Or if Prince George choses to use his second name when he ascends the throne, he would be Alexander IV. There were no English kings named Alexander, but three Scottish Alexanders.
Are you sure about that? It seems to me that James I and VI and James II and VII would be contrary examples.
Wasn’t that before the union of the crowns part II.
Indeed - the Acts of Union in 1707 tidied all that up, so to speak.
Between 1603 and 1707 the Stuart monarchs still used separate numberings in Scotland than in England (although for Charles I, Charles II and Anne those happened to require the same numerals). And since 1707 the English numeral has always been the higher one anyway. But when this was the subject of much controversy in 1952-3, Churchill acknowledged that there was logic in using the Scottish numeral if that was higher.
There is a further quirk about how monarchs regnant are numbered: The first one to have a given name is known only by his/her chosen regnal name without the numeral “I”. Only in some future generation, when a second monarch of the same name appears, does the original one become known with the “I” as part of the name.
For example, Pope Francis is the first of his name, thus is known simply as Francis, not as Francis I. But when some future pope chooses Francis for his name, then the first Francis will become retrospectively known as Francis I.
Japanese custom is a bit different: The emperor rules under his given name while he lives, but is known by a regnal name after he dies. The name is chosen and known throughout the emperor’s life, but only becomes his regnal name after he dies.
For example, Hirohito ruled by the name Hirohito all his life, even though it was established all along that his posthumous name would be Emperor Showa.
I don’t speak Japanese, but as I understand it, Japanese people avoid referring to a living emperor by his personal name; they simply speak of (translated into English) “the Emperor” or “His Majesty” or, if it is necessary to distinguish him from his predecessors, “the current Emperor”. Once he is dead, they refer to him by the era name that he has chosen as motto for his rule (which was Showa for Hirohito).
I think that’s right. The current Japanese emperor is often mentioned by his given name in non-Japanese press. At least, in American journalism, IIRC he was routinely mentioned as Hirohito or Emperor Hirohito, and similarly for Akihito and Naruhito.
An interesting side issue of naming conventions for Japanese emperors is that both Hirohito and his son Akihito were/are published authors in academic journals, since both of them were accomplished marine biologists and did research in this field. This caused the problem for the (foreign) journals to decide on an author name under which to publish the papers in a way that would do justice to both Japanese etiquette and the Western need to have a uniquely identifying author name. I think most papers settled on something along the lines of “Akihito, His Majesty the Emperor” and an institutional affiliation with the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
I was under the impression that they both chose to publish under their own given names, to keep separate their academic work from their royal positions.
I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Hirohito was also an accomplished Hebrew scholar.
I wonder if the writer herself thinks she understands what she wrote?
I don’t know that they would have effectively abdicated, since they would still be king or queen, and therefore nobody else could be king or queen in their place.
Wasn’t that situation settled by the Glorious Revolution?
Yes, although this was, of course, a revolutionary act (hence the name “Glorious Revolution”). If you’re a legitimate the Convention Parliament was not a parliament at all (because it was not summoned by the monarch) and, even if it were a true parliament, the Lord and Commons without the crown had no authority to declare the throne vacant (or, indeed, to do anything). So the whole thing was a putsch; a bunch of people simply asserted the authority to change the monarch and, because the army was on their side, they got away with it.
Fair enough, you might say. Most states have their origins in some such transaction. But if a similar situation occurs again and it becomes necessary that there should be a revolutionary assertion of a new foundation for political authority, in modern conditions choosing the deposed monarch’s Protestant son-in-law is not the most obviously appropriate new foundation. Other possibilities will occur to people, such as a revolutionary assertion of the sovereignty not of the ex-king’s distant relative, but rather of the people.
The scenario we are considering is a wildly unlikely one, but if we speculate a scenario in which an individual is raised from birth to be monarch and inculcated with a sense that his or her duty, destiny, what have you, is to serve in this role but in the event refuses to serve in it, then it’s hard to imagine that in that context people are qoing to question the utility or wisdom of the system. The obvious course of action is not to find someone who is distantly related to the reluctant heir but has otherwise no qualifications or training for the job, but to ask whether it might be time to consider a more serviceable method of getting a head of state.
That’s doesn’t seem like a “quirk” to me. That seems logical and natural.
Any generation now, we’ll have King Stephen II !
The Lieutenant Governors of New Brunswick and British Columbia have exercised the reserve powers in recent memory, without it being considered a ‘nuclear option’.
In the 2018 New Brunswick election, neither the Liberals nor the Tories had a clear majority. The Liberal premier asserted that he could stay in office; the Lt Gov told him that she would only allow that if he recalled the House within a set deadline and demonstrated that he had a majority. The Premier wasn’t able to show he had confidence within that timeline and had to resign, allowing the Lt Gov to appoint the leader of the Tories as premier.
It was an even clearer use of the reserve powers in the 2017 BC election. There was a similar pattern, where the Liberal premier did not win a clear majority, with the NDP having a smilar number of seats and a couple of smaller parties. The Premier advised the Lt Gov to dissolve the House right away and call a new eledction. The Lt Gov rejected that advice, saying that the House was so closely divided that the NDP should have a chance to form government if the Liberals couldn’t. The Liberal premier resigned and the Lt Gov called on Horgan, the leader of the NDP, to form a minority government.
Nitpick - or maybe not so much of a nitpick: In the cases you describe, the lt-governors weren’t exercising their powers to block parliament; rather, in each case, to allow parliament to act. In one case, the Lt Governor required parliament to be recalled; in the other, he refused to dissolve it. They were perhaps blocking the executive, but “blocking” would be a pejorative way to characterize requiring the executive to be accountable to Parliament.
Yeah. Same as you’re only George Sr. if there’s a George Jr.
In the UK, we pretty much always refer to “the Queen” as if there were only one Queen ever, probably the same as in Japan. It always feels a little odd to refer to her as anything else, like using someone’s middle name in addition their first name or something.
This. Typically, when there’s a king on the throne in the UK his wife is simply “HM the Queen” and that is how she will appear in, e.g., the Court Circular. (He is “HM the King”., and together they are “TM the King and Queen”.)
When the king dies, if he leaves a widow she then becomes “HM Queen Mary” (or whatever), and this is to distinguish her from the new king’s wife/new queen regnant, who is “HM the Queen”.
That’s not to say that the current queen regnant/queen consort can’t be referred to by name, e.g.“Queen Elizabeth”. They can be, and sometimes are. But in formal writing/speech it’s simply “HM the Queen” or just “the Queen”. So a BBC newsreader will report that “the Queen did such-and-such today”, not “Queen Elizabeth did such-and-such today”.
When Charles succeeds to the throne, unless they decide after all not to use the Q-word for his wife, she will be “HM the Queen” or simply “the Queen”. There will be no other living queens in the UK with whom she might be confused, so there will not often be occasion to call her “Queen Camilla”.