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Imperial, royal, noble and chivalric ranks
Emperor / Empress
King / Queen
Archduke / Archduchess
Grand Prince / Grand Princess Grand Duke / Grand Duchess
Prince / Princess / Infante / Infanta / Królewicz / królewna
Duke / Duchess
Sovereign Prince / Sovereign Princess / Fürst / Fürstin
Marquess / Marquis / Marchioness / Margrave / Landgrave / Count palatine
Count / Countess / Earl Burgrave / Châtelain / Castellan
Viscount/Viscountess / Vidame
Baron / Baroness
Baronet / Baronetess Hereditary Knight / Lady / Ritter / Ridder
Knight / Dame Chevalier
Esquire / Laird / Edler / Jonkheer / Junker
Gentleman / Younger / Maid
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Heraldic crown of the King of the Romans (variant used in the early modern period)

The Iron Crown of the Lombards, a surviving example of an early medieval royal crown

12th-century depiction of Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths.

Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King" (Roi-Soleil), who ruled at the height of French absolutism (painting by Hyacinthe Rigaud 1701).

King, or king regnant is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant,^[1] while the title of queen on its own usually refers to the consort of a king.

• In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the title may refer to tribal kingship. Germanic kingship is cognate with Indo-European traditions of tribal rulership (c.f. Indic rājan, Gothic reiks, and Old Irish rí, etc.).


• In the context of classical antiquity, king may translate in Latin as rex and in Greek as archon or basileus.


• In classical European feudalism, the title of king as the ruler of a kingdom is understood to be the highest rank in the feudal order, potentially subject, at least nominally, only to an emperor (harking back to the client kings of the Roman Empire).^[2]
  


• In a modern context, the title may refer to the ruler of one of a number of modern monarchies (either absolute or constitutional). The title of king is used alongside other titles for monarchs: in the West, prince, emperor, archduke, duke or grand duke, and in the Middle East, sultan or emir, etc.^[3]
  

The term king may also refer to a king consort, a title that is sometimes given to the husband of a ruling queen, but the title of prince consort is sometimes granted instead. A king dowager is the male equivalent of the queen dowager. A king father is a king dowager who is also the father of the reigning sovereign.

Etymology

Look up cyning in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The English term king is derived from the Anglo-Saxon cyning, which in turn is derived from the Common Germanic *kuningaz. The Common Germanic term was borrowed into Estonian and Finnish at an early time, surviving in these languages as kuningas.
The English term "King" translates, and is considered equivalent to, Latin rēx and its equivalents in the various European languages. The Germanic term is notably different from the word for "King" in other Indo-European languages (*rēks "ruler"; Latin rēx, Sanskrit rājan and Irish ríg, but see Gothic reiks and, e.g., modern German Reich and modern Dutch rijk). It is a derivation from the term *kunjom "kin" (Old English cynn) by the -inga- suffix. The literal meaning is that of a "scion of the [noble] kin", or perhaps "son or descendant of one of noble birth" (OED).

English Queen translates Latin regina; it is from Old English cwen "Queen, noble woman, wife" from the PIE word for "woman" (*gwen-).
The Germanic term for "wife" appears to have been specialized to "wife of a King"; in Old Norse, the cognate kvan still mostly refers to a wife generally. Scandinavian drottning, dronning is a feminine derivation from *druhtinaz "Lord". The Norse Rígsþula ends with the emergence of Kón as a Grand son of Rig, resulting from a threesome between the mythological characters Father and Mother, and Rig, through Jarl and his wife Erna. Kon is the twelfth son of Jarl and Erna, and his progeny are the Konungs, litterally, the younglings of Kon; from which the name King comes, according to this tradition.

History

The English word is of Germanic origin, and historically refers to Germanic kingship, in the pre-Christian period a type of tribal kingship. The monarchies of Europe in the Christian Middle Ages derived their claim from Christianisation and the divine right of kings, partly influenced by the notion of sacral kingship inherited from Germanic antiquity.

The Early Middle Ages begin with a fragmentation of the former Western Roman Empire into barbarian kingdoms. In Western Europe, the kingdom of the Franks developed into the Carolingian Empire by the 8th century, and the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England were unified into the kingdom of England by the 10th century.

With the breakup of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century, the system of feudalism places kings at the head of a pyramid of relationships between liege lords and vassals, dependent on the regional rule of barons, and the intermediate positions of counts (or earls) and dukes. The core of European feudal manorialism in the High Middle Ages were the territories of the former Carolingian Empire, i.e. the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire (centered on the nominal kingdoms of Germany and Italy).^[4]

In the course of the European Middle Ages, the European kingdoms underwent a general trend of centralisation of power, so that by the Late Middle Ages there were a number of large and powerful kingdoms in Europe, which would develop into the great powers of Europe in the Early Modern period.

• In the Iberian Peninsula, the remnants of the Visigothic Kingdom, the petty kingdoms of Asturias and Pamplona, expanded into the kingdom of Portugal, the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon with the ongoing Reconquista.


• In southern Europe, the kingdom of Sicily was established following the Norman conquest of southern Italy. The Kingdom of Sardinia was claimed as a separate title held by the Crown of Aragon in 1324. In the Balkans, the Kingdom of Serbia was established in 1217.


• In eastern-central Europe, the Kingdom of Hungary was established in AD 1000 following the Christianisation of the Magyars. The kingdoms of Poland and Bohemia were established within the Holy Roman Empire in 1025 and 1198, respectively. In Eastern Europe, the Kievan Rus' consolidated into the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which did not technically claim the status of kingdom until the early modern Tsardom of Russia.


• In northern Europe, the tribal kingdoms of the Viking Age by the 11th century expanded into the North Sea Empire under Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England and Norway. The Christianization of Scandinavia resulted in "consolidated" kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, and by the end of the medieval period the pan-Scandinavian Kalmar Union.

Contemporary kings

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Currently (as of 2016^[update]), fifteen kings and two queens regnant are recognized as the heads of state of sovereign states (i.e. English king or queen is used as official translation of the respective native titles held by the monarchs).

Most of these are heads of state of constitutional monarchies; kings ruling over absolute monarchies
are the King of Saudi Arabia, the King of Bahrain and the King of Swaziland.^[5]

See also

Imperial, royal, noble and chivalric ranks
Emperor / Empress
King / Queen
Archduke / Archduchess
Grand Prince / Grand Princess Grand Duke / Grand Duchess
Prince / Princess / Infante / Infanta / Królewicz / królewna
Duke / Duchess
Sovereign Prince / Sovereign Princess / Fürst / Fürstin
Marquess / Marquis / Marchioness / Margrave / Landgrave / Count palatine
Count / Countess / Earl Burgrave / Châtelain / Castellan
Viscount/Viscountess / Vidame
Baron / Baroness
Baronet / Baronetess Hereditary Knight / Lady / Ritter / Ridder
Knight / Dame Chevalier
Esquire / Laird / Edler / Jonkheer / Junker
Gentleman / Younger / Maid
v t e

Notes

References

• Thomas J. Craughwell, 5,000 Years of Royalty: Kings, Queens, Princes, Emperors & Tsars (2009).


• David Cannadine, Simon Price (eds.), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (1992).


• Jean Hani, Sacred Royalty: From the Pharaoh to the Most Christian King (2011).

External links

• 
  Media related to Kings at Wikimedia Commons


• 
   Phillip, Walter Alison (1911). "King". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). pp. 805–806.