On paper, the Polyrepublic is a constitutional monarchy. It's kings had guided it through the turbulent ages of the past, before eventually handing off power to their people. Then, after all that, they could simply be figures of celebration and political unity. So what happens when there ISN'T a king at all? During the Korwegian Revolts, fifty years ago, things got heated to the point of armed conflict. King William XI was not a uniting force, but a dividing one, whose presence only exacerbated the growing division between the ruling Serclosians and restless Korwegians. So what better way was there for them to really hammer their point home? Thus, King William XI disappeared one August day. Nobody knows what happened to him, but at the same time, everybody knows exactly what happened to him. Now, William XI had only been king for four years, leaving no children to put in his place. The royal line had been dwindling anyway, but the government had never anticipated the cutoff being this soon. Therefore, they had nothing regarding what to do if the king died without an heir. Of course, they could abolish the constitutional monarchy - but one of the few rules stipulated by King Carl VII seventy or so years ago was that the king needed to sign off on the abolition of the monarchy, if it were to ever occur. There were no rules on what to do without a king, since nobody had really gotten that far yet. Thus, the Polyrepublic is in this strange sort of limbo, constantly searching for a king that might not even exist, to remove an outdated government that has only made things ten times more complicated. Of course, this has become a major turning point in Polyrepublican politics. Prime Minister Stavsson is a centrist, from a minority party, who keeps making decisions seen as controversial from the majority left in order to reach Stavsson's goal of "complete equity between Korwey and Serclosia". The left, obviously, wants this clear roadblock out of office. Stavsson has continually pushed to just ignore all the rules and get rid of the troublesome pseudo-monarch, both to make governmental affairs easier and to make Korwey feel more welcome, but everybody else from all Serclosian parties would use that to discredit Stavsson and portray him as a dictator consolidating power and undermining democracy. So Stavsson's stuck. Leaving the monarchy makes things awfully complicated, and his popularity with the Korwegians will drop. Getting rid of it will wreck his Serclosian reputation. Of course, finding a king would be the most ideal solution...
