What happens when a queen marries a king? The countries don’t enter into a union automatically, so who gets what titles where?
For example, say that Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and King Harald of Norway marry (after the deaths of their respective spouses). Presumably Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom retains that regnant title, and also acquires the consort title Elizabeth, Queen of Norway. Also presumably, King Harald of Norway retains that ruling title, and also receives a princely consort title such as Harald, Prince of the United Kingdom (though not necessarily right away – Elizabeth didn’t make Philip a Prince of the United Kingdom until some five years into their marriage).
So now you end up with a woman who is both Queen of the United Kingdom and Queen of Norway. How would she be referred to in each country? Would the titles be combined into “Queen of the United Kingdom and Norway”? Or would that be out on the basis that she’s sovereign of one but only consort in the other? If the titles are to be kept separate, then I suppose in the UK she would still be “Queen of the United Kingdom”, but what about in Norway? Royals are normally referred to by their highest title, and since a queen regnant outranks a queen consort, would she also be “Queen of the United Kingdom” even in Norway?
Harald has the same problem. In Norway he is a king, but in the UK he is only a prince. So when he’s in the UK, does he get called Prince Harald or King Harald? The former seems inappropriate because surely his kingship takes precedence over his principality, but the latter seems equally strange because it implies that he outranks his (reigning) wife.
There’s no reason that the crowns would be united, is there? She’d still be sovereign of England, but also Queen Consort of Norway, and he’d still be sovereign of Norway, but also Prince Consort of England.
This may have been a problem back when kingdoms and nations were much more mutable than they are now. But it doesn’t seem to me that either the thrones or the nations involved would be united just because the respective sovereigns were married to each other.
Now, if it had happened back before Elizabeth actually married Phillip and bore the current crop of heirs, the inheritances would be…interesting, to say the least. If Liz and Hal had one child together, does that child become regnant king/queen of both countries? Do the thrones unite in that case or would he/she just be king of the UK and king of Norway, separately? Given that the royals of either country don’t actually embody the political power of the country anymore (the parliaments do that now), I doubt the countries themselves would dissolve into some sort of new United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Norway.
This situation is denoted by the German term “Personalunion”
“A personal union is the combination by which two different states are governed by the same monarch, while their boundaries, their laws and their interests remain distinct.[1] It is not to be confused with a federation, which internationally is considered as a single state. Neither is it to be confused with dynastic union, where the union can be under a dynasty.”
There are a lot of questions here, but I’ll talk about the succession of the children of the hypothetical union of a king and a queen regnant. Within each of their realms, the succession would follow the law of that realm, so (depending on those laws and on the gender of ther children) the thrones might be united or might be separated.
One example is the former personal union of the thrones of Great Britain and of Hanover between 1814 and 1837, with George III, George IV and William IV of Great Britain being also King of Hanover. With the death of William IV in 1837, because Britain and Hanover had different laws of succession, Victoria took the throne in Britain, but not in Hanover – since Hanover had Salic lawm under which women could not inherit the throne. (Victoria’s uncle, the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, became Ernest Augustus I, King of Hanover.)
So, if a hypothetical Emperor of Japan married a hypothetical Queen of the Unitd Kingdom, and they had just one child who was a daughter, the daughter would succeed to the UK throne, but not to the Japanese throne.
I believe you’re right. When Mary I of England married Philip II of Spain (at the time still a prince), Philip was styled “King of England” and under the terms of the marriage treaty, he was given some powers in England (for example, Parliament was called under the monarchs’ joint names). This was very unpopular among the English people who didn’t want to see England become a dependency of Spain. But at most other times in British history, the Queen regnant’s husband wasn’t given this kind of power.
Even in previous times, realms in personal union didn’t necessarily get united. England, Scotland and Ireland had had the same monarch for centuries when Great Britain was created from England and Scotland in 1707, and when the UK was created from Great Britain and Ireland in 1800.
