Idi Amin; dictator of Uganda and King of Scotland.
And his widow has since ascended the thrones.
This is an exceptionally snitty nitpick, but one that really should be made in the interests of accuracy:
James Stuart was never James I of the “United Kingdom,” except in describing their hereditary monarchy retroactively. The “United” there refers to the union of the crowns of Great Britain and of Ireland, formerly a legally separate nation whose government was basically imposed from London. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was only around from 1800 to 1922, following which, with Irish Home Rule and the independent Republic of Ireland save for six Ulster counties, it became “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” the name it’s held since.
What James was, was James VI of Scots and James I of England. What he often called himself was James, D.G. Britanniae Magnae Rex – i.e. “King of Great Britain,” meaning that he was the sole king over that island. It didn’t become a unified country until 104 years later, under his great-granddaughter Anne in 1707.
Okay, [post=8338072]this[/post] is what I was talking about. (See the thread linked to in this post.)
The other, less obvious example of a king of Poland who ruled elsewhere would be Stanisław I Leszczyński, who, after his second abdication, became duke of Lorraine.
And that was possible only because the existing duke, François-Etienne I, agreed to swap Lorraine for succession to the grand duchy of Tuscany, thus becoming another example for the OP. (Whether the fact that, as the husband of Maria Theresa and as Franz I Stephan, he went on to become the co-regent of the Habsburg hereditary lands and Holy Roman Emperor also qualifies is, I suppose, more debatable.)
I don’t have all of them, since he had a pile of titles taller than me, but just in Spain he was Carlos I de Castilla, Carlos I de Aragón-Dos Sicilias and Carlos IV de Navarra. He inherited the first from his mother Juana I, the other two from his maternal grandfather Fernando I; his claim to the Empire came from his father.
His son Felipe II had even more titles, adding Portugal by marriage. Unlike the other three kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, that one got re-separated pretty fast.
The only modern example I know of is Simeon II, who was the tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1943 until 1946 when the monarchy was abolished. The state was succeeded by the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, in which Simeon had no role. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Bulgaria became the Republic of Bulgaria, and Simeon was elected prime minister in 2001. This marks the only time a deposed monarch has become head of government through democratic elections.
I did not know that. God save the Queen!
How about Cambodia – before Pol Pot, Lon Nol, and other odd names, Norodom Sihanouk was at various times Prince Regent, King, Prime Minister, and President. I’m not sure of the fairness of any elections, nor of the intricate constitutional history that led to this, but I do recall him being four different kinds of head of state/government over his career.
No, it refers to the union of England and Scotland. The Treaty of Union of 1706 uses the phrases United Kingdom and United Kingdom of Great Britain many times; all the union with Ireland did was make GB into GB&I. Any monarch from Anne forward is properly styled “of the UK”–but not of course James I, who reigned long before the Union.
Fair enough, given that it’s a nitpick of my nitpick. But I’ll note that in lists of laws, titles of nobility, etc., the nation that existed between 1707 and 1800 is (apparently always) shorthanded as “Great Britain” or “GB,” and the one that succeeded it with the incorporation of Ireland in 1800 is (likewise apparently always) shorthanded as “the United Kingdom” or “UK.”
No, no, no.
(I’ve done this several times before, but here we go again anyway.)
There is a big difference between ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain’ and ‘the united kingdom of Great Britain’. Just because the texts of the 1706 Treaty and both the 1707 Acts used the phrase with initial capital letters does not mean that this is how it was meant to be read. After all, in common with most official documents of that period, those texts used initial capital letters for most nouns and adjectives. Simply citing that phrase in isolation therefore proves nothing. Only by considering other evidence can the reading that was intended be established.
Fortunately, those documents themselves clarify the point. Consider Article 1.
It even puts the phrase entirely in capital letters just to make sure that the form of the name is unambiguous.
Plenty of other evidence can be cited to show that this was how contemporaries understood these documents. As it happens, the royal style is the most clear-cut example. Every British monarch between 1707 and 1801 was formally, properly and routinely styled ‘King/Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland’. For that reason, historians actually do describe them as being ‘of Great Britain’, which is also the name they use for the country over which those rulers ruled. Anything else would be blatantly anachronistic.
True, that ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’ was adopted as the new name after 1801 was clearly influenced by the wording of the 1706-7 documents. But the fact that the 1800 Acts were so obviously modelled on those earlier documents only underlines the crucial difference. Consider the 1800 Article 1.
The parliamentary draftsmen knew precisely what they were doing and what that was was changing the country’s name. Needless to say, it was only at that point that the royal style was changed to ‘of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’.
A nitpick: Elizabeth II isn’t “Queen of the Commonwealth,” she’s the “Head of the Commonwealth.” Some of the Commonwealth nations are republics, and others have their own monarchs: Head of the Commonwealth - Wikipedia
Mr. Speaker, a follow-up question for APB - how come Her Majesty’s own web-site refers to the monarchs in this wise:
I’m not disagreeing with your analysis, but I’m wondering why HM & Co are using this terminology? is it common in the UK government?
Sanford Dole followed a similar path. He was President of the Republic of Hawaii and was then appointed Governor after Hawaii was annexed by the United States.
Huh. People actually (a) read my posts, and (b) remember them. 
Very true. Her Maj could just as easily be head of NATO, ASEAN, or The Under 13s Soccer Club. She is Queen of Australia and Queen of Canada, and these are separate crowns entirely to the British one. It is theoretically possible that the UK could become a republic and sack the Royals, yet QEII could remain as head of state and monarch of those other countries that chose to keep the old girl.
I don’t believe that this qualifies.
The actual head of state in Austria-Hungary was the “Hereditary Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary” (also, by the way, King of Bohemia, among many other titles).
“Archduke”, in this context, merely means “a child of the Emperor”, and “Prince” merely means “a child of the King”.
A viceroy is always subordinate to a monarch.
I don’t know what “regent” means in this context, but it usually means someone acting on the behalf of the actual monarch, not an actual monarch in his own right.
Do conquests count as “mergers”? What about Canute?
While you did say Countries , I wonder if Kurt Waldheim would fit the bill. Originally SecGen of the UN , and then President of Austria.
Declan