Is there anything that determines whenever a ruling monarch is a count, marquis, duke, archduke, prince, king, or anything else ?
1 Answer
Tradition. Entirely tradition.
Wikipedia has a page on every royal title, which also includes the note:
Several ranks were widely used (for more than a thousand years in Europe alone) for both sovereign rulers and non-sovereigns. Additional knowledge about the territory and historic period is required to know whether the rank holder was a sovereign or non-sovereign.
It's also complicated by the fact that titles in different languages don't necessarily have direct equivalents in others. Tsar is a great example: It comes from the Latin caesar, but there is no modern English title that derives from caesar. I think it's usually matched to "Emperor" when it's not used as-is, but that comes from the Latin imperator.
Looking it over, my impression is that whether you were a Prince, Duke, King or Emperor (or their local equivalents) depended on how big the territory you claimed was (in ascending order). If you were first among relative equals, you might be a Grand Prince, Grand Duke/Archduke, or King of Kings.
Wikipedia also has a list of the remaining sovereign monarchs and their titles, which include Kings, Queens, Princes, Grand Dukes, Sultans, and Emirs (and a few others).
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1@DVK - That's not a monarchy, though. Although it would be ironic if a "Democratic People's Republic" stated it was a monarchy while actually being a dictatorship, they call themselves socialist.– BobsonMar 11, 2015 at 4:08
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Ok, so basically the only meaning of those titles is a distant latin word.– BregaladMar 11, 2015 at 7:56
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@Bregalad - Pretty much. Titles are pretty arbitrary, and there's lots of historical examples of rulers going "I now proclaim that I'm _______". There is something of a hierarchy to them, but there's no direct relation to how much is actually ruled. Also, not every title comes from Latin specifically, but you've got the idea right.– BobsonMar 11, 2015 at 11:11
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1@DVK: This would be its own distinct question on its own. There is many difference between an single party totalitarist dictatorship and a monarchy. The main differences that comes to mind is that a monarchy do not follow an ideology, and that the monarch itself has to follow some traditional rules and laws, and that there is no leading party in a monarchy.– BregaladMar 11, 2015 at 21:34