section_path: Characteristics and role/Statehood
section_name: Statehood
paragraph_text: Statehood
  
  Monarchies pre-date polities like nation states and even territorial states. A nation or constitution is not necessary in a monarchy since a person, the monarch, binds the separate territories and political legitimacy (e.g. in personal union) together.
  
  Monarchies, though, have applied state symbols like insignia or abstracts like the concept of the Crown to create a state identity, which is to be carried and occupied by the monarch, but represents the monarchy even in absence and succession of the monarch.
  
  Nevertheless, monarchies can also be bound to territories (e.g., the King of Norway) and peoples (e.g., the King of the Belgians).