Template talk:Monarchies

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Contents 1 Inclusion of UK as well as Commonwealth 2 Footer removal consensus 3 Categories 4 Multiline footer 5 Commonwealth realms in Europe 6 Bias ? 7 Kingdom of the Netherlands

[edit] Inclusion of UK as well as Commonwealth

In response to the statement that only one of these entities should be included in the current listbox, I want to draw the attention to the factors that 1) the UK must be certainly included, as the most well-known and one of the oldest surviving monarchies on the planet, and 2) that the Commonwealth should also be mentioned alongside the UK, as the part of the former British Empire that still recognises the Queen as their sovereign. That the UK is (the 'central') part of the Commonwealth is no complication in this matter. To list each and every non-UK country of the Commonwealth would totally overflow the listbox and is not needed, as articles on the separate contries is easily reached via the single link anyway. Dropping either the UK or the Commonwealth from the box would also give an incomplete picture in my opinion. --Wernher 11:33, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

The current setup perpetrates the notion that the UK is not a part of the Commonwealth. If we can't fit all the monarchies, then this box isn't a good idea. The Queen is equally sovereign in each of her realms. Not placing this box in the Canada article is POV.--Jiang

Regarding the UK & Commonwealth listing question, I must say I have a feeling that one must want to misunderstand in order to be mislead by the current setup. The simple reason Canada was 'left out' (and a whole lot of other commonwealth countries, and other monarchies for that matter) was that I didn't have the stamina to add the box in all the needed articles in one edit binge.:). --Wernher 18:30, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

No, you do not need to want to misunderstand. It's a misconception that the commonwealth is "formed by former British colonies" and just that. You need not put the footer in every article listed. --Jiang 05:22, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Footer removal consensus

Also be advised that these boxes are being removed per wikiproject countries consensus. Add them to the politics articles only or dont add them at all. Or better, insert a link to List of monarchies. --Jiang 02:13, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. After having read the discussion(s) about this on WikiProject Countries (Talk), I get the impression that the focus was set on the large and numerous 'international / regional organization' footers. To be taken into consideration in any 'defence' of the monarchies footer is its small size and its relatively small number of occurrences (not very many monarchies around anymore...). --Wernher 19:16, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

So mediawiki:APEC is not large... Again, why not just link to a list? What does this footer accomplish? We can perhaps just keep it in the 'politics of...' articles and out of the main articles. --Jiang 05:22, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I think the footer accomplishes the (small) feat of conveniently displaying which other countries remain in the small 'club' of monarchies left in the world. I think it is a well-spent centimetre-and-a-half (?) on the bottom of the monarchy articles. I also understand the point of view that the number/size of footers should be reduced; but I think this small one is worth having. --Wernher 15:00, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

The government of Saudi Arabia is very different from that of Britain. In certain parts of the world, monarchies are not uncommon. I guess there's no way out of this disagreement, but IMO, if we have a footer, it needs to be comprehensive. --Jiang 04:56, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm with Jiang on these matters. This message is not needed, and if it's there, it must take up all current monarchies, no less. The UK, Canada, Australia, Tuvalu etc. are monarchies, so they shall be included, and not grouped together, and certainly not grouped together under a misleading name. (The Commonwealth is not a monarchy because it isn't a state and so has no head of state; neither is it comprised of, or even dominated by, monarchies.) -- Jao 11:57, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

Now that we have a categories system, this is all really unnecessary. This msg should be limited to the 'politics of...' articles as I've stated before. --Jiang 20:21, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

What would you think of a category replacing the present footer? And please also see this comment of mine in the Denmark talk page; feel free to reply if you want to. --Wernher 21:00, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Update: take a look at Category:Monarchies and tell me what you think. As a test, I have only included Andorra in the category so far (and removed its Monarchies footer). The footer is now put into the category page instead. --Wernher 20:18, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Multiline footer

Eh - I'm a little uncertain of the agenda of some contributors to this footer regarding minimization vs liberal numbers of lines -- I actually thought vertically large footers annoyed some people no end? Oh well, I guess we're going over to a category system anyway (which I like very much, by the way). --Wernher 21:00, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Commonwealth realms in Europe

Jiang commented in an edit summary of this article: all commonwealth realms in Europe? i didn't think so... Just to clarify why I originally put the Commonwealth under Europe: when listed the UK, one of the oldest remaining monarchies, I put the Commonwealth alongside due to the UK's 'motherly' role, as I used to perceive it, among the Commonwealth realms (the UK being the head of the former British Empire). Of course, most of the Commonwealth realms is located (far) outside Europe, no discussion about that. --Wernher 19:26, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bias ?

I think that the current template is rather biased towards the Commonwealth and Europe. With its categories: "commonwealth", "European Christian Traditions" (the naming of this category is really rather biased) and "Non-European Traditions". I've looked at previous versions of the template: when it looked like this for instance, with all countries standing equal next to each other:

Monarchies of the World

Andorra | Antigua and Barbuda | Australia | Bahamas | Bahrain | Barbados | Belgium | Belize | Bhutan | Brunei | Cambodia | Canada | Denmark | Grenada | Jamaica | Japan | Jordan | Kuwait | Lesotho | Liechtenstein | Luxembourg | Malaysia | Monaco | Morocco | Nepal | Netherlands | New Zealand | Norway | Oman | Papua New Guinea | Qatar | Saint Kitts and Nevis | Saint Lucia | Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | Samoa | Saudi Arabia | Solomon Islands | Spain | Swaziland | Sweden | Thailand | Tonga | Tuvalu | United Arab Emirates | United Kingdom

I'd prefer this version over the current version. Not only because it less biased, but also because it is less cloggy (what kind of monarchies these countries are can be looked up on their individual pages), but also because it more simple.

If its up to me, the entire commonwealth is grouped into one mentioning instead of 17, because other of monarchies, like the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of out of the European part and the carribean islands of Curacao and the Dutch Antilles, not all individual parts are mentioned. It would look like this:

Monarchies of the World
Andorra | Bahrain | Barbados | Belgium | Bhutan | Brunei | Cambodia | Commonwealth | Denmark | Japan | Jordan | Kuwait | Lesotho | Liechtenstein | Luxembourg | Malaysia | Monaco | Morocco | Nepal | Netherlands | Norway | Oman | Qatar | Samoa | Saudi Arabia | Spain | Swaziland | Sweden | Thailand | Tonga | United Arab Emirates

This last part is open to debate. I'll settle for anything that is not classed "Commonwealth/Christian Europe/Rest of the World". C mon 20:01, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that it's pretty silly to separate "Christian" and "Non-Christian" monarchies and have no objections to putting everything in one big list. The Commonwealth Realms should not be collapsed into one list item though. For one thing, there are many members of the Commonwealth that are not Commonwealth Realms -- that are republics or have their own monarchs. The Commonwealth Realms are 15 separate sovereign states that happen to have the same monarch. This is very different from the Dutch situation you mention -- Aruba and the Neth. Antilles are not internationally recognized sovereign countries and do not claim to be, while the non-UK commonwealth realms are. --Jfruh (talk) 20:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

===>My two cents I personally think the classifications are kind of goofy, too as they don't actually explain anything about the monarchies or provide a systematic taxonomy for them. I would be in favor of keeping information like constitutionality or democratic election, as that seems useful to the reader to me. On the other hand, I'm not exactly married to that. -Justin (koavf), talk, mail 20:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Seeing the overwhelming support, I'm returning the template to the old version. C mon 23:22, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

===>Overwhelming support? You have one person that agrees with you and another that agreed in principle. I'm leaving the template the way it was until we have an actual dicussion on it. -Justin (koavf), talk, mail

Okay I'll wait two days for real opposition to the plan. C mon 12:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

===> Since the commonwealth realms share one monarch, not grouping them is ignoring the one 'family' that is undeniable, while calling the commonwealth a monrachy wpuld be wrong (it does NOT have a Monarch, nor is it even a state). Whle the Christian tradition makes sense historically, I suppose it may seem outdated to apply this criterion. Terms like 'Absolute' and (semi-)cosntitutional are not absolute, but somewhat subjective and vary oer time; marking out the truely unique forms (elective, co-principality, emperor ...), which are permanent and well-defined constitutional features, makes more sense. Fastifex 15:52, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I hope you understand that templates are better simple than complicated. Information on what kind of monarchy it is might be a part of a list of monarchies article, which could not only show the very important typologies you propose but also the current monarch and the name of the royal family etc. Quickly comparing monarchies would be possible there, as it is possible in the way the template is worded now.

On the other side I am deeply opposed by the classification commonwealth/christian/other, because it is very eurocentric, and somewhat condescending towards the rich traditions in hinduistic, buddhist, african and islamic traditions of monarchy. Grouping the commonwealth realms in one group, possibly giving them their own template:commonwealth could be a solution for their exceptional situation.

With these two new features on wikipedia, which are linked this template, I hope you can agree on simplifying the template. C mon 11:03, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

• It seems you confuse my last version, which IS simpler (abandoning the Christian grouping, just Commonwealth realms grouped as they uniquely share one monarch, and only marking the unique cases) with the indeed somewhat crowded three group plus codes for absolute etc. someone else put back (fine with me, but I can accept simplification for clarity; even if the idea of a 'condescending' motive is rather paranoid, since most historical monarchies themselves systematically appeal to the sacred dimension as well as to genealogical and other inheritances) Fastifex 21:48, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Your proposal is to do it like this, isn't it?

Current Monarchies
Commonwealth Realms: Antigua & Barbuda | Australia | Bahamas | Barbados | Belize | Canada | Grenada | Jamaica | New Zealand | Papua New Guinea | St. Kitts & Nevis | St. Lucia | St. Vincent & the Grenadines | Solomon Islands | Tuvalu | United Kingdom
Andorra(!) | Belgium | Denmark | Liechtenstein(⁂) | Luxembourg | Monaco(⁂) | Kingdom of the Netherlands | Norway | Spain | Sweden | Vatican City (Holy See)(*!) | Bahrain(⁂) | Bhutan(*) | Brunei(*) | Cambodia | Japan | Jordan(⁂) | Kuwait(⁂) | Lesotho | Malaysia! | Morocco(⁂) | Nepal | Oman(*) | Qatar(*) | Samoa | Saudi Arabia(*) | Swaziland(*) | Thailand | Tonga | United Arab Emirates!
* - Absolute monarch, ⁂ - Semi-constitutional monarch, ! - elected

I'll settle for that too. C mon 07:31, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Seeing no overwhelming opposition I've made the change C mon 22:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The asterisking of Andorra as an elected monarchy is kind of weird - only one of its two princes is elected - and the only :;other monarchy so marked is the Vatican City. I think it might be less deceptive to just mark those two separately as special cases. Ccreitz 03:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

That's wrong; Malaysia and the UAE are also elective, more or less, and Samoa will be as soon as the current monarch finally dies (although they might also become a republic, of course). —Nightstallion (?) 12:26, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Samoa is a Republic, as its Politics article states. I've removed it from the template. —Nightstallion (?) 12:27, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kingdom of the Netherlands

Should the link under Netherlands point to Kingdom of the Netherlands? Im only asking as Beatrix of the Netherlands indicates that is what is the monarch of. John Vandenberg 12:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed I've changed it. C mon 13:42, 5 February 2007 (UTC)