I do not know what a “monarchy” is, but let me know if you feel like explaining this thing.
But here’s my confusion: if someone like Alexander or Napoleon was a king, he was a monarch, right? (I’m going to ignore the concept of a “monarchy” here for simplicity’s sake.)
Now, it’s true that there are some differences between kings and emperors – they are both kings, but in different ways, and one is more powerful than the other.
But they still have the same traits – they are kings of their respective countries, they rule over their respective countries, they have people who serve them as part of their governments, and so on.
As you say, the most fundamental difference is that an empress/emperor is just the ruler of an empire, not the ruler of a specific country or country and people. (So this does seem to be a difference after all.)
But there are ways in which the emperor is, in many ways, like the king – if there were no emperors, would we even have kings? Would kings still exist?
In the modern world, I think it’s probably true that you would still have kings, even if there were no emperors. I don’t know anything about history or economics, and of course I don’t know enough about medieval history to know whether the difference between kings and emperors is a difference that would have occurred in practice, but I can’t think of any reason not to imagine some kind of “queen” who has some authority over a group of people, even if they can’t really call themselves rulers.
And you see this in the idea that the “real” ruler is the king’s “wife,” or that the real ruler is the “prime minister” who is in charge of the real government’s executive functions.
There is this idea that the sovereign/emperor/monarch is a separate person, and there is the idea that the sovereign is more powerful because he/she rules in a more direct way. But surely they are both king, and are more different than they are different? Or are there some of these ideas that are “in reality” different?
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