 Ambient cardinal bound on the constructible reals

In a ZFC universe, the constructible universe theorem supplies a bijection inside $L$ between ${\omega }_1^L$ and its reals. The same graph is a bijection externally. Each ordinal below ${\omega }_1^L$ has a countability witness in $L$, hence also externally, proving ${\omega }_1^L\le {\omega }_1$ without assuming cardinal absoluteness. Therefore the constructible reals have ambient cardinality at most ${\aleph }_1$. If the ambient continuum is larger, some subset of $\omega$ is not constructible. The ordinal ${\omega }_1^L$ may be externally countable, so the argument is an upper bound and not a claim of equality.