In 1173, Henry II of England began using the title “King by the grace of God.” This led to the idea later known as the divine right of kings, meaning that the king’s power was hereditary. God supposedly manifested his choice in the fact of birth.

A similar idea appeared in Scotland at more or less the same time. While ruling Scotland as James VI but before becoming King James I of England in 1603, this monarch wrote: “Kings are called Gods . . . because they sit upon GOD his Throne in the earth, and have the count of their administration to give unto [H]im.” We do not know to what extent this belief influenced James to authorize translating the Bible into English. We do know the result, the King James Version, still widely used by Protestants.

The Age of Absolute Monarchies

From the early Middle Ages onward, monarchies were the typical form of government. Kings developed a cheap and convenient way to rule by delegating authority to prominent landholders. These, in turn, set up a political and military system known as feudalism. In exchange for military and other services, the landholders gave their vassals land. But the more effective and powerful feudal landholders became, the more likely the kingdom would be to disintegrate into feudal power blocs.

Besides, the feudal system robbed citizens of their dignity and their freedom. They were dominated by military landlords, for whose income they were chiefly responsible. Deprived of education and cultural opportunities, “the serf had few rights that were enforceable at law against his manorial lord,” says Collier’s Encyclopedia. “He could not marry, transmit his leasehold to heirs, nor leave the manor without the lord’s consent.”

This was not the sole method of ruling in absolute monarchies. Some kings bestowed administrative posts on individuals who could later be removed from office, should it be thought necessary. Other kings entrusted local government to popular institutions that ruled by means of custom and social pressure. But all these methods were in one way or another unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, writers of the 17th century, such as Sir Robert Filmer of England and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet of France, still advocated absolutism as the only proper form of government. Yet its days were numbered.

“Gods” Reduced to Figureheads

Despite the general belief that monarchs were responsible to God alone, pressure had long been growing to make them responsible to human laws, customs, and authorities. By the 18th century, “monarchs employed a rhetoric different from the sovereigns of the seventeenth century,” says The Columbia History of the World, adding, however, that “beneath and behind the rhetoric they were still sovereigns.” It then explains that “when Frederick the Great called himself the ‘first servant of the state’ and repudiated the divine right of kings, he was not thinking of abjuring power.”

Nevertheless, after the Revolution of 1688 in England and the French Revolution of 1789, the day of absolutism was over for the most part. Gradually, absolute monarchies gave way to limited monarchies with legislatures or constitutions, or both. In contrast with the 12th century when “kingship was still what a king was capable of making it, and what his subjects were prepared to accept,” to quote historian W. L. Warren, today the political power of most kings and queens is quite limited.

Of course, a few monarchs still wield considerable power. But most of them have long since lost their halos of “godship” and are content to serve as figureheads, central figures of power around which peoples can be encouraged to rally in a spirit of loyalty. Limited monarchies have tried to retain the unifying features of one-man rule while eradicating its negative aspects by bestowing the real power on a legislature.

The idea of limited monarchies is still popular.

That same year, Time magazine noted: “Royalty commands loyalty perhaps because monarchs are the last great icons of our secular age, the only larger-than-life figures who can still quicken belief while dwelling in mystery. If God is dead, long live the Queen!” But then viewing things more realistically, it added that “the sovereign power of the [British] Queen lies mostly in her glittering powerlessness.”