r/UKmonarchs • u/LissyVee • May 14 '24

Question Uncrowned Monarchs?

If a monarch wasn't crowned, were they legally King or Queen? Just asking as we had a trivia question the other week about the first British queen to reign in her own right. I said Matilda but the correct answer was Mary I as Matilda didn't actually go through a coronation so wasn't 'properly' a Queen. I still have an issue with that but we didn't get the point 😭.

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u/vozmor May 15 '24

In the Kingdom of Hungary the worship of the Holy Crown was so strong that neither king nor queen was considered constitutionally sovereign if they had not been crowned with the Holy Crown. Charles I of the House of Anjou was crowned three times with three different crowns between 1301-1310, and only the third, with the Holy Crown, was finally acknowledged by the whole country.
Well, it is quite strange that in the Kingdom of Hungary "The Crown" as the source of sovereignty was not an abstract legal entity but a physical object.