Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

demise of the Crown

The immediate, automatic transfer of a kingdom to a successor upon a sovereign's death or long absence from the throne."The king never dies. Henry, Edward, or George may die; but the king survives them all. For immediately upon the decease of the reigning prince in his natural capacity, his kingship or imperial dignity, by act of law, without any ... interval, is vested at once in his heir; who is, eo instanti, king to all intents and purposes. And so tender is the law of supposing even a possibility of his death, that his natural dissolution is generally called his demise .an expression which signifies merely a transfer of property; for . . . when we say the demise of the crown, we mean only that, in consequence of the disunion of the king's body natural from his body politic, the kingdom is transferred or demised to his successor; and so the royal dignity remains perpetual." 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 242 (1765).