The British Monarchy

Ministry of General and Profession Education of Sverdlovsk Region Educational Institution school 12 Subject English. Theme of research The British Monarchy Performer Demina Ludmila 11th Form Student.Ekaterindurg 2005 Introduction 1. Role of the Monarchy 4 2. The Development of the British Monarchy 3. British Royal Family8 3.1 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II8 Conclusion12 Bibliography.13 Introduction. It is rather difficult to understand the British way of ruling the country.

In Britain the Queen is the Head of State, but in fact she doesn t rule the country as she has no power. The Queen is a symbol of the country history and its traditions. Britain is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch Queen Elisabeth II as a head of state. The British constitution, isn t set out in a single document. Instead it is made up of a combination of laws and conventions.

A thousand years ago the Anglo-Saxon kings consulted the Great Council before taking important decisions. Between 1066 and 1215 the king ruled alone, but in 1215 the nobles forced king John to accept Magna Carta, which took away some of the king s powers. In later centuries this was seen as the 1st occasion on which the king was forced to take advice. In 1264 the 1st parliament of nobles met together. Since then the British constitution has grown up slowly as the result of countless Acts of parliament.

Then, parliament invited William and Mary to become Britain s 1st constitutional monarchs. A constitutional monarch is one who can rule only with the support of parliamentary. The Bill of Rights was the 1st legal step towards constitutional monarchy. This Bill prevented the monarch from making laws or having an army without Parliament s approval. Since 1689 the power of parliament has grown, while the power of the monarch has become weaker. The UK is a constitutional monarchy the head of the state is a king or a queen.

In practice, the Sovereign reigns, but doesn t rule. The present Sovereign is Queen Elisabeth II. Today the Queen isn t only head of state, but also an important symbol of national unity. In law the Queen is head of the executive, head of the judiciary, the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces of the Crown and the established Church of England. The monarchy s absolute power has been progressively reduced, the Queen is impartial and acts on the advise of her ministers.

The Queen and the Royal family continue to take part in many traditional ceremonies. Their visits to different parts of Britain and to many other countries attract considerable interests and publicity. Role of the Monarchy. The role of the monarchy as an intelligible part of the constitution might on a superficial level at least have some merit. The Monarch s function of signing into law Acts passed by Parliament is an integral part of the legislative process. The Monarch technically holds the right to veto any measure adopted by Parliament but this is a very rare occurrence and the last time it was used was in the eighteenth century by Queen Anne. The Monarch also receives newly appointed ambassadors to the United Kingdom who are accredited to her court rather than to the state.

She is also the commander in chief of the Armed forces and new recruits have to swear allegiance to the Monarch rather than to Parliament or to the State. In this and many similar functions the Queen acts as a living personification of the British State, a type of shorthand by which people can swear allegiance to the state, which is a social construct, via a living person.

Whilst the majority of the Monarch s powers have been transferred to the Head of the Government for the Prime minister to use at her discretion to suggest that the Monarch has no direct input into the decision making process in Britain would be inaccurate.

The active involvement during the nineteenth century of Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert as well as the active interest Elizabeth II has taken in Commonwealth relations point to the way that the Monarch can directly influence decisions made at Westminster at a much more sophisticated and direct way than an average British citizen. Equally to suggest that the Monarch is somehow seen as a spurious part of the constitutional structure of the United Kingdom would seem to be disproved by the millions of letters and petitions for help Buckingham palace receives each day from members of the public. The fact that so many people would seem to be more confident writing to an unelected hereditary Monarch with their problems rather than an elected representative would seem to point to the power of the Monarch in people s imagination.

The British Sovereign however is a constitutional Monarch that is to say she does not directly rule but acts more as a symbolic head of State. The symbolic role of the Monarch is perhaps its most effective role in the late twentieth Century.

The majority of the Queen s workload consists of representing the state at home and the Nation abroad. On state visits the Queen attracts interest from the foreign public and media who helps raise the profile of the Nation overseas. However one might argue that the image of an elderly aristocratic Monarch is not perhaps an accurate representation of the sophisticated multicultural and diverse state Britain is in the late 1990s. It is often also argued that the Queen is an ideal figure to represent Britain as she is a neutral figure above the political arena and one who can represent the nation as a whole without carrying any political baggage.

This is again a difficult argument to present with any degree of plausibility given that the Queen comes from such a narrow aristocratic background and has little practical knowledge of the lives and experiences of a great many of her subjects.

In the following chapter I would like to tell about development of the British monarchy.

The Development of the British Monarchy

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were the successors to King George... Accordingly, all the Royal children came to be educated at schools tha... Bibliography. Absolute Monarchy. Britain.

British Royal Family

British Royal Family. Dossier Stephen Rabley, 1994 5. David Mc Dowall, Longman, 1989 АНКЕТА УЧАСТНИКА РЕГИОНАЛЬНОГО КОНКУРСА 1.Фамилия, имя, отчествоДемина Людмила Александровна2. Адрес, телефон г. Екатеринбург, ул. Уральских рабочих, д. 25, кв. 44 телефон 38187603.Место учебы учебное заведение, клас. МОУ СОШ 12 города Екатеринбурга, 11 Б 4.Направление конкурса иностранные языки и межкультурные коммуникации.