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?
In: Other
There are many possible answers. The most-correct is possibly the most confusing: that there isn’t *one* monarch, but many.
While King Charles is one physical human being, the King of Canada, say, and the Kings of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are all *legally distinct* entities. While he is one *person*, he is many *legal people*. Indeed, in a federation like Canada, the King of Canada is even distinct from the Kings of each of the ten provinces. There’s no reason the King of Canada and the King of Ontario must agree on something.
This legal structure was established by the Statute of Westminster in 1931, and originally only applied to Canada, Ireland and South Africa. So in 1939, when the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, Australia, India and New Zealand were all automatically at war with Germany – having the same head of state they were, for many purposes, one state. But Canada was not at War, so the King of Canada was at peace with the German Chancellor, even if the King of the UK was not – that they were the same person was irrelevant. Canada waited about a week to declare war specifically to emphasize that it had this independence, and its own Crown.
Latest Answers