King
A King is usually the head of state in monarchies. He is male and is married to the queen.
Some monarchies, including the United Kingdom, and British Commonwealth nations, allow a daughter to inherit the throne, and reign in her own right, as a Queen regnant.
In recent centuries remaining monarchies in Europe, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, took steps to reduce the authority of the monarch. In the early middle ages European monarchs were both head of state, and head of their nation's executive, and had few limits on their power.
England's Magna Carta documents how a vulnerable King John was forced to devolve some of his powers. For instance, the Magna Carta instituted the habeas corpus, limiting the monarch's authority to arbitrarily arrest and imprison individuals. King John was forced to concede that, from then on, if any of his officials arrested anyone, that individual's friends or relatives could call upon a judge to require those officials to bring the arrestee to court, and offer a legal justification for that arrest. The term is Latin for "show the body".
Etymology
[edit | edit source]Germanic. Brought into English with the Anglo-Saxons.
Current English kings sometimes sign their names with R, for Rex (Latin), as in "Charles R".