The dramatic history of prorogation in British parliament

Queen Elizabeth II opens a session of the Parliament of Canada in Ontario with Prince Philip at her side. Britain's reigning monarch is also Canada's head of state, a government structure left over from when the region was under British rule, and the queen has visited Canada more than any other country during her reign.

A Mongolian princess wears full court dress, including a traditional headdress.

Prince Chun, a regent of China, holds his son, Emperor Hsuan Tung, in the Liaoning Province. A member of the Manchu dynasty, Hsuan Tung became the 12th emperor of the Qing dynasty and the last emperor of China, as royal rule fell to the Republic of China.

A Siamese prince wears a full regalia of jewels, including a headpiece modeled after a 'chadok', the traditional Siamese dancer's headdress.

A Swazi princess is dressed by older women on her wedding day in the 1970s in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. Swaziland, a relatively small country largely surrounded by South Africa, is currently ruled by a monarchy.

Yang-Chi-ching, the prince of Liulin in the Gansu Province of China, sits in front of his 'yamen', or administrative office. He wears a cap made of fox skin and a fleece-lined coat with an otter-skin border.

A woman playing the role of a princess in a 'wayang' production in Java, Indonesia, uses the position of her arms to help portray emotions. Wayang is a type of Javanese theatre which uses shadows and puppets to tell stories often centred around the lives of royalty.

A Mongol prince and princess stand with their young children, wrapped in warm furs to ward off the cold, in the courtyard of their home in Beijing, China.

King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat, the last reigning monarchs of Burma (now known as Myanmar), sit beneath Shwedagon Pagoda's carved teak entrance in Rangoon. After ruling for only seven years, they lost control of the region to British colonisers and were exiled to a small village in India.

A young Mongolian prince poses for a picture, wearing a hat with embellishments that signifies his royal status.

Iranian Empress Farah Pahlavi walks through Gulistan Palace dressed in ceremonial attire. The widow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, she still lives in exile today, while the nation is run by the Government of Islamic Republic of Iran.

Emperor Haile Selassie I and Empress Menen Asfaw pose in their robes in Ethiopia. Haile Selassie's birth name was Ras Tafari Makonnen, and his ascent the throne in Africa led many Jamaicans to believe he'd fulfilled a Biblical prophecy—marking the beginning of the Rastafarian faith.

Princess Elizabeth Bibesco was the daughter of a British prime minister and a writer in her own right. She married Antoine Bibesco, a Romanian prince, and lived much of her life in Paris as a patron of the arts.

A princess of Hue wears her royal robes in Annam, French Indochina. Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Nguyen emperors ruled the country. It is now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

This informal portrait of a princess of Tonga was taken on Niue Island in the early 1900s. Tonga's royal family, the House of Tupou, is descended from three ancient dynasties and still governs the country today.

King Edward VIII, who was the Prince of Wales at the time, poses with flying aces, or military pilots who have shot down five or more enemies during combat, from the Allied forces during World War I.

A Choni prince wears traditional attire in China.

Hang Kai Huei, ruler of the Gelugpa Buddhist kingdom of Muli, stands in front of a sacrificial chimney in what is now known as China's Sichuan Province. The kingdom was overthrown by the Communist government of China in the 1950s, and the area is now called Muli Tibetan Autonomous County.

Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV is crowned king of the Tonga Islands on Tongatapu Island in 1968. He was known for his immense physical size and ruled a Polynesian archipelago made up of 150 small islands until 2006, when he died and his son, King George Tupou V, ascended the throne.

The queen of Nyorophu stands with two of her children on Nyorophu Island in the Yunnan Province of China. Yongning Lake, which surrounds the island, was home to a lamasery, a monastery where Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leaders known as lamas reside.

Salote Tupou III, Tonga's first reigning queen and the mother of Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV, led the island archipelago until her death in 1965.

A former queen of Ladakh, India, sits with her daughter, a nun, and a pet dog. Ladakh was an ancient kingdom in the Himalayas near Tibet. It was difficult for outsiders to visit, partly because of rough terrain and partly because foreigners were forbidden from entering without the government's permission until the 1970s.

Uygen Wangchuk, the first king of Bhutan, poses for a photograph in royal clothes and a British seal in the early 1900s. After he negotiated with the British over control of the 'duars', the passages into eastern India, and acted as a diplomatic mediator between Britain and Tibet, he was elected king in 1907 and a hereditary monarchy was established. Bhutan has had four more kings since his reign.

The queen of Nuku Hiva Island, the largest of the Marquesas Islands in France's overseas territory of French Polynesia, poses for a photograph in the early 1900s.