Editing Monarchy (section)

===Elected Monarchy===

Formed where a bunch of Aristocrats or other powerful groups which vote one of themselves to sit on the throne, said council also typically has a collective say in the running of a country and could sometimes remove the monarch. They generally arose when several smaller monarchies joined through non violent means such as a political marriage or confederation and no party was strong enough to totally dominant the other or where a group started becoming too powerful to totally control so were integrated into the power structure. Because of this they tended to be unstable and mired in the red tape of inter-dynastic bickering but could work a lot better at the city-state scale such as in Venice where it stopped any one family totally dominating. 

Most countries were historically 'elected monarchies' but the monarch was only elected from and by the royal family and this was simplified to hereditary succession. In turn countries usually retained elements of this or adopted elements of them over time, for example in countries such as Medieval Scotland in practice were still a hereditary monarchy but the nobles had a right to name a new king if the heir was an insane, incompetent, tyrannical buffoon.

:'''''IRL examples:''' The Holy Roman Empire, the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth before Austria, Russia and Prussia carved it up (various constitiants were also elective), Ancient Rome at various times, the Holy See, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia (in both these later cases the monarchs are elected from their heads of the constituent states and are monarchs in their own right over the states they have responsibility for. Further while the UAE monarchs have power and elect each other to roles like Prime Minister, Malaysian monarchs are purely ceremonial and elected from one of the 9 state royal families, some of which are themselves elected monarchies).''