Back in the old days was there a way to remove a king involuntarily short of a revolution? I mean without the kings consent, not including abdication
In which country? It makes a difference.
Regicide.
Using a block vote.
lol not counting murder. I mean a LEGAL procedure…I did not specify a country…just wanted general info
Then the answer is yes, no, maybe and who knows.
There was always that, or you could force the king to abdicate by threatening to kill him or do something else unpleasant to him. That’s what happened to Tsar Peter III of Russia, Catherine the Great’s husband (though he was later killed).
Or you could get some governing body (Parliament in England, a council of nobles in France, the riksdag in Sweden, or the local equivalent) to say that the previous king was no longer king and that you were. This sometimes happened after beating the previous king in battle. It could also be done by proving that the previous king had something wrong with him (usually that he was born out of wedlock or his parents’ marriage was invalid). The former was done by Henry IV of England to depose Richard II, twice by Edward IV of England to depose Henry VI, by John III of Sweden to depose Erik XIV, and by Henry VII of England to depose Richard III (Richard III was also killed in the battle). The latter was done by Richard III to depose Edward V, the supposedly illegitimate son of Edward IV (Edward V was one of the Princes in the Tower). Usually the previous king, if he was still alive, would be imprisoned or maybe exiled. It worked best for the new monarch if the old king died sooner rather than later- otherwise, you had people starting revolts in the name of putting the previous king back on the throne.
Or you could try to make the king ineligible for the throne- this was done to several Byzantine emperors, where there was a rule that a Byzantine emperor could not have any kind of physical blemish. Justinian II had his nose slit and was sent into exile, but he came back and regained his throne by conquest. After that, people in the Byzantine empire who wanted to get rid of an emperor would often have him blinded, so he couldn’t continue as emperor.
Charles I of England was sentenced to death by a court. Charles challegned the Court’s jurisdiction, but the Court held that they were authorised by the Parliament and government of the Commonwealth of England. Execution of sentence was duly carried out by the authority of the death warrant issued by the court.
Which country definitely makes a difference. In order to phrase your question in the way you do, I assume you think of the king as an absolute monarch or despot. In Denmark this was not the case until 1665 that King Christian V made himself absolute monarch by the grace of God (with the assent of the nobles I think). Before that, the king was elected - by the rich and powerful - and he was often also of the former kings family - but elected nontheless. The people who elected him had the possibility of taking away the crown. Of course it would usually involve an amount of violence but still, the office of the king was not untouchable.
As you can see, it really, really depends on what time and which country you’re asking about. ‘King-hood’ was very different across Europe (and across the ages as well). As for legal procedure, AFAIK in the middle ages in Denmark, to remove the king from his seat it would take an agreement in the council. But even then, we’d have to go into more detail about when because the constitution and the laws were not fixed things.
There was one king, Erik ‘Klipping’ who was (famously) murdered in 1286 by 56 knife wounds. That was one way of dealing with an incabable king (as he was).
Ea