I’m deep diving this and Wikipedia’s explanation just isn’t doing it for me. How can one person be the head of multiple countries?
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You can be made a monarch either by your country splitting off parts and keeping you as monarch of each part, by someone else inviting you to be the monarch, or you inherit titles from separate relatives and are now monarch of several countries.
The commonwealth is the first case, all of the relevant separate nations were part of the British empire. Almost all of the parts of the British empire they directly ruled (India, most of Africa), Canada, Australia etc. Retained the British Crown on independence and then some chose to be republics after that. Some former UK colonies, egypt, Israel never had the British crown.
Scotland and England is an example of the third, where one person ended up with both crowns but they were two completely separate countries. They did not actually join into one political entitity for many years. But now Scotland and England are legally one country with one monarch, it’s just the United Kingdom of great Britain and northern Ireland.
Arguably Ireland is an example of the second where the church made the King of England protector of Ireland, whether the Irish wanted it or not, though that was of course done due to the English ‘asking’ . Generally, Belgium, Sweden, even Russia, etc. Inviting in someone to be a monarch usually means they would not have been monarch wherever they were before.
The King in the commonwealth does not govern in any day to day sense, nor has the UK monarchy for decades. England has had a parliament since 1341 (and other power structures before that), the relationship between the monarch and Parliament (both the Commons and lords) has evolved over the centuries, with significant powers being shifted to Parliament generally over time. Perhaps the last major change was universal male suffrage in 1919 followed by female suffrage in 1935 (that delay was due to demographics after ww1 and the fear women would who now outnumbered men would vote against men’s interests, but millions of former soldiers would not appreciate that).
In practice all of the countries that share Charles III as monarch other than the UK itself have a process of appointing the person who is head of state day to day (Governor General is usually the position). The only practical difference between the Governor general and a president appointed by Parliament is that when the sovereign is in town they take precedence and in theory a completely dysfunctional country could have the sovereign step in and dissolve parliament and call new elections or the like, but that has never happened.
Up until relatively recently the sovereign had a bit more practical power in the UK itself. The head of state ultimately invites someone to form a government, and then they need consent(a vote) from parliament to govern. It used to be the case the sovereign had more latitude who they would pick or who would lead political parties, but these days the parties pick their own leaders and then advise in who to form a government next. So functionally Charles only has reserve powers, as long as Parliament can function he reads reports, cuts ribbons, and tries to not get in the way. While it is his government and his treasury etc. If he wanted to go strongly against the will of Parliament it likely wouldn’t get far (see Edward viii). Now if Parliament could not function.. That would be interesting.
There isn’t really a reason for this to happen, but if say a Governor general and a chief of the supreme Court died at the same time in one of the commonwealth realms the King could step in and provide royal ascent to regular bills until a new gg is chosen.
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