Exercise 2: Why Charles IV's Non-Abdication Still Functioned as a Real Transfer of Power — Possible Solution ================================================================================================================== This exercise is asking you to explain how a formally incomplete legal act (withdrawal without abdication) could still produce a genuine, practical change in who actually held power. WHAT CHARLES IV'S PROCLAMATION ACTUALLY DID, IN FORMAL LEGAL TERMS Charles's real 13 November 1918 proclamation stopped short of a full, formal abdication - it recognized Hungary's own right to decide its future form of government and announced his own withdrawal from Hungarian affairs, but it deliberately did not include an explicit renunciation of the Hungarian throne itself. In strict legal terms, this left his own formal royal title technically unresolved rather than clearly ended. WHAT ACTUALLY MATTERED WAS REAL, PRACTICAL AUTHORITY, NOT THE FORMAL TITLE Political power in this situation depended on who could actually exercise real authority on the ground, not simply on who still technically held an unrenounced title. By the time of the proclamation, the Aster Revolution had already placed real control of Budapest in the hands of soldiers' councils, Károlyi had already been named Prime Minister, and Charles's own proclamation itself explicitly announced his withdrawal from actually directing Hungarian affairs. A monarch's own genuine, exercised power had already ended in practice, regardless of whether a single further formal legal step, full abdication, had also been completed. WHY THIS DISTINCTION EXPLAINS WHAT HAPPENED THREE DAYS LATER Because real, exercised authority had already shifted away from Charles in practice, his own careful choice to withdraw rather than fully abdicate created no genuine obstacle to what followed: the Hungarian People's Republic being declared just three days later, on 16 November, with Károlyi as its own provisional head of state. A truly still-functioning monarch, actively exercising real royal power, could not simply be replaced by a declared republic within days - what made that transition possible was that Charles's own real authority had already, functionally, ended. WHY THIS IS A GENUINELY USEFUL DISTINCTION TO RECOGNIZE This shows that a formally incomplete legal act - stopping short of an explicit abdication - does not necessarily prevent a real, practical transfer of power from actually occurring. What determined the real outcome was the practical exercise of authority on the ground, not whether every formal legal box had technically been checked. ANSWER: Charles IV's proclamation still functioned as a real, practical transfer of power because political authority in this situation ultimately depended on who could actually exercise it, not merely on who still held an unrenounced formal title. By 13 November, real control of Budapest already rested with the Aster Revolution's own soldiers' councils and with Károlyi as Prime Minister, and Charles's own proclamation itself explicitly announced his withdrawal from Hungarian affairs - meaning his genuine, exercised royal power had already ended in practice, even though he had not formally abdicated. This is exactly why the declared republic followed just three days later without obstacle: the practical transfer of power had already occurred, regardless of the one remaining formal legal step left incomplete. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ It separates formal legal completeness from practical, exercised authority, and uses the real, close timing between the proclamation and the republic's declaration as evidence that genuine power had already shifted before any formal abdication was ever needed.