A personal union is the combination by which two or more different states are governed by the same monarch, while their boundaries, their laws and their interests remain distinct.[1] It is not to be confused with a federation, which internationally is considered as a single state. Nor is it to be confused with dynastic union, where the union can be under a dynasty.
Personal unions can arise for very different reasons, ranging from near coincidence (a princess who is already married to a king becomes queen regnant, and their child inherits the crown of both countries) to virtual annexation (where a personal union sometimes was seen as a means of preventing uprisings). They can also be codified (i.e. the constitutions of the states clearly express that they shall share the same person as head of state) or non-codified, in which case they can easily be broken (e.g. by different succession rules).
Because presidents of republics are ordinarily chosen from within the citizens of the state in question, personal unions are almost entirely a phenomenon of monarchies, and sometimes the term dual monarchy is used to signify a personal union between two monarchies.[citation needed]
Personal union was also a bureaucratic device used in Nazi Germany to combine high level state positions with equivalent positions in the National Socialist Party.[2]
There is a somewhat grey area between personal unions and federations, and the first has regularly grown into the second.
The following is provides some detail of personal unions through history. There are no longer any personal unions in today's world.[3]
On 1162 Alfonso II of Aragon was the first person to bear the titles of King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, ruling what was called later Crown of Aragon.
The conception of a personal union was suggested to keep the Irish Free State as a Commonwealth Realm.[4]
The phrase personal union appears in some discussion about the early Commonwealth of Nations [5], though its application to Commonwealth was refuted by others.[6]
Note: The point at issue in the War of the Spanish Succession was the fear that the succession to the Spanish throne dictated by Spanish law, which would devolve on Louis, le Grand dauphin — already heir to the throne of France — would create a personal union that would upset the European balance of power (France had the most powerful military in Europe at the time, and Spain the largest empire).
The duchies of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach were in personal union from 1741, when the ruling house of Saxe-Eisenach died out, until 1809, when they were merged into the single duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.
Duchies with peculiar rules for succession.
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