A British monarch shouldn't need to remind Americans of lessons from their own revolution

King Charles III gently urged Americans to remain true to the principles that led them to declare independence from what the revolutionaries described as the tyranny of King George III, who Charles acknowledged as “my five-times great grandfather.” It is sobering, even staggering, to consider that Americans need a British king to remind them that their nation was founded on a rejection of monarchy and a commitment to, in Charles’s words, “the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”

The first King Charles was well known to the American revolutionaries as a tyrant. Charles I claimed absolute prerogative—power unchecked by law or Parliament. His ambitions were roundly rejected—supporters of Parliament fought a civil war against the notion of absolute prerogative, and Charles I was executed in 1649.

In his speech before Congress, King Charles III broadly (and tactfully) outlined this history, which is itself part of a centuries-old tradition of gradually accumulating limits on the power of the monarch, dating back, as Charles III explained, to Magna Carta in 1215.

As Charles III noted, the 17th-century English civil war culminated in the 1689 Bill of Rights, which declares that “the pretended power of suspending the laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament…[and] the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority…[are] illegal.”

Charles III is, of course, far too diplomatic to make the point expressly, but the subtext ought to be quite clear to Americans –or, indeed, anyone who worries about Donald Trump’s authoritarian ambitions. As I have explained, “Trump is claiming fake emergencies as a pretext to consolidate power of a kind enjoyed by 17th-century [British] monarchs—that is, the absolute power to act against statutory law.”

Trump aspires to more power than King George III, who was constrained by the English Bill of Rights; he seeks the power that Charles I unsuccessfully claimed, the very power expressly rejected by the English Bill of Rights.

The American Declaration of Independence described Charles III’s forebear, George III, as a tyrant bent on forcing the new United States to submit to his will. The revolutionaries included a long list of grievances against the monarch, including what they saw as George III’s efforts to destroy the rule of law by “obstruct[ing] the administration of justice…[making] judges dependent on his will alone…[and] affect[ing] to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power”.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson observed the common ties between the new Americans and “our British brethren”, asserting that “We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow [their] usurpations…”

Like Jefferson, Charles III repeatedly invoked a bond between Britain and the United States, describing them as nations with “interlinked…destinies” and a relationship that “spans…four centuries”.

Charles III’s extraordinary speech deftly echoes Jefferson’s words and the revolutionaries’ grievances by turning them against Trump, reminding Americans that “Our common ideals were...crucial for liberty and equality…[these ideals include] the rule of law, the certainty of stable and accessible rules, [and] an independent judiciary resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice.”

Again, Charles is far too diplomatic, far too subtle, to make the connection explicit, but any reasonable observer can answer the obvious implied question: who, today, poses a threat to the rule of law in the United States? Indeed, the Trump administration gleefully accepted Charles’s bait, adding a caption to a photo of Trump with Charles reading in all caps “TWO KINGS”.

While Trump seeks the real power of an absolute monarch, Charles III is a monarch only in name. He possesses no hard power—but he plays an important role as head of state. In that capacity, and on behalf of a British government now embodied in liberal democracy through a parliamentary system, Charles was urging his American cousins to choose democracy over tyranny. Although Charles assured his audience that “I am not part of some cunning rearguard action”, he was in fact doing something far subtler, although in service not of monarchy, but of democracy.

King Charles III spoke in support of the principles expressed by the American revolutionaries who rejected his own ancestor. That is not rearguard action, but rather an effort to advance the revolutionaries’ own cause. As the United States observes its 250th anniversary as a nation born in a declaration of independence from monarchs, Americans should carefully consider why they need a British monarch to remind them of the lessons of their own revolution.

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Chris Edelson is a lecturer in political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  He has written three books on presidential power; his most recent book Above the Law? The Evolution of Emergency Presidential Power was published in March 2026.

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