A Commonwealth realm is a sovereign state within the Commonwealth of Nations that has Elizabeth II as its monarch and head of state. The sixteen current realms have a combined land area of 18.8 million km² (7.3 million mi², excluding Antarctic claims), and a population of 137 million, of which all, except about two million, live in the six most populous states: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Jamaica.

Nearly all the realms were once British colonies that evolved into independent states, the current exceptions being the United Kingdom (UK) itself and Papua New Guinea, which was formed in 1975 as a union of the former German New Guinea—administered by Australia as an international trusteeship before independence—and the former British New Guinea—legally the territory of Papua, administered for the UK by Australia since 1905. The first realms to emerge were colonies that had already previously attained the status of a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire.

New Zealanders, colloquially known as Kiwis, are citizens of New Zealand. New Zealand is a multiethnic society, and home to people of many different national origins. Originally comprising solely of the indigenous Māori, the ethnic makeup of the population has been dominated since the 19th century by New Zealanders of European descent, mainly of British and Irish ancestry, with smaller percentages of other European ancestries such as French, Dutch, Scandinavian and South Slav. New Zealand has an estimated resident population of around 4.37 million as of August 2010.

Today, the ethnic makeup of the New Zealand population is undergoing a process of change, with new waves of immigration, higher birth rates and increasing interracial marriage resulting in the New Zealand population of Māori, Asian and Pacific Islander descent growing at a higher rate than those of European descent, and are projected to make up a larger proportion of the population in the future.

While most New Zealanders live in New Zealand, there is also a significant diaspora, estimated in 2001 at over 460,000 or 14% of the international total of New Zealand-born people. Of these, 360,000, over three-quarters of the New Zealand-born population residing outside of New Zealand, live in Australia. Other communities of New Zealanders abroad are concentrated in other English-speaking countries, specifically the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, with smaller numbers located elsewhere. This diaspora has reportedly surged as of 2010, with well over 650,000 New Zealanders living abroad (with 566,815 estimated to live in Australia alone in June 2010).

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms, and head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. She is also head of state of the Crown Dependencies.

Elizabeth was born in London, and educated privately at home. Her father acceded to the throne as George VI in 1936 on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. She began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, in which she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. On the death of her father in 1952, she became Head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Her coronation service in 1953 was the first to be televised. Between 1956 and 1992, the number of her realms varied as territories gained independence and some realms became republics. Today, in addition to the first four aforementioned countries, Elizabeth is Queen of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Nigel Paul Farage ( /ˈfærɑːʒ/, FARR-ahzh; born 3 April 1964, Farnborough, Kent), is a British politician and is the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a position he also held from September 2006 to November 2009. He is a Member of the European Parliament for South East England and co-chairs the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

Farage is a founding member of the UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty. Having unsuccessfully campaigned in European and Westminster parliamentary elections for UKIP since 1994, he gained a seat as an MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament Election — the first year the regional list system was used — and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage describes himself as a libertarian and rejects the notion that he is a conservative.

In September 2006, Farage became the UKIP Leader and led the party through the 2009 European Parliament Election in which it received the second highest share of the popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. However he stepped down in November 2009 to concentrate on contesting the Speaker John Bercow's seat of Buckingham in the 2010 general election.

Linda Anita Carty (born 5 October 1958) is a woman possessing both United States and British citizenship on death row in Texas. She was convicted and sentenced to death in February 2002 for the abduction and murder of 20-year-old Joana Rodriguez, allegedly in order to steal her new born son. Carty claims she was framed by drug dealers in response to her work as an informant and has appealed her conviction. Her appeals have been unsuccessful and the appeal procedure has been exhausted. Barring the granting of clemency, she stands to become the first female British national to be executed since Ruth Ellis in 1955, and the first British black woman in more than a century.

Born in St. Kitts to Anguillan parents, Carty holds British citizenship as St. Kitts was a British colony at the time of her birth. She emigrated to the United States in 1982 and is a citizen of the United States.

In 1992, Carty was convicted of auto theft and impersonation of an FBI agent. She was sentenced to 10 years probation, on the condition she would work as a drug informant. While working as an informant, she provided information leading to two arrests. Her services came to an end when she was arrested on drug charges.