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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope.欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi, 安澜.
Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.
What are we going to talk about today？
I thought, since we’ve discussed about the Queen and her passing, I think it might be a good opportunity to discuss about our new King, King Charles III.
Actually, at the end of that episode, you promised me that we're going to talk about King Charles III.
Well, it's a big topic. So there's lots that we can discuss about this.
Um. Honestly, this is… the whole idea of monarch这种君主制, it's still very, very foreign to me because we don't have a monarch anymore. And your monarch is a constitutional monarch, 君主立宪制.
That's right. Let's start, first of all, what the king actually does or what the British monarch actually does. So first of all, the important role is that they are the head of state for the UK.
Head of state. I see, Prime Minister is the head of government, and the King now is the head of state.
Yeah, same as pretty much every other country that they have a head of state. It's normally the president in many countries, but in the UK, it is the King or Queen.
So he is the head of state of the UK, and also his other role is the head of the commonwealth.
So, basically, the old empire that's the left over…the old empire.
Well. Many of the countries were part of the British Empire. There’re also some countries that weren't part of the British Empire. They've also joined. It's around 56 countries around the world with around 2.5 billion people.
That's actually quite surprising.
It's quite a large organization, and he is the King of 14 of those countries like…
Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Yeah.
But you say that he is the King of these countries, but these countries they have their own head of government and all that. King himself doesn't really hold a lot of real power, that's like my understanding of it.