Why don kings and queens rule the world anymore?
Not true everywhere – the King of Saudi Arabia and the Sultan of Brunei still rule as absolute monarchs. But the United Kingdom is a good example of why they don’t in most of the rest of the world. When people disagreed with the king they were able to rebel against him and demand some say of their own, leading to democracy. When there are many against one, the many always win! In some countries this led to the overthrow of the monarchy, sometimes violently (as in France in 1789), in others it led to civil war (as in England in 1642). Somehow in Britain we had too much of an attachment to monarchy to get rid of it completely – Parliament just managed to cut down the powers of the king until he had none left, and the king knew from experience he couldn’t refuse. So now the UK has a democratic constitutional monarchy, as do the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Spain.
