A Commonwealth realm is a sovereign state in the Commonwealth of Nations that has the same constitutional monarch and head of state as the other realms. The current monarch is King Charles III. Except for the United Kingdom, in each of the realms the monarch is represented by a governor-general. The phrase Commonwealth realm is an informal description not used in any law.
, there are 15 Commonwealth realms: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia and its external territories, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, the Realm of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom and its territories. While the Commonwealth of Nations has 56 independent member states, only these 15 have Charles III as head of state. He is also Head of the Commonwealth, a ceremonial role.
The notion of these states sharing the same person as their monarch traces back to 1867 when Canada became the first "dominion": a largely self-governing nation that was nevertheless a part of the British Empire. Others, such as Australia (1901) and New Zealand (1907), followed. With the growing independence of the dominions in the 1920s, the Balfour Declaration of 1926 established the Commonwealth of Nations and that the nations were considered "equal in status ... though united by a common allegiance to the Crown". The Statute of Westminster 1931 further set the terms: of the relationship between the realms; and of their broader sharing of the monarch, including a convention that any alteration to the line of succession in any one country must be voluntarily approved by all the others.
After the significant and costly mutual defence assistance provided by empire nations during the Second World War, the modern Commonwealth of Nations was formally constituted by the London Declaration. In 1950, India became a republic without leaving the Commonwealth. This left seven independent nations sharing the Crown: Australia, Canada, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Since then, new realms have been created as former colonies and dependencies have gained independence. Saint Kitts and Nevis is the youngest extant realm, having achieved independence—while retaining the monarch—in 1983. Some former realms have transitioned to presidential republics: most recently, Barbados changed from realm to republic in 2021.
List There are currently 15 Commonwealth realms across three continents (nine in North America, five in Oceania, and one, the UK, in Europe). Together, these realms have a population of more than 150 million and a combined land area of .
Country Population () Date Governor-general Prime minister (monarchy) 1981 Rodney Williams Gaston Browne (monarchy) 1901 Sam Mostyn Anthony Albanese (monarchy) 1973 Cynthia A. Pratt Philip Davis (monarchy) 1981 Froyla Tzalam Johnny Briceño (monarchy) 1867 Louise Arbour Mark Carney (monarchy) 1974 Cécile La Grenade Dickon Mitchell (monarchy) 1962 Patrick Allen Andrew Holness (monarchy) 1907 Cindy Kiro Christopher Luxon (monarchy) 1975 Bob Dadae James Marape (monarchy) 1983 Marcella Liburd Terrance Drew (monarchy) 1979 Felix Finisterre (acting) Philip J. Pierre (monarchy) 1979 Stanley John Godwin Friday (monarchy) 1978 David Tiva Kapu Matthew Wale (monarchy) 1978 Temukisa Auina Penehuro Hauma Feleti Teo (monarchy) 1801 None Andy Burnham
Interrelationship The Commonwealth realms are sovereign states. They are united only in their voluntary connection with the institution of the monarchy, the succession, and the King himself; the person of the sovereign and the Crown were said in 1936 to be "the most important and vital link" between the dominions. Citing Arthur Berriedale Keith, 1936. Political scientist Peter Boyce called this grouping of countries associated in this manner "an achievement without parallel in the history of international relations or constitutional law." Terms such as personal union, a form of personal union, and shared monarchy, among others, have all been advanced as definitions since the beginning of the Commonwealth itself, though there has been no agreement on which term is most accurate.
Under the Balfour Declaration of 1926, dominions were proclaimed to be "equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown" and the monarch is the leader "equally, officially, and explicitly of separate, autonomous realms". Andrew Michie wrote in 1952 that "Elizabeth II embodies in her own person many monarchies: she is Queen of Great Britain, but she is equally Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and Ceylon ... It is now possible for Elizabeth II to be, in practice as well as theory, equally Queen in all her realms." Still, Boyce holds the contrary opinion that the crowns of all the non-British realms are "derivative, if not subordinate" to the crown of the United Kingdom.
Since each realm has the same person as its monarch, the diplomatic practice of exchanging ambassadors with letters of credence and recall from one head of state to another does not apply. Instead, high commissioners between Commonwealth realms use letters of introduction exchanged between heads of government. Diplomatic precedence among heads of mission within the same class is determined according to the date and time at which they take up their functions. At Commonwealth events held in the United Kingdom, national flags follow the Commonwealth order of precedence prescribed in UK flag protocol.
Conflicts of interest have arisen from this relationship amongst independent states. Some have been minor diplomatic matters, such as the monarch expressing on the advice of one of his/her cabinets views that counter those of another of his/her cabinets. More serious issues have arisen with respect to armed conflict, where the monarch, as head of state of two different realms, may be simultaneously at war and at peace with a third country, or even at war with themself as head of two hostile nations.
The Crown's role The evolution of dominions into realms resulted in the Crown having a shared and a separate character, with one person equally monarch of each state and acting as such in right of a particular realm as a distinct legal person guided only by the advice of the cabinet of that jurisdiction. This means that in different contexts, the term Crown may refer to the extra-national institution associating all 15 countries, or to the Crown in each realm considered separately. In Australia, it has been suggested that the Crown is further divided, with it possible that the monarchy in each of the states is a separate institution, equal in status to each other. The monarchy is, therefore, no longer an exclusively British institution.
From a cultural standpoint, the sovereign's name, image and other royal symbols unique to each nation are visible in the emblems and insignia of governmental institutions and militia. Elizabeth II's effigy, for example, appears on coins and banknotes in some countries, and an oath of allegiance to the King is typically required from politicians, judges, military members and new citizens. By 1959, it was being asserted by Buckingham Palace officials that the Queen was "equally at home in all her realms".
Robert Hazell and Bob Morris argued in 2017 that there are five aspects to the monarchy of the Commonwealth realms: the constitutional monarchy, including the royal prerogative and the use thereof on the advice of local ministers or according to convention or statute law; the national monarchy, comprising the functions of the head of state beyond the purely constitutional; the international monarchy, where the monarch is head of state in the 15 realms and holds the position of head of the Commonwealth; the religious monarchy, meaning the sovereign as head of the Church of England and his relationship with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland; and the welfare/service monarchy, wherein the sovereign and other members of the royal family give their patronage to charities and other elements of civil society.
Succession and regency To guarantee the continuity of multiple states sharing the same person as monarch, the preamble of the Statute of Westminster 1931 laid out a convention that any alteration to the line of succession in any one country must be voluntarily approved by the parliaments of all the realms. This convention was first applied in 1936 when the British government conferred with the dominion governments during the Edward VIII abdication crisis. Prime Minister of Canada William Lyon Mackenzie King pointed out that the Statute of Westminster required Canada's request and consent to any legislation passed by the British parliament before it could become part of Canada's laws and affect the line of succession in Canada. Sir Maurice Gwyer, first parliamentary counsel in the UK, reflected this position, stating that the Act of Settlement was a part of the law in each dominion. Though today the Statute of Westminster is law only in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, the convention of approval from the other realms was reasserted by the Perth Agreement of 2011, in which all 16 realms at the time agreed in principle to change the succession rule to absolute primogeniture, to remove the restriction on the monarch being married to a Catholic, and to reduce the number of members of the Royal Family who need the monarch's permission to marry. These changes came into effect on 26 March 2015. Alternatively, a Commonwealth realm may choose to cease being such by making its throne the inheritance of a different royal house or by becoming a republic, actions to which, though they alter the country's royal succession, the convention does not apply.
Agreement among the realms does not mean the succession laws cannot diverge. During the abdication crisis in 1936, the United Kingdom passed His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act with the approval of the parliament of Australia and the governments of the remaining dominions. (Canada, New Zealand and South Africa gave parliamentary assent later.) The act effected Edward's abdication in the United Kingdom on 11 December; as the Canadian government had requested and consented to the act becoming part of Canadian law, and Australia and New Zealand had then not yet adopted the Statute of Westminster, the abdication took place in those countries on the same day. The parliament of South Africa passed its own legislation—His Majesty King Edward the Eighth's Abdication Act, 1937—which backdated the abdication there to 10 December. The Irish Free State recognised the king's abdication with the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 on 12 December. According to Anne Twomey, this demonstrated "the divisibility of the Crown in the personal, as well as the political, sense". For E. H. Coghill, writing as early as 1937, it proved that the convention of a common line of succession "is not of imperative force" and Kenneth John Scott asserted in 1962 that it ended the "convention that statutory uniformity on these subjects would be maintained in the parts of the Commonwealth that continued to owe allegiance to the Crown".
Today, some realms govern succession by their own domestic laws, while others, either by written clauses in their constitution or by convention, stipulate that whoever is monarch of the United Kingdom is automatically also monarch of that realm. It is generally agreed that any unilateral alteration of succession by the UK would not have effect in all the realms.