Re: King and Queen

On 4/06/2025 6:19 a.m., Christian Weisgerber wrote:

On 2025-06-03, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
 

Today, by contrast, is "Queen's Birthday" in Thailand -- actual birthday
of the actual reigning Queen ("former air hostess"),

 Hmm.  So a "reigning queen" is not a "queen regnant"?
 

I don't know. All I meant to say was that she was in fact the current holder of that title. I don't profess to be an expert in things Royal, and "regnant" is not really even in my vocabulary. Dictionaries were not very helpful, simply defining "regnant" as "reigning". I thought I knew what "reign" meant, but I probably learned that from reading mostly about kings. But as helpfully explained by Blackstone (1765), quoted in OED, "regnant" means "holds the crown in her own right". So (I guess) Suthida is not regnant, does not reign.
Monarchs, then, can have spouses who do not reign. Could two people be co-regnant? Wiliam III and Mary II, apparently, were co-monarchs (1689-1694). I can't remember how that was worked out, though we heard about it in high school. Or how William got to be "William III and II", as I just read somewhere.