To be satisfyingly pedantic, my King isn’t the same King. Mine is the King of Canada. It just happens to be the same person as the King of England and the King of Australia ;)
Some friends and I started playing Crusader Kings 2 recently. If anyone wants a thorough education in the weirdness of feudal monarchy, I highly recommend it, half the game is manipulating weird inheritance laws/scenarios to grow your holdings.
Still it skips over weirdness like the same person being both a sovereign king and vassal of another king. See for example King Henry II of England and Duke of Normandy etc.
“””
Charles III, by the Grace of God, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
“””
So in my head canon, he is the King of the UK and Canada … the same person and the same office. Ie there is no King of Canada officially - the title is always King of UK (first) and of other places as well … in short whilst Canada has a King, there is not a title “King Of Canada” that he can hold as well as holding “king of UK”
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Queen Elizabeth II was the first of Canada's sovereigns to be proclaimed separately as Queen of Canada in 1953, when a Canadian law, the Royal Style and Titles Act, formally conferred upon her the title of "Queen of Canada". The proclamation reaffirmed the monarch’s role in Canada as independent of the monarch’s role in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms.
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The other realms the British King has are the Crown dependencies, eg Isle of Man. Australia is the odd one out in naming the UK as one of the other realms. Your head canon was true, before the independence of the Commonwealth countries.
Jamaica has the monarchy. Jamaican forces were part of the US-led coalition that invaded Grenada in 1983, after the communists seized power. The communists found it politically expedient to maintain the structure of parliamentary government, and so the head of state of Grenada also remained nominally, Elizabeth II.
If you're wondering how it's relevant: the titles can end up separating again. The most straightforward way is if the territories have different rules for who inherits the crown on death.
That page correctly describes the different entities that are all called ‘Canada’. It’s not wrong. The one that has its own monarch - the King/Queen of Canada - is the modern one, established in 1984.
Previous to that, the UK’s monarch had dominion over Canada. In 1984 the roles were made distinct.
There is an even more pedantic objection to your claim: there is no such person as the “King of England”; this is like saying Donald Trump is the President of California.
Right?! Listen, I know this sounds like a conspiracy… but I think the monarchy has historically been a mechanism used to centralize tremendous global power under a single banner. We ought to be mindful of that and, perhaps, construct checks and balances against this concentrated power.
the last time the British tried to have anything to do with the governing of Canada was a century ago, and it went poorly (and led to the statute of Westminster, removing that as an option).
Kind of! There's nothing on paper that says the King can't just decide that democracy is over and dissolve Parliament. Another example is that the King's representation in Canada, the Governor General, unilaterally gets to decide whether or not to give any passed legislation "royal assent." However in practice, they always do and they otherwise never put their thumb on the scale. Doing so would be a constitutional crisis that would likely end our relationship with the Monarchy more formally and put pen to paper that no, you don't actually have any real kingly powers.
The Governor General has in recent times prorogued Parliament when the Prime Minister asked them to. Ie. "This is politically nasty. Let's hit the pause button and come back when things are better and we're not about to be ejected from power..." And that has been politically controversial. Historically the Governor General just says yes because they want to avoid playing a political role at all (ie. preserving this convention that the Monarchy is really just a decoration of our government).
> if ever exercised it’d probably lead to the end of the monarchy.
If he does something that is openly obviously defying the will of the democratic majority, sure. But there are a lot of ways he can put his thumb on the scale in more subtle situations where the legal course of action is unclear.
For example, if the Queen had refused Boris Johnson's request to prorogue parliament in 2019 -- which was later ruled illegal anyway -- I doubt it would have led to the end of the monarchy.
If by 'their king', you mean 'the king of England'. No, the king of England holds no power in Canada or Australia. However, the king of Canada holds limited power in Canada, and happens to be the same person as the king of England, and it's expected that that will continue as all countries that share that monarch have agreed to the same rules of succession.
Constitutionally, the king of Canada is the commander in chief of its armed forces, provides consent or assent to all laws passed by Parliament, has some immunity from prosecution, and has a pardon power. In actual practice, most of those powers are performed perfunctorily by delegates based on either action by Parliament or by recommendation of ministers determined by the Prime Minister.
In 1975 the British Queen instructed her representative the governor general to dismiss the Australian prime minister, dissolving the Australian parliament.
I don't think the Queen instructed the Governor General to do that. He made the decision.
I'm old enough to remember it and remember a statement from the palace saying something like "The Queen is watching events in Australia with interest" but I don't think she took an active part.
I quick search reveals this. I don't know this site but if true then some letters seem to confirm the above. She told the GG to obey the Australian Constitution.
The pictures of Queen/King is on the money, and not to mention this little fiasco in the 70's [1] is when the rub meets the road, and we figure out who is really wearing the pants in this geopolitical relationship.
The legal landscape is very different now, that triggered a constitutional crisis that basically ensured it will never happen again. A lot of things were also formalised after that by Acts of Parliament like the Australia Act 1986 which cut off basically all legal ties (like any remaining ability of the UK Parliament to make laws in Australia)
I'll give you another reason to consider Canada as part of the British empire. It's actually called Canada.
The local Indians have two words for settlements - one word for their own settlements, and another word for the settlements of other peoples who have come to their lands. Canada is the latter - it actually means "foreigner's settlement on our land" or "invader's settlement". Interestingly, I just tried to Google it and the only two websites I looked at - Wikipedia and some official Canada site - both conveniently leave out the part about it being a foreign settlement. Both simply translate the word as settlement, without the nuance.
I feel a citation is needed for that, since it seems in direct conflict with the given history of the word which was that Cartier heard the local indian youths at the village of Stadacona call their village "kanata" (village) and believed that it was the word for the entire area. There was no "invader's village" to even refer to at the time.
Looking into it online now, yes I agree that wherever I heard that from contradicts the established histories. It's too late for me to delete my comment, so if we could just start downvoting it so it disappears that would be great.
Thinking about this, perhaps you were thrown off by rhetorical flourish in a speech, perhaps by an Iroquois, perhaps reacting to the use of "Canada" as a unifying term for everyone living in the northern americas now - "our village."
"Our word for village is kanata, "canada" is a totally different word for the 'village of the invaders'"
It was an explanation by a Native American Indian who I think was a non-Iroquois as this was in Florida. We were discussing Indian (he used that term) names, specifically the fact they nobody living remembers the meaning of the name Miami (for the river).
We do not have the same king. The King of Great Brittan is not the King of Canada, they just happen to be the same person. Is the US also part of the British Empire?
but he's commander in chief. and he confirms / dissolves parliament. so when it matters, as in war time, he can . I don't appreciate the condescension in either case. It's not like his powers are easy to understand. They exist, though not commonly exercised.
I looked it up, and you are kinda right in the theory of it, and I was wrong in the practice of it. The practical power lies with the Cabinet.
From Wikipedia:
"A declaration of war by Canada [...] is an exercise of the royal prerogative on the constitutional advice of the ministers of the Crown in Cabinet and does not require the direct approval of the Parliament of Canada, though such can be sought by the government."
To be complete, Elizabeth is still on a lot of Canadian money, and she was the Queen of the UK with dominion over Canada until 1984, when she became Queen of Canada, and the UK crown lost dominion over Canada.
So Elizabeth was a British monarch on Canadian money, and Canadian monarch on Canadian money, uniquely.
Of course she is no longer put on newly made money.
Well I did not expect the thread to be that good ... but I am definitely going to get popcorn out to eat while I read all the people telling me that :)
Ha! Yeah, Canadians are quick and eager to describe their independence from the UK, relatively fresh as it is :)
Americans had 200 year dramatic and violent head start and everyone has figured that out by now. The details of Canada’s status are understandably less well known.
Hard to think otherwise as they have the same king.