Quote:
Originally Posted by PKFFW
If "the highest ruling body" is a single person, that single person has total authority do they not?
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Not
The president of the USA is a single person and is the highest ruling body in his country, but he has not total authority. Has he?
What you call "monarchy" is actually
absolute monarchy, which is hardly distinguishable from dictatorship (absolute power in both cases), but there are a whole bunch of different monarchies (constitutional, parliamentar, counseled, restricted, religious, feudal...).
"Monarchy" means just that there highest ruling body has inherited his/her right to govern by right of birth, what is under him and what other ruling bodies are there to limit his/her powers is not defined by that word. It's a broad definition, not limited to absolute monarchies.
As you said, you can have a Constitutional monarchy, and that
is actually a monarchy. There's the Constitution (and a parliament, usually) there to limit the monarch's power. It's not the only way, of course, if I think of feudal monarchies the power of the monarch is limited by his/her feudal vassals (or rather, limited by the fear of how his feudal vassals could react and could do if they joined armies together and marched against him).
I'm getting waaaay out of topic now, though, so if you think it's worth continuing we're better switch to Private Messages.