Thread by @MorsRattus

Today in Real History Is Fucking Weird:

Did you know that there was a major legal theory that predated the Magna Carta, prevented a king from breaking laws, and was centered on the fact that the king was outranked by his own hat?

See, the Hungarian king Saint Stephen I officially gifted the entire nation of Hungary to the Virgin Mary. She owned it. But obviously Mary couldn't rule Hungary, because she's too busy doing...whatever it is that Mary spends all her time doing.

So, therefore, Mary is held to have delegated the authority of the Hungarian rule to a divine entity manifesting itself in the physical form of the Holy Crown of Hungary. The actual, physical crown. It is in charge of the nation.

Why does this matter? After all, the king wears the hat and speaks for it. The king, when speaking as king, has all of the total divine authority of the Holy Crown.

...except. EXCEPT.

That the Holy Crown is perfectly good and divine, and the king isn't.

Therefore, the Crown would never break the law. Because that would not be perfectly good and divinely ordained most of the time! And so if the king is breaking the law, he must not be speaking with the authority of his hat.

And therefore he can be questioned.

The law must apply to the king, who is after all only a man who represents the divine will of his hat, the divine agent of Mary. And as a fallible man, he does not hold the true divine right, which is vested in the hat, and therefore it is right and just to oppose his lawbreaking

And that's why, unlike England, Hungary never needed a Magna Carta. The King had to obey the law, because otherwise the nobles would declare him in violation of it and rebel or remove him, on the grounds that he was not properly serving as steward of the Holy Crown.

This is why goofy old history is important - these things happen for reasons that are both eminently practical if understood right, and also are hilarious.