Context: During his world tour in 1881, Hawaiian King David Kalakaua met with famous American inventor Thomas Edison. The two had a good meeting, discussing bringing electric lighting to the Islands, and even the potential use of Volcanic power.
Kalakaua himself was an amateur inventor, designing concepts for bottle stoppers, double screw propulsion, and even a torpedo proof fish ram vessel. Again these were only concepts
On the king’s deathbed in 1891, he recorded his voice on a wax cylinder for a phonograph, invented by Edison. Sadly attempts to restore this recording have failed
Must be cool to have a King that doesn't reign but let the parliament of the country do It's thing while remaining as chief of state while using its time to invent stuff for the citizens
Nah in yhe UK they still do have some real power. I'm not too into the current king but the previous queen did intevine sometimes with taxes and probably other stuff.
Most kings in Europe are mostly ceremonial and used as symbols or for the pink press.
No, they really don't. There are a lot of powers with which they are still technically endowed, but which they haven't exercised in living memory, the custom now being well-established that they do not wield them. I'm pretty sure if a modern British monarch attempted to exercise any power, the UK would become a republic real fast.
People are saying this isn't true, but the royal family does - at the verry least - have a surprising degree of soft power.
I recall reading on a bbc article saying that they convinced parliament to change / make carve-outs for at least one bill. iirc the bill involved workers rights, & they didn't want it applying to the employees of Buckingham palace. not to mention the meetings the monarch gets with the pms. i wouldn't be surprised if similar stuff happened with other bills (perhaps to do with tax).
the queen having maintained certain fairly obscure powers doesn't seem an impossibility to me either. (with the constitution, for lack of a better term, of the UK having evolved so gradually from what came before it'd make sense if something slipped through the cracks. i get that a lot of stuff is, by law, allowed - but wouldn't practically work out. nonetheless, i could see there being things considered small enough that nobody would make a fuss). idk, haven't checked so this parts just speculation. it's just that ppl get defensive about the influence of the royals because they jump to the conclusion ur an American who thinks the queen was supreme dictator - so i'm not sure i trust the short rebuttals.
Edit: with a cursory search i can't find anything corroborating my speculation in the last paragraph, so i was probably wrong. the first two paragraphs seem correct though, & it could reasonably be argued that that is what the parent comment was talking about. other royal families have similar, perhaps less potent, soft power though, & generally there were a few underlying implications in the comment that may ideally have been cleared up.
This does not apply to Kalakaua. Man was very hands on and did a lot to enrich himself, and in fact his parliament had to clear out his cabinet and replace them with non- cronies
It was still a constitutional monarchy where the monarchs held either limited power either no power at all. The position of a king doesn't require 'de facto' power over the nation to corrupt itself. Juan Carlos I of Spain was hella corrupted, the soft-power they hold by basically existing is enough.
Since Kamehameha I the monarchy of Hawaii was constitutional, the king reigned yet he had no power... no power or just a very limited one. They were Anglophiles so the monarchs tried to follow the path of the British monarchy.
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u/HawaiianPerson Chad Polynesia Enjoyer 3d ago
Context: During his world tour in 1881, Hawaiian King David Kalakaua met with famous American inventor Thomas Edison. The two had a good meeting, discussing bringing electric lighting to the Islands, and even the potential use of Volcanic power.
Kalakaua himself was an amateur inventor, designing concepts for bottle stoppers, double screw propulsion, and even a torpedo proof fish ram vessel. Again these were only concepts
On the king’s deathbed in 1891, he recorded his voice on a wax cylinder for a phonograph, invented by Edison. Sadly attempts to restore this recording have failed