelevant. Just compare to countries like France or USA where the Head of State gets capital letters and is a person with actual power.

Next best would be a president like in Germany who is basically a nonentity with less power than a GG.

> TBH the nonsensical nature of monarchy works out for Australia, as it costs essentially nothing and sort of acts as a ground strap to make the idea of “head of state” rather irrelevant. Just compare to countries like France or USA where the Head of State gets capital letters and is a person with actual power.

> Next best would be a president like in Germany who is basically a nonentity with less power than a GG.

Meh, you're just moving the position 1 rank down. The German Chancellor (in other countries, the Prime Minister) wields all the power instead.

Plus, you know, they're only presidents. After 4-5-6-7 (x2 in some cases) years they go away.

The concept under description is effectively Bagehot's "dignified" vs. "efficient" parts of government. The head of state being the "dignified", the personification of the nation, and the head of government being the "efficient", the wielder of political power.

I generally favor the American-style presidential system over the British-style parliamentary system, but I think one flaw of the American one is that it combines the roles of the dignified and the efficient, often conflicting with each other, into one office.

The French semi-presidential system is a little weird, with technically the prime minister being the head of government, but the president still wields most of the executive power.

The 5e's constitution was designed for De Gaulle, so de facto, the French Président wields all the power, even quite a bit during "cohabitation". The PM is mainly there is be blamed for things and to manage the legislature for the president.

> Meh, you're just moving the position 1 rank down.

Indeed, that is the point. But the PM can be replaced more easily than, and doesn't have the same focus of attention of, the head of state. Best is when the two are muddled, as in the German case.

I've lived in Australia, USA, France and Germany so have some idea of the spectrum of options.

we would probably drop the monarchy that day tradition or not.

I’m not so sure. If that were the case, why not drop it now? There is nothing virtuous about the tradition.

>Basically Governor-General (the Queen's representative of a country) John Kerr did it without approval from the Queen.

What does this even mean? It's not like G-Gs the world over consult with Buckingham Palace before every action. Kerr acted as he believed was the correct course. You may or may not agree, but the 1975 dismissal was not a case of that Governor-General somehow cheating to get away with a flagrant violation of the rules G-Gs follow.

More to the point, Australians did not agree with your interpretation. The Coalition won the biggest majority in history in the federal election called one month after the dismissal. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_federal_electi...>

>We have the same system here in Canada but if such a thing happened here there would be riots in the streets.

The same thing did happen in Canada. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%E2%80%93Byng_affair> No riots.

Yet again, a Canadian (thinks he) knows more about other countries' affairs than his own. I can guarantee that Canadians as a whole were more aware of Trump winning the 2016 US presidential election by earning more electoral votes than Hillary despite receiving fewer popular votes, than the fact that the same thing (of one party forming a federal government by winning the most seats, despite winning fewer popular votes than another) had happened several times in Canadian history, such as in 1979. I doubt that this has changed even though this happened again in the two most recent federal elections to Trudeau's benefit.

> Yet again, a Canadian (thinks he) knows more about other countries' affairs than his own.

On behalf of Canadians I'm sorry about whatever it is that we did to make you feel this way.

> Yet again, a Canadian (thinks he) knows more about other countries' affairs than his own.

Yeah there's a story there.

Plus their apparent belief in having mind reading abilities is disturbing.

Sorry, not my fault that you misunderstand what Governors-Generals do (and don't do) or what happened with the 1975 dismissal.[1] Or you now pretending that you knew what had happened in the 1979 federal election (let alone the earlier cases, especially 1896) before I told you about it.

[1] Or The Dismissal, depending on who you ask

Yeah… not exactly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...

remember back in 80 or 70, when she recalled the election results in Australia. Then they had the election again, and of course this time the other guy won.

You'd think the queen interfering in an election would earn her more than one brief mention in the Wikipedia article. But Wiki remembers it differently than you do:

"The leader of the Opposition, Billy Snedden, was enthusiastic about the appointment and also agreed to reappoint Kerr in five years, were he prime minister at the time. Kerr then agreed to take the post, was duly appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, and was sworn in on 11 July 1974."

The kings of England also claimed to be Kings of France until 1800.

In 1800 England was closer to becoming a department of France, than France joining a personal union under England :-))

Of course, life turned out differently, but aristocratic claims are quite crazy. Who's the current King of Jerusalem, again? :-D

So...

The thing to remember is that nations and nationalism are the centrepiece concept of politics today, but this is new.

Medieval politics was all about kings, lords and lordships. Not nations. National sentiments may have played roles, but secondary. Like the role race, class, ideology or whatnot today. Important, but nowhere near as central as nations.

The King of England wasn't very English much of the time.

The competing claims on england & france originate with Normans. They were if scandi origin, became powerful in France. They conquered England, Jerusalem, Cyprus, parts of Italy, etc. England became the house's important, long term procession... but they weren't English. They spoke french and claimed Viking ancestry.

Circa 1800 was a transitional period. Republican nationalism was exploding. Being a German house (Hanover) ruling England was becoming an issue. Royals started to adopt (previously derided) English folkishness. They raised their children in English, started speaking in a native accent, eating English foods and publicly participating in English activities.

You can still see this today, with British royals engaged in symbolic national "customs" like Scottish tartanry, Welsh language or whatever.

England wasn't claiming lordship over France. The king of England was. Up to 1800-ish, the king himself wasn't English. Not culturally and not by self-definition.

There's a Hohenzollern (futilely) trying to claw back the assets of Prussia.

All dutch laws start with "Wij Beatrix, bij de gratie Gods, Koningin der Nederlanden, Prinses van Oranje-Nassau, enz. enz. enz." (or equivalent for different kings/queens) which translates to "We Beatrix, by the grace of god, queen of the Netherlands, Princess of Oranje-Nassau, etc. etc. etc."

You know a title is too long if you have to resort to "etc." in official documents.

They did love collecting titles. The kings of England also claimed the title of King of France until 1802, even though they lost the very last enclave on French soil in 1558:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_claims_to_the_French_t...

There was a recent incident with the first printing of the Book of Common Prayer (the Church of England's official prayer book) after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The BCP includes both references to the current monarch, and to Queen Elizabeth I who ordered it to be compiled. Unfortunately someone at the publisher didn't realize this, and did a find and replace of (among other things) "King" for "Queen" and "Charles" for "Elizabeth", resulting in a page that referred to "Our Sovereign Lord CHARLES, by the grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith.”

Reminds me of "Parsing Html The Cthulhu Way" [0] except for the semantic (meaning) layer instead of the syntactic layer.

0. https://blog.codinghorror.com/parsing-html-the-cthulhu-way/

Holy Roman Emperors also pile on the royal titles. King of the Germans, king of Italy, on top of their regular titles. Charles V was king of Germany, Italy, Spain, Lord of the Netherlands, Duke of Burgundy. When he passed half of his titles to his brother Ferdinand, he was also king of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia.

And yet somehow there's supposed to be only one real king in the Empire (Bohemia).

> Charles V

Funnily he was also King of two different Galicias (the one in Spain and the other one in Ukraine)

Maybe one day some really successful conqueror will be king of both Georgias, the one in North America and the one in Caucasus.

Or maybe a really specific conqueror?

I could bet on what his name would be.

Drago the Dragon King.

Don't forget South Georgia!

I'm reading again Henry V, by Shakespeare. The first scene starts with some realpolitik where the archbishop of Canterbury (a Catholic bishop then) distracts the king from passing a law that would strip the Church from a large part of its wealth and lands by making him go to war against France to claim the throne.

The current King of Sweden decided that he had enough and dropped all except King of Sweden from his.

Bad move. Now it takes one move to dethrone him.

He’s castled with the Stockholm Royal Palace so there’s a bishop and knight defending him, at least.

Ever since the Kalmar Union, Denmark has had the Swedish national emblem the Three Crowns as part of their Royal Coat of Arms. The union ended in 1523.

> The kings of England also claimed the title of King of France until 1802, even though they lost the very last enclave on French soil in 1558:

I imagine a future where China badly loses an expansionist war but continues to identify itself as Protector of Tibet for 10 more generations.

Then again I can also imagine a future US Gov rejecting the Confederation of Desantia after it's Bugs Bunny style secession from the US - and continue to use it's archaic name of Florida.

They still hold the Jersey islands where the English monarch is the Duke of Normandy ;)

Elizabeth was never Empress of India, not least because India became a republic in 1950, two years before her accession.

Yes - the title Emperor/Empress of India was abolished in 1948:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_India

So her father, George VI, was the last Emperor of India.

The reason it was such a strategic position, is because the town was a natural fortress. It's located on top of a high, flat rock, which is riddled with tunnels for gun casemates, making the town of Luxembourg very hard to take.

It was a vital part of the Spanish Road that the Spanish Habsburgs needed to move troops from their lands in Italy to the north during the 80 Years War.

In 1867 by treaty the anything military and the fortress was required to be torn down. Kind of a shame, because just a few decades later fortresses became almost useless in war. It's a bit weird to see the ruins of a fortress and then go to the local museum and realize that it was torn down recently enough that there are tons of photographs of it. On the other hand it allowed the rest of the city centre to be built up.

> (Monarchy is pretty weird in practice.)

Friend of mine back-tested the simple "the next king is the first son of the previous king" against the past 1,000 years of English kings and found it to be true only half the time.

I did the same - taking only the kings/queens of England (i.e. starting with Alfred and ending with Queen Anne, ignoring those after the unification of the United Kingdom).

Son is by far the most common (21 from 50), followed by brother (6 from 50).

The next two are especially interesting - 5 new monarchs were usurpers (i.e. not closely related to the previous monach) and 3 times the new monarch was also an old monarch (i.e. a previous King was returned to the throne!).

There were 4 or 5 female successions (twice a daughter, twice a sister and once a daughter-but-disputed-succession [i.e. Matilda]).

Only once does it looks like the succession totally jumped a generation, and a grandson succeeded. In every other situation it looks like people were in the same generation (i.e. brother, sisters, cousins) or one lower (sons, daughters, nephews).

And only once did the succession 'jump back' a generation, with Richard III succeeding his nephew.

I was really hoping that Charles would just be king for a day and give it to William thereafter. Get some fresh blood in there, as well as a figure that didn't have 50 years of somewhat controversial behavior lined up behind them.

Did your friend exclude situations where the previous king had no sons?

> Dutch law allowed the throne to pass to a female child, but the Grand Duchy was under different laws and was inherited by a claimant rather than the new Dutch queen

If you are confused by this, try Crusader Kings game by Paradox (I prefer ck2 to ck3) for a good taste of multiple types of inheritance and problems arising from ruling medieval realm and passing all accumulated titles to your heirs.

Wow, I wish I had your ability to synthesise a thousand-year history in a few paragraphs in such an interesting and cohesive way!