Note: the British monarch and all other European monarchs are the good guys - constitutional monarchs. Their powers were clipped centuries ago, and now they reign but do not rule, as the saying is. It is hard for an American mind to grasp the concept of a king with all the glory but very little of the power, but that's the way the British like it. (They don't think like we do.) And as the 70-year reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II amply demonstrated, in a parliamentary democracy a figurehead monarch can be a strong force for good and an anchor of stability amid the to-and-fro of politics and social change.
For background on the evolution of the monarchy in Britain, start with the Bill of Rights 1689, which preceded our own Constitution and Bill of Rights by a century, and was very much in the minds of the Founding Fathers when they were getting our country off the ground.
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