The Decline of Monarchies

The decline of monarchs since 1700 has been a slow‑motion costume change on the world stage – crowns slipping off heads one by one as republics strutted in wearing sensible trousers. Back then, kings were as common as pigeons in Trafalgar Square – Europe practically tripped over them. But as the centuries ticked by, thrones were overturned, dynasties dissolved, and more than a few royal heads parted company with their owners.

And yet, in the middle of all this upheaval, Britain managed to make the simple act of counting kings a bureaucratic nightmare. Before 1707 you had England and Scotland – two monarchies, two crowns, one rather overworked monarch shuttling between them like a 17th‑century Avanti commuter. Then came the Act of Union and, abracadabra, the same monarch suddenly counted as “just one”. Scotland didn’t get independence, it got filed under “miscellaneous”.

Ireland, not to be left out, remained its own kingdom until 1801, when Westminster scraped it into the United Kingdom like the last spoonful of trifle no one wanted to go off. On the monarchy graph, these changes look neat – a single line calmly drifting downwards – but the story behind it is anything but. The British essentially redefined “one country” every time it made the maths awkward, while the world’s kings quietly disappeared.

It’s one thing for monarchies to vanish thanks to revolutions and guillotines. It’s quite another to watch Britain turn the whole exercise into a paperwork issue – the only nation that could make the fall of kings look like an entry in the wrong ledger.