Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 April 11

= April 11 =

City monarch
Are there any cities with a monarch whereby the monarch rules only that city? Also, are there nominal examples of such a city; i.e. whereby the monarch only reigns over the city in a nominal/de-jure-only way? 92.2.64.31 (talk) 14:26, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Historically or currently? There was, for example, once a Count of Paris.  In modern times, the best example is the Holy See or the Vatican City, for which the Pope serves as absolute monarch.   -- Jayron 32 14:29, 11 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Monaco? Loraof (talk) 14:48, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Good one. -- Jayron 32 14:49, 11 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Not the Vatican or Monaco since they also function as a state. I'm thinking of a monarch (whether a nominal example or an actual-ruling example) who only reigns over a city, whilst having no influence over the wider state. As for the time period, currently. 92.2.64.31 (talk) 16:08, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * But Monaco and the Vatican have no "wider state". The monarch's influence, especially in Monaco, ends just a few hundred meters away. --Golbez (talk) 16:10, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Per Golbez, there is no non-urbanized land in either Monaco or Vatican City. They literally rule over 100% city and 0% non-city land.  There is no functional space in either country which is not the single city in question.  -- Jayron 32 16:26, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I guess this is an extremely pedantic distinction but more than half of Vatican City is actually gardens... Adam Bishop (talk) 21:33, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Which are part of the city. Defining things like population density (for doing things like defining urban areas) suffers from the same problem as the coastline paradox: the value you get for an area's population density is highly dependent on the size of the unit you are calculating over.  After all, if you use the square meter as the size of your base measurement, you find that even in the largest cities in the world, most of those square meters are unoccupied by people at any one given time. -- Jayron 32 12:05, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
 * In fact, the technicalities around these terms are going to have to be defined if the examples given are no good. For example, if I get declared as king of my hometown with no control over the countryside in any way - am I really a king? Does it make sense to refer to someone as a monarch if their control doesn't reach the borders of their state? Regardless of wealth or power, the term monarch just wouldn't be used AFAICT. Matt Deres (talk) 20:23, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * The word "monarch" tends to only be used to refer to a sovereign ruler: one not subservient to any other earthly ruler. As some have noted, monarchies often have all kinds of titles relating to cities and regions of the realm (random example: Duke of York), and in the past the holder of said title sometimes did exercise power over their fief, but they were still subjects of their monarch. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 22:50, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I thought kings were monarchs but in some situations they could be subservient to emperors. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 23:13, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It complicated (and IMO somewhat arbitrary). Monarch says that monarchs are sovereign, and King says kings are monarchs, but as you say, there are cases of one sovereign conquoring a king or kingdom, and the ruler of that kingdom retaining their title and some of their powers, while becoming subserviant to the conqueror.  (Note that "the ruler of that kingdom" isn't necessarily the king that got conquered - it could be a new, more compliant king imposed by the conqueror).  Plus there are even more complicated situations, like the Duke of Normandy being subserviant to the King of France, while also being (since 1066) the King of England and so sovereign. Iapetus (talk) 08:58, 12 April 2019 (UTC) ((( Edited from King of Frace to King of France -- SGBailey (talk) 14:55, 16 April 2019 (UTC))))
 * These things exist on a continuum, and there is of course the difference between de jure and de facto, i.e. one can be a fiefdom on paper, and still essentially sovereign in practice, as was true of basically all of the fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire after the Thirty Years War, where various treaties and laws and bulls and the like essentially stripped the power of the Emperor and made him a figurehead. After the middle 17th century, Holy Roman fiefs began maintaining their own armies, coining their own currency, establishing their own independent foreign relations, i.e. behaving exactly like sovereign states, even though they still sent representatives to the Imperial Diet and otherwise were technically fiefs of the Emperor.  -- Jayron 32 12:09, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes it's complicated. For example, the United Arab Emirates is federation made up of seven absolute monarchies. Malaysia is a federation made up of several states and federal territories. Several of the states are parliamentary constitutional monarchies. In neither case are any of the monarchies cities only although there's no reason why it's not possible and the Emirate of Ajman is fairly small and most of the population is in the city. (Actually I think the later is true for most of the emirates.) Of course, it's also true in neither case does the monarch have zero involvement in the rule of the wider federation. In Malaysia, one of the monarchs is elected by the all of the monarchs to be the constitutional monarchy of the federation. In the UAE, the President of the United Arab Emirates is also nominally elected by the monarchs, but current convention is the Emir of Abu Dhabi is always the president I think in part due to the economic dominance of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The monarchs also form the Federal Supreme Council.  I think having an absolute monarchy where the monarch rules the city but has no involvement in the federation the city is part of would be a bit weird. Although I guess you could have one where the federation requires democracy for the federal government but not the state ones where this would sort of work.  More likely, would be something fitting the OP's last question. It's easy to imagine a system like Malaysia where you have a largely figurehead monarch for a city-state, but the federation itself becomes a republic perhaps with a largely figurehead elected president, and so the monarch has no real involvement in what goes on in the wider federation. I mean Singapore was once part of Malaysia and although not a monarch I guess you could imagine a world where it was. (NB the current system in Malaysia with some of the states means the monarch has more involvement than the UK for example.)  Nil Einne (talk) 17:01, 13 April 2019 (UTC)


 * The Principality of Sealand was in the news once upon a time. Not what you were asking but maybe interesting. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 23:19, 11 April 2019 (UTC)


 * There's a Greek word politarch (not referring to royalty, however). AnonMoos (talk) 23:34, 11 April 2019 (UTC)