/biz/ - Business & Finance

The City of London is a City State, vassal to the United-Kingdom. It's run by entreprise, medieval guilds, livery companies and a few thousand citizens. They have their own police force!
The Queen needs permission from the Lord Mayor to enter the City and she gives him a bow in a ritual where he presents to her a sword.
Absolutely everything in the UK belongs to his or her royal majesty. It's her army, her government, her prisons, her justice system, her navy, her air force, she needs to sign every law passed to make it official. The Queen is literally the head of the Church, a divine being almost.

That really bugged me. The British monarch, ruler of the world, representative of God en Earth, has to bow to some nobody in tights IN HER OWN CAPITAL.

Suppose you're a pure banker. You tell the world "deposit your gold in my vault, it's safe with me". You've got a problem. Because at all times there is one person in the UK who is above the law. If the Queen decided to rob a bank, you can't arrest her, can't prosecute her, can't imprison her. All justice is carried out in her name. All court cases in the UK are "The Queen vs. Trayvon Billingsby"
As a banker, you need to fix this problem.

So some intelligent banker explained to an intelligent Monarch: "listen, you need to concede part of your capital, the most ancient and historic part of your capital. And from time to time, you need to come and perform a little ritual to reinforce the notion that nothing here belongs to you"

It is not the City which is sovereign, it is the gold in the BoE. Without the gold, you don't have the banks, without the banks you don't have the financial sector, and without the financial sector, you don't have the Empire.

I could be wrong but I doubt it.