Isn’t he more like the national bird than an actual head of state for those countries?
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Yeah, it’s the same - effectively the US President and other world leaders don’t need a passport either. Except obviously elected heads of state are in office for limited periods, whereas the British/Japanese royals have these rules apply to them their whole lives, and if, say, the government fell apart for some reason, normally a head of state could still grab their passport and jet somewhere, whereas these royals would be stuck. (And other royals aren’t necessarily heads of state and can travel without it being an official visit, so they aren’t subject to these kinds of limitations.)
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But a royal fleeing state collapse would be able to find refuge in a friendly country. The government can just decide to let them in.
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Again, using Trump and Brexit as an example - everything is fine until it’s not - should the Queen have decided they weren’t allowed to - and the UK sent warships - do you think they’d have been able to resist?
The Queen was, objectively, a particularly great ruler that seemed to focus more on family image than imposing will on people (using historical British Monarchy as a measuring stick anyway). I’m just saying it only takes one populist charismatic individual who can get enough support behind them and crack the glass.
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Charlie doesn’t need a passport because all passports, in countries where he’s the monarch, are issued in his name.
He’s like a living Green Lantern battery of passportness.
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Yeah, but that would be on an individual basis - they wouldn’t be able to travel like a normal person.
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Some woman wrote a book a few years ago about habits of the extremely rich or something like that. She got a personal assistant job(s) to do her research. She was going to fly somewhere internationally on a private jet and forgot her passport. She told her employer that she needed to go get it and he said not to worry about it. Evidently no one ever checks the passports of the uber rich. So Japan and England’s royalty and anyone with a private jet don’t need passports.
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Like that line spoken in court by God (George Burns),
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Don’t all have Charles as king or head of state, and especially not Mozambique which was never part of the British Empire.
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I’m assuming being part of the commonwealth ensures his non-need for a passport - I mean I could be wrong it’s really not something I’m going to deep research on as it’s kind of a popcorn topic really.
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Which is not the point. They did leave, because it was understood that that was the deal - easy exit. I don’t think that Charles is going to go against the grain on that. She set a pretty strong standard…
Besides which, the British fought some civil wars over the issue of the monarchy and how much power it should or shouldn’t have.
Well no, this isn’t just about commonwealth, but that he general can travel about anywhere without one. There are 195 countries in the world right now, so the Commonwealth, though large, isn’t the majority of nations in the world.
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I was not talking about Charles. I don’t think the line ends with him (last time I checked) - people seem to really like Kings.
What was changed, can be undone - given all the changes were approved by the crown to begin with. Again people like Kings - I don’t really understand where the resistance to this idea comes from given that it almost happened in the USA - a country that fought against the English crown in fact, setting up a system to explicitly remove royalty from our politics forever, yet once again - people seem to like Kings (dictators, despots, whatever you want to call it).
Yes well given out of the 195 most of the ones you want to be on good terms with are within the 56 of the commonwealth it makes sense to keep him on good terms. That’s why I stared with “You probably underestimate how many countries Charles is king of - he is still head of state of more of the world than anyone else - refusing him would be cutting your foot off to spite your toe.” - this is still true - and the point I was trying to make - even if you want to call him ‘head of state on paper only’ - it’s still head of state in 15 of them and the commonwealth - that’s what we call the United States right? I mean it’s just a big block of people you don’t really want to upset collectively.
And quite a few people are not fans of kings… there is a whole anti-monarchy movement in the UK… and of course while we could of had a king - we don’t. We’ve only had a single president serve more than 2 terms before we changed the rules to enforce a term limit.
Broad sweeping generalizations about how people feel about a particular political structure aren’t particularly helpful.
And all of this is just way off-topic anyhow, considering that it’s about the few people who can travel sans passports… it just happens to include the British monarch.
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He is the issuing authority for UK passports. They’re passports because he said so. Having a passport would be redundant.
It seems strange now, but the rules were laid down when there were a lot of “I am the state!” monarchs ruling the countries that mattered.
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That is funny. I don’t think they would have listened to her if she ordered warships to be sent.
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Shoot, we even have a (sappy, oversimplified) song about it!
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You can say that about anything. You’re talking about starting wars, and at that point what matters is whether other countries recognize your sovereignty.
If Chuckie Three decides he’s had enough of us Canadians are our weird chip flavours, he can send his warships over, sure. Then it’s down to, do our allies stand for that? If not, is it war? A blockade? Does the hassle of all that warrant the gains for the UK? When the rest of the free world ceases relations with them over this, will it still be worth it? Will they be happy being North Korea, but with marmite?
International diplomacy is about who your friends are and your standing in the world. It’s not about what’s technically true on some pieces of paper from 300 years ago.
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Yes. I’m aware.
That’s what we’re calling him.
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I used to think the same thing about supporting a coup in the US - pretending that the position of King (or Queen) is impotent when so much of the government still by law requires their consent to even form would seem to me just wishful thinking.
I guess the Trump years didn’t happen the way people are so quick to think ‘these things can’t happen’. History is rife with examples that say y’all are wrong.
Well, it’s all fun and games until you’re caught somewhere and can’t produce one on demand. Apparently, they don’t let the rich and famous get away with everything.
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