The Completion of the British Constitutional Monarchy

After the end of World War I in 1918, the main political systems throughout Europe changed from aristocracy-based to mass democracy-based. During those unstable times, King George V maintained his position as constitutional monarch during and after that Great War, in contrast to his cousins Kaiser Wilhelm II, who fled from Germany into exile in the Netherlands, and Tsar Nikolai II, who was executed by the Bolsheviks along with his young family. King George had learned from Bagehot’s The English Constitution in his young age how to be a model constitutional monarch, and his style has been inherited by his son King George VI, and also by his grand-daughter Queen Elizabeth II. In this way the British Monarchy solidified its powerful status in Europe during the long reign of the late Queen.