Twelve European monarchies survive, including one where France's president is co-prince
Europe still has twelve sovereign monarchies: seven kingdoms, three principalities, a grand duchy and the Vatican. Two are elective. The pope is chosen by conclave, and Andorra shares its headship between the bishop of Urgell and whoever the French elect as president.
The kingdoms comprise the three Scandinavian crowns plus Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom; the principalities Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco; Luxembourg is a grand duchy. They split into two families. Seven descend from premodern crowns, while Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg took their current shape around the Napoleonic Wars. Vatican City was only recognised as a sovereign state in 1929. Most are constitutional, with monarchs who stay out of politics, but Liechtenstein and Monaco's princes still wield real influence, and the Vatican is an absolute monarchy. Six belong to the European Union.
Republics are the newcomer. At the start of the 20th century only France, Switzerland and San Marino lacked a monarch, and it took the fall of several crowns after World War I to make republicanism mainstream. Yet the idea is ancient: kingship vanished from most Greek city-states and from early Rome during the archaic period, Sparta blended two kings with a council and an assembly, and Carthage began as a monarchy before judges known as suffets took over in the 4th century.
Rome shows how thin the line can be. Octavian ended the Republic in 27 BCE but called himself merely princeps, first citizen, disguising a monarchy as a partnership among equals; Diocletian dropped the pretence in 284. Many of the barbarian kingdoms that followed kept stamping the Roman emperor's face on their coins into the 6th century, and that borrowed Roman and Christian authority fed the medieval doctrine of the divine right of kings.
That doctrine peaked with James I of England and Louis XIV of France, who claimed authority over both political and spiritual life. By the 17th century the Habsburgs, split into Spanish and Austrian branches, had become the most influential dynasty on the continent, while the Wars of Religion hardened France, Spain, Britain and briefly Sweden into centralised powers backed by overseas empires.
Source: Monarchies in Europe
