This is a good example of what this thread is about, on both sides.
It is providing relevant information that many people do not know, and therefore fighting ignorance.
But it’s also needlessly calling someone “wrong.” Just because something isn’t an official title doesn’t mean it’s totally invalid as a descriptor or way to refer to someone.
(Maybe it’d be like referring to the POTUS or his administration as “the White House,” as in “the White House said…” or “the White House did…”? “The White House” is not an official name of the presidential administration, but it’s a common way of referring to it.)
Hopefully we can fight ignorance without fighting each other.
Quoting the Act of Union at people is not actually very helpful at fighting ignorance because the issue is mid-20th century social changes, not 18th century constitutional changes. “Queen of England”* was utterly standard** usage for centuries after the union, including the period in which the English language was exported around the globe, so it’s to be expected that peoples who are at a remove from the social changes will not change their language at the same rate. If you want to correct someone who isn’t familiar with that, tell them about the other national identities in the United Kingdom, not an irrelevant legal change that occurred 250 years before the linguistic change.
*The present queen even called herself such in her Christmas speech in 1953.
**And yes, I realize that there were probably people who were put off by that terminology during that time.
You do realise that EIIR monograms were smashed in Scotland and there was a Court case against the coronation oath and regnal name?
So, it was a pretty live issue. At a time when Unionist feeling in Scotland was at its highest.
So if I understand this correctly, Queen Elizabeth II can only be queen of countries where she does not actually live. Even though she resides in England, she is Queen of the UK, according to what I am reading here. She is Queen if the Commonwealth of Nations. That seems kind of messed up. Will any of this terminology change under Brexit?
The country where she lives is the UK, of which she is Queen. When she’s living in Balmoral, her Scottish residence, she remains Queen of the UK. It is impossible for her to live in England, or Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, without living in the UK.
(Country is an amphibolous term here. The UK is a country, and a state. It consists of several countries which are not independent states. England doesn’t have a seat at the UN, the UK does. England doesn’t make treaties with other countries, the UK does. England doesn’t go to war with other countries, the UK does. These are the things that States do. The Queen is Head of State, and you can’t be HoS of a country that is not a State.)*
Brexit will not directly affect the terminology concerning which countries the Queen is HoS of. There is a chance that it will affect the make up of the UK by encouraging Scottish independence and Northern Irish reunification with Ireland (don’t bet the house on it though.) In the former case, the Queen would become Queen of Scotland as well as Queen of the (now smaller) UK (almost certainly); in the latter, she would not become Queen of Ireland and she would continue as Queen of the (now smaller) UK.
*I realise that to American readers, the term “state” is ambiguous, but I’m assuming context makes things clear.
Ok, again, no comment on the mod note, but for purposes of clarification, why was that a worthy of a note, but Ulfreida’s fit in the moustache thread not?
For the record, I posted the link to the Wikipedia not to endorse the hijack, I agree that it was nothing more than a hijack. But having been said, it seemed more likely to cause issue and further discussion by going unexplained than by having someone fill in the gap. Ergo, a link to the relevant Wikipedia link for everyone curious to know what the hell the objection was talking about.
I don’t think it’s possible to keep people from driving drunk and killing innocents. And yet I’m quite happy that there’s a law forbidding such activity and that punishments are applied to those who offend.
Actually to go ahead and launch the pedant nuclear weapons: under no mainstream international relations or political science school of thought are Canada or Australia “nation-states.” A nation state is a concept that refers to legal states which are closely interwoven with one specific ethnic nation. The term arose in the era of early nationalism, when the various “ethnic nations” of Europe that had little representation in any legal state started to rise up. Czechia (yes it’s a real place) is a nation state, associated with the Czech people. Croatia is a nation state associated with the Croatian people. A nation state obviously can have persons in it who are not members of that nation, and how that’s dealt with varies considerably.
In France (a nation-state for the French) there’s a concept that “anyone can become French”, meaning you can be a black man from Africa who moves to France and you can become French, but that the government of France is for French people. That actually creates complex situations and arguably problems, notably there is an expectation that to be a proper part of the French nation state you must, in fact, become French. Other nations don’t have this concept, and tend to be more…racially strict, to try to put it as neutrally as possible. For example you simply can never become Japanese (Japan is a nation-state), you can get Japanese citizenship–it’s one of the hardest citizenship processes in the world, but you will never be Japanese unless you were born Japanese.
Most “New World” countries (which I include Australia/NZ in this), like America and Canada don’t have this concept. Each state was made up of immigrants from many nations arriving at many different times. There is no American ethnic nation, there is no Canadian ethnic nation. There are ethnic nations within both countries, but the countries are simple legal states that are not tightly associated with any one specific ethnic nation.
England did used to be a separate Kingdom, although even that is debatable. The Kingdom of England merged its monarchy and most of its political system (but not, interestingly, its legal system) with the Kingdom of Scotland, for about 200 years prior to that the two Kingdoms had been in “personal union” (same monarch, different countries.) But the concept of “states” sometimes is pretty restrictive. The Kingdom of England was overwhelmingly populated by English person, but at the time of its merge with the Kingdom of Scotland the concept of “nation-state” didn’t really exist. If England was one, it’d be one we sort of retroactively classified as such.
Heh. This penny-ante pedantry is amusing. If you wanted to be pedantic, you’d insist upon The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland not including the Britons (it is, after all, an English institution, hein?), the Manx, or the Channel Islanders, and including the Bretons, across the Channel. Of course, then you’d be out-pedanted for trying to split the Britons and the Bretons, not to mention mixing the Cornish in with the English like a common pleb.
FWIW I’m an anglophile and well read/greatly interested in the Britain and its constituent antecedent Kingdoms’ royal histories. I’ve frequently been the one doing the “there is no Queen of England” correction, but I kind of backed off of it over the past few years for basically the reason that I don’t think it matters enough to correct. I’m well aware of the culturally sensitive issues with the term, but I also can find usage (misusage) of the term “Queen of England” in British news, television, and film regularly enough that if that’s happening so commonly in the country in question it’s almost just a bridge too far to continually correct my fellow Americans who use the term.
The reality is there is no Kingdom of England so there is no monarchical title associated with England.
However, in a legal sense there is still a country called England, even if there is no longer a Kingdom called England. England is one of the constituent countries of the Kingdom of Great Britain–which technically still exists, albeit that specific nomenclature is infrequently used that way. Since there is an England, and there is a Queen who reigns over it, while it’s not a correct legal interpretation to call her the Queen of England, she is in a practical sense exactly that.
It’d be akin to calling Donald Trump the President of West Virginia. He is not the President of West Virginia, but West Virginians are governed by a President, and that President is Donald Trump. There is no reason anyone would call Trump that, because West Virginia doesn’t have a thousand year history of being a separate independent Kingdom before being folded into the United States.
It was actually simpler before the term United Kingdom came into usage. Pre-1707, the Parliament in Westminster was the center of government for a country that covered all of the British Isles (including all of Ireland.) The constitutionally limited monarch through hereditary inheritance was properly the monarch of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England. This person also controlled Ireland and Wales.
Wales was almost never viewed as a “proper Kingdom” by the English. At one point long ago the celtic rulers of Wales had a title that roughly was translated as “King of the Britons” (the Britons being a celtic peoples who used to inhabit most of the modern day areas of Wales + England South of Scotland–which was inhabited by Pictish people, however these Britons were driven out of their lands through conquest, intermarriage and other complex things over many hundreds of years by the Germanic Anglo-Saxon peoples); in some of the final periods of resistance to English rule the Welsh had a few crowned “Kings of Wales” but they generally held limited power and were eventually permanently vanquished by the English. By 1300 the English had taken to utilizing the title “Prince of Wales” both to represent the subordinate nature of Wales to England, and to represent the English King’s sovereignty over Wales, and also to use as a title for the King of England’s principal heir.
Ireland was dominated by the English to varying degrees for some 500 years during which this overlordship was usually recognized by use of the title “Lord of Ireland.” This again, was because the English didn’t view Ireland as a Kingdom, and created an inferior-tier title to represent their overlordship of Ireland.
At the end of Henry VIII’s reign, continuous Irish political pressure caused the King to approve creation of a new title–King of Ireland, and recognition of Ireland as a full “Kingdom.” It certainly didn’t bring with it Irish rights being on par with English rights, but in its time, it was seen as a step forward for the Irish people. Henry VIII’s immediate heirs all ended up dying without issue, and his crowns fell to the King of Scotland after the death of Elizabeth I.
From that point, there was essentially a triple monarchy that was always held by the same person, that person was monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland separately. Each country also had its own peerage (nobles) and parliament. These were pre-modern Kingdoms. So the relationship between them was less formalized than we’re used to in the 21st century, but the “de facto” reality was that the Kings/Queens of England, ruling from London, were rulers of all three countries. These persons were to a one vastly more interested in England than their other Kingdoms, and those other Kingdoms were subjected to de facto continuous subordinate status culturally, politically etc. Interestingly this started almost from the moment the James I/VI (or VI/I!) inherited the English crown. You might expect having been born and raised in Scotland, and having first been King of Scotland, he would have a special place in his heart for Scottish interests. This ended up not being true, the reality was England was by far the biggest prize, James moved to London and to my knowledge never set foot in Scotland again. He had actually promised to visit Edinburgh once every three years, a promise he immediately broke, while it’s possible he may have visited Scotland occasionally if he did I’m not familiar with the specific recording of it. In any case, James was actually in awe of England, the reality is England of the time was an massively richer, more powerful country. James realized very quickly he had been King of a petty Kingdom and was now the King of a great one, and his interests in the two Kingdoms followed that line of thinking.
Now we end up in a situation where one person is a King thrice over. In 1707, after years of political lead up, the political unions of England and Scotland. Most importantly at the time–this was a Union of Parliaments, 1707 Parliament was the real power, not the crown. The union of the crowns was the symbolic part of the more politically relevant/important union of the parliaments.
What specifically happened with the Act of Union, is the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England ceased to be. Wales was never seen as a Kingdom in the first place, but under the Act of Union it was now formally part of a new Kingdom along with England and Scotland: the Kingdom of Great Britain.
So from a technical perspective, this very long answer is to simply say “who is Queen of that Part of the UK”, is Elizabeth II–but even more importantly, while that region may exist in some sense as the “country of England”, there is absolutely no Kingdom of England or Scotland any longer, they were combined into the Kingdom of Great Britain.
In a sense this was a simpler situation at first, the monarch was the King/Queen of Great Britain, and also the King/Queen of Ireland. Then in 1800 the Irish merged into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the royal title King/Queen of Ireland was dissolved. At that point and forever since, it’s been very “troublesome” as to what to call the British monarch. “King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” isn’t very fun to type or to say. “King of the United Kingdom” has a weird sound to it, almost a redundancy since the ‘King’ part implies it’s a Kingdom, for example saying “King of the Kingdom of England” would not be a comfortable phrase to use. But since legally after 1801 there existed a “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” (not separate Kingdoms), saying “King of Great Britain” inferred a subordinate stance for the Irish. In fact that was primarily the sense felt by most Irish at the time, that they were unfair juniors in the Kingdom (in fact they were–this lead to a lot of problems.)
The reality is the term “King/Queen of England” continued to be used for a long time, as others have noted. King/Queen of Great Britain, which was “polite terminology” for almost 100 years, never had really caught on, despite being legally correct. In a lot of writing the issue is just sidestepped by using different terminology whenever possible: “British monarch”, “the sovereign”, “the King/Queen”, etc. Unless you’re backed into a corner you almost never have to use the term “King of” or “Queen of.” When that situation occurs, obviously the most correct and most succinct approach is to use the terms “King of the United Kingdom” or “Queen of the United Kingdom”, but the issue remains that at least in English this isn’t a very easy or “natural” sounding title. Nothing like say, the King of England was in its time.
I was really dismayed to see this post from a moderator on this message board. It feels like ignorance has finally triumphed. The SDMB is now officially a place where people who think “England, Britain, the UK, who cares, it’s all the same” can feel right at home, and anyone who does care about the differences can just keep their opinions to themselves.
The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not actually part of the United Kingdom at all, so don’t need to be considered per se in the discussion. They are both in “personal fief” to Elizabeth Windsor the person, who happens to also be the United Kingdom’s monarch. She rules over the Isle of Man by right of holding the title Lord of Mann (she is the Lord of Mann btw, not the Lady of Mann.)
Because of the fact the British monarchs have been constitutional monarchs for ages, the reality is Parliament manages her dependencies like the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, but they quite technically are not part of the United Kingdom. This has meaningful implications and has had meaningful implications for a number of things. Like Manx people actually don’t enjoy quite the same freedom of movement in the EU, the Isle of Man is not actually part of the EU. Manx living in the Isle of Man were not in fact eligible to vote in the Brexit referendum–because they aren’t part of the EU. They did enjoy tariff free movement of capital and trade, but that was basically a special corollary to the EU’s agreements made basically as a favor for the UK and because dealing with the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands is/was really complex because their relationship with the United Kingdom basically is out of sync with modern norms. There is no separate citizenship for Isle of Man and the United Kingdom, but British citizens with “Manx status” which means persons born in the Isle of Man or other British citizens who are resident there long enough, can receive a British Passport - Isle of Man", these persons are not entitled to the free movement of labor in the EU area that the rest of the United Kingdom’s citizens enjoy. But if they establish residency in the United Kingdom proper after a number of years they do automatically get such benefit.
Quoting myself to highlight how easy it is for pedantry to muddy up discussions around the British Royals–technically I’m well aware Queen Elizabeth does not have a last name, so referring to her as “Elizabeth Windsor” is not technically correct. But it’s a somewhat common way to try to refer to Elizabeth “the person” as separate from Elizabeth the Queen (that’s very hard to do because the reality is she inhabits a weird position in which her person is 100% tied up with her title); using her full name to try to accomplish the same effect–Elizabeth Alexandra Mary–is difficult, because almost no one uses her other names from when she was christened, and most people are familiar with the fact she was born into the “House of Windsor.”