Eli5; how are countries like Australia and New Zealand independent yet they still are under King Charles?
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It’s mostly symbolic. We have a governor general that represents the crown, but their role is mostly ceremonial and only exists as a tradition. Our respective parliaments hold power, not the crown.
Think of the governor general as a school council president. Having one is just a tradition, but they don’t actually have power, the school does.
Because they’re part of “The Commonwealth”
Basically when the British empire was falling apart, instead of fulling breaking away, they went “Hey United Kingdom, we are gonna go ahead and make our own parliament and stop being colonies, but we’re gonna keep the King/Queen like you have, so we’re still gonna be buddies.”
And the UK, having no real way to stop the countries from leaving, said “Hey that sounds like a GREAT idea, so much so that we’re gonna set up this whole process for you guys to do it and help you get set up with your new parliament.” Because at least with the commonwealth there remained some kind of imperial connection, albeit very thin these days.
TL:DR when the British empire was falling apart it told it’s (now former) colonies “we will let you leave and even help you get set up if you promise to keep the king/queen.”
So now a bunch of countries share the same monarch.
They were given autonomy and independence through a variety of agreements. The Commonwealth of Nations are former British territories that are now free and equal.
The Monarchy is largely symbolic and could be removed if the country’s wanted to. It is kept for historical and cultural reasons.
No one is “under” King Charles, not even the UK.
The British Monarchy is largely ceremonial and wield no real political power. They are recognized as a symbolic head of state due to history and tradition.
Technically it’s a “[personal union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_union)”. The same person is the head of state of more than one state, in this case fifteen states. In the same way, from 1603 England and Scotland were separate kingdoms ruled by the same monarch until they united to become the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. Ireland still remained a separate kingdom in personal union until it united to become part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
The fifteen Commonweath realms are careful to keep their rules of succession identical to avoid ever having different monarchs. This was carefully orchestrated recently when the rules to give females an equal right of succession came into effect in 2015. Queen Victoria’s predecessor was also the King of Hanover (a German state) but Hanover did not permit females to rule, so that personal union came to an end when she ascended the British throne in 1837.
Becaue Charles is seperately the King of Australia and seperately the King of New Zealand (as well as Great Britain and various other territories), they’re not under the rule of the King of England, he just happens to *also* be the King of England.
More to the point as they are all constitutional monarchies the King is a figurehead and even his ceremonial duties are delegated to the Governor General who is effectively chosen by the Australian/NZ governments to carry out the ceremonial stuff the King would normally do. While theoretically the king/governor general has to sign every law into power and can dissolve parliament it’s a very british fudge that everyone knows he can but if he ever did parliament reserves the right to get rid of him (again).
Oddly enough Australia is the only place in recent history where the governor general screwed the whole thing up by actually using the power of the King to dissolve parliament unilaterally and caused a constitutional crisis by doing [so](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis)
Countries like Australia, NZ, UK, Canada, Norway, Spain and many others are what we call constitutional monarchies.
There is no technical definition of the term, but essentially the nation’s constitution recognises a head of state.
Australia has a King named King Charles of Australia who is very seperate from King Charles of New Zealand or King Charles of the UK.
its like, you can be the CEO of the car wash and the CEO of the laundromat company
they are not the same company, you are one person
same guy runs both companies, but both companies got different staff and priorities so they are run as two different companies despite the same owner.
there might be some overlap like they use the same bank or stuff
Important to understand the difference between ‘head of government’ and ‘head of state.’ Too long to go in to here but check it out. Almost all Western democracies have both.
Hint: the US does not make this distinction. The president is both.
The social answer is that Australia and NZ consists of a majoirty of people being of European descent, more specifically, from the UK. Aussies and NZ’ers are just the long lost cousins of the Brits. Lots of ties to the mother country = favourable view of UK. Aussie population is also an aged one, meaning there are more older people than younger. The older folks are usually the ones with the strong British ties.
This isn’t the case more recently, I believe. Australia is becoming more of a multicultural nation. If you were to go to Sydney CBD and ask 10 random people what their thoughts on independence are, my money is on the majority in support of it.
As an Aussie, I personally believe in independence. I reckon Brits are getting more value out of this whole commonwealth situation than the Aussies are. So many Brits pack up and leave for Aus because it’s better living conditions here, and its easy AF for them to do so. Meanwhile, it’s rarer for Aussies to pack up and go to the UK.
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