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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 Dutc
by dalbasal 3y ago
>> 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.
- pavlov 3y agoThey 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_throne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_claims_to_the_French_t...
- d-trieu 3y agoThe current King of Sweden decided that he had enough and dropped all except King of Sweden from his.
- dalbasal 3y agoBad move. Now it takes one move to dethrone him.
- pavlov 3y agoHe’s castled with the Stockholm Royal Palace so there’s a bishop and knight defending him, at least.
- rags2riches 3y agoEver 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.
- mcv 3y agoHoly 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).
- sofixa 3y ago> Charles V Funnily he was also King of two different Galicias (the one in Spain and the other one in Ukraine)
- pavlov 3y agoMaybe one day some really successful conqueror will be king of both Georgias, the one in North America and the one in Caucasus.
- atvrager 3y agoDon't forget South Georgia!
- kroltan 3y agoOr maybe a really specific conqueror? I could bet on what his name would be.
- earthboundkid 3y agoDrago the Dragon King.
- lgeorget 3y agoI'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.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> 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.
- Ichthypresbyter 3y agoThere 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.”
- adolph 3y agoReminds 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/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/parsing-html-the-cthulhu-way/
- dustypotato 3y agoThey still hold the Jersey islands where the English monarch is the Duke of Normandy ;)
- Symbiote 3y agoQueen 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_Elizabeth_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_titles_and_honours_of_...
- Doxin 3y agoAll 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.
- opensource4ever 3y ago>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.
- Symbiote 3y agoThe 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_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...
- dghughes 3y agoBasically 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.
- dghf 3y agoElizabeth was never Empress of India, not least because India became a republic in 1950, two years before her accession.
- arethuza 3y agoYes - the title Emperor/Empress of India was abolished in 1948: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_India So her father, George VI, was the last Emperor of India.