We begin with the power of the crown. Why with it?

Because it contains all three sides of the state. First, the constitution and the laws. Second, deliberation, which relates the particular to the universal. Third, the final decision.

What is special about it:

The final decision is pure self-determination. Everything runs toward it. And everything actual starts from it. This sets the power of the crown apart from the other powers.

A comparison:

It is the same with the I. It is wholly single and at the same time wholly universal. Everything I think and will comes together in it. In the same way, the power of the crown is the soul of the state. It is the point that gives the state life.

Summary: The power of the crown includes the constitution, deliberation and the final decision. What is special about it is pure self-determination. It is the point that gives the state life.

But what Hegel actually wants to say is nothing but that the »universality of the constitution and the laws« is — the princely power, the sovereignty of the state. It is then wrong to make the princely power the subject and — since by princely power the power of the prince, too, can be understood — to produce the appearance that he is the master of this moment, the subject of it. But let us first turn to what Hegel gives out as »the distinguishing principle of the princely power as such«; it is: »the moment of ultimate decision, as self-determination, into which everything else runs back and from which it takes the beginning of its actuality« — this: »absolute self-determining«.

Hegel says here nothing but: the actual, i.e. individual, will is the princely power. Thus it is said in § 12:

»That the will gives itself … the form of individuality […] it is deciding, and only as a deciding will [at all] is it an actual will.«

Insofar as this moment of »ultimate decision« or of »absolute self-determination« is separated from the »universality« of the content and the particularity of deliberation, it is the actual will as arbitrariness. Or:

»Arbitrariness is the princely power«, or: »The princely power is arbitrariness«.

§ 542. In government as organic totality there is a) subjectivity, as the unity of the concept, infinite in the development of the concept, with itself, the will of the state that holds and resolves everything, its highest apex, as [its] unity that permeates everything, – the princely governmental power. In the perfect form of the state, in which all moments of the concept have attained their free existence, this subjectivity is not a so-called moral person or a resolving that proceeds from a majority – forms in which the unity of the resolving will does not have an actual existence -, but rather, as actual individuality, the will of one resolving individual; – monarchy. The monarchical constitution is therefore the constitution of developed reason; all other constitutions belong to lower stages of the development and realization of reason. The unification of all concrete powers of the state into one existence, as in the patriarchal condition or as in the democratic constitution, in the participation of all in all affairs, conflicts in itself with the principle of the separation of powers, i.e. with the developed freedom of the moments of the Idea. But just as much must the separation, the development of the moments that has proceeded to a free totality, be led back into ideal unity, i.e. into subjectivity. The differentiation that has been formed, the realization of the Idea, contains essentially that this subjectivity, as a real moment, should have matured into actual existence, and this actuality is solely the individuality of the monarch, – the subjectivity of the abstract, final deciding that is present in one person. To all those forms of a common resolving and willing, which is supposed to emerge and be counted out democratically or aristocratically from the atomistics of individual wills, there clings the unactuality of an abstraction. Everything depends only on the two determinations: the necessity of a moment of the concept, and the form of its actuality. Truly, only the nature of the speculative concept can come to an understanding about this. – That subjectivity, in that it is the moment of abstract deciding as such, proceeds partly to the determination that the name of the monarch appears as the external bond and the sanction under which everything in government takes place at all, and partly, in that as the simple relation to itself it has the determination of immediacy and thereby of nature attached to it, whereby the determination of individuals for the dignity of the princely power is fixed through heredity.

§ 542. In government as organic totality there is, a) subjectivity, as the unity of the concept with itself that is infinite in the development of the concept, the will of the state that holds and resolves everything, its highest apex, as well as the unity that permeates everything, – the princely governmental power. In the perfect form of the state, in which all moments of the concept have attained their free existence, this subjectivity is not a so-called moral person, or a resolving that proceeds from a majority, – forms in which the unity of the resolving will does not have an actual existence – but rather, as actual individuality, the will of one resolving individual; – monarchy. The monarchical constitution is therefore the constitution of developed reason; all other constitutions belong to lower stages of the development and realization of reason. The unification of all concrete powers of the state into one existence, as in the patriarchal condition, or as in the democratic constitution, in the participation of all in all affairs, conflicts in itself with the principle of the separation of powers, i.e. with the developed freedom of the moments of the Idea. But just as much must the separation – the development of the moments that has proceeded to a free totality – be led back into ideal unity, i.e. into subjectivity. The differentiation that has been formed, the realization of the Idea, contains just as essentially that this subjectivity, as a real moment, should have matured into actual existence, and this actuality is solely the individuality of the monarch, – the subjectivity of the abstract, final deciding that is present in one person. To all those forms of a common resolving and willing, which is supposed to emerge and be counted out democratically or aristocratically from the atomistics of individual wills, there clings the unactuality of an abstraction. Everything depends only on the two determinations: the necessity of a moment of the concept, and the form of its actuality. Truly, only the nature of the speculative concept can come to an understanding about this. – That subjectivity, in that it is the moment of abstract deciding as such, proceeds partly to the determination that the name as such is the bond and the sanction under which everything at all takes place, and partly, in that as the simple relation to itself it has the determination of immediacy and thereby of nature attached to it, whereby the determination of individuals for the dignity of the princely power is fixed through heredity.