Divine Right of Kings
This article deals with the Divine Right of Kings as it relates to NationStates. For more general information, see the Wikipedia article on this subject.
The Divine Right of Kings is a political and religious doctrine of political absolutism. It is based on the belief that a monarch owes his rule to the will of God, not to the will of his subjects, parliament, the aristocracy or any other competing authority. This doctrine continues with the claim that any attempt to depose a monarch or to restrict his powers runs contrary to the will of God. Other theories base the 'Divine' legitimacy of the monarch exclusively on him on her being the heir to certain forebearers. Essentially, this variant to the Divine Right comes down to the same thing: the rule of the monarch cannot be questioned.
In RL such doctrines are largely, though not exclusively, associated with the mediæval and ancien régime eras, however in Nationstates the concept continues to thrive in many non-democratic regimes.
The concept
The concept of Divine Right of Kings is different from a much broader concept of "royal God-given rights", which simply says that "the right to rule is anointed by god(s)" which is found in other cultures. A King cannot lose the Divine Right by misrule.
A more constitutional and republican interpretation makes it legitimate to overthrow of an oppressive or incompetent monarch. An example of this can be found in the Knootian declaration of Independence, which asserted that the Emperor of Lavenrunz had forfeited his claim to the United Provinces.
A similar case can be seen in the Syskeyian Civil War in which King Adam II/Achilles "the Apostate" was jurisdictionally removed from power and sentenced to death by the Senate for numerous crimes. (Of course the king did not accept that judgement, starting off three years of civil war, but that's another story. ;) )
Another variant of the Divine Right of Kings is practiced in Iesus Christi, which has deposed of the monarchy in a Christian-fundamentalist revolution. (As with the Knootian independence war, the Monarch was said to no longer stand for the will of God). However the new regime still maintains that its current government is executing the Will of God. For example, the Iesus government has acted against the Catholic church itself "in the name of God" by arresting certain Bishops.
Yeat another kind of "divine right of kings" can be found in non-Christian countries. In this, there is no division between God and the monarch whom He gives the right to rule, as the monarch is a god, or even is God, himself.
Application in Nationstates
In Nationstates the Divine Right of Kings has come to be associated with both Roman Catholicism and Protestant Christian faiths such as those practiced in The Reich and Greater Prussia where it is extensively used as a primarily political mechanism for increasing the power of kings within centralized monarchies relative to their nobles and subjects. However other nations have yielded to more democratic notions of popular sovereignty
