One of the cool things a king – or queen – in an absolute monarchy can do is to give away land. So popular, democracies have tried similar editions of their own. One of the largest giveaways happened in British North America where King Charles II gave away lands within the drainage system of Hudson’s Bay. That included lands within the James Bay drainage since James is simply a bay off the main Hudson’s. He gave them to a group headed by his cousin Prince Rupert in 1670. The HBC many exclaimed as an “empire within an empire.”