I'm salvaging this from Royal Mess until such time as I figure out what to do with it.
- It is not uncommon for works which mention the British aristocracy to treat "Lord" as a distinct rank, separate from barons and so forth. In fact, it's used as a generic title for all five types of peer (duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron), although in practice, some get called Lord more often than others (e.g.: barons get it a lot, while dukes hardly ever). "Lord" is also a courtesy title for those of Blue Blood who do not, in fact, have titles, such as younger sons of nobles. (Lord Peter Wimsey's "Lord" is such a courtesy title; he's the second son of the Duke of Denver.) Works which merely base their aristocracy on the British lot have more excuse, but the deviation is may well be due to carelessness rather than a deliberate choice.
- Except in Scotland, where "Lord" (strictly, "Lord of Parliament") is actually the equivalent of "Baron" in England, while "Baron-Feudal" is roughly the equivalent of an English "lord of the manor" (an utterly useless non-noble title, which simply allows its holder to refer to himself as "Jock Tamson of Killiecrankie" rather than plain "Jock Tamson." Yes, that's right: it is a "title" with no actual title. The various baron-feudal titles are each tied to ownership of a small pieces of land in Scotland, so by buying the estate one can buy up the title. James Boswell, for example, was technically James Boswell of Auchinleck, since his family owned that feudal estate.)
- "Marquis" is French. If they're British, they should generally be "Marquess" instead. Yes, even though that sounds like it should be for women, like "duchess" and "countess". The actual feminine forms are marquise (French) and marchioness (English).
- You also get counts and earls both placed in some sort of hierarchy with regards to each other. In reality, they're equivalent—the wife of an earl is even a "countess" just like the wife of a count. The only difference between them is that an earl is British or Irish, and a count is not.
- "Duchy" and "dukedom" are not, according to the strict interpretation, supposed to be the same thing. The former is a territory (like "kingdom"), while the latter is a position and status (like "kingship", sort of).
- Plenty of plots deal with succession to the throne, but the terms "Heir Apparent" and "Heir Presumptive" are thrown around without authors necessarily knowing the difference. The difference is that heirs presumptive are at risk of being displaced, while an heir apparent cannot be displaced and will inherit unless they predecease the monarch/peer (or if something else horrible happens). For example, a king's brother might inherit if the king dies childless, but he'd be heir presumptive rather than apparent, because the birth of a child would bump him down the list. By contrast, a king's eldest son is almost always going to be the heir, barring disinheritance.
- We say the eldest son of the king will almost always be the heir apparent because, of course, there are different forms of succession. Take a sonless king (if he had a son, he would in most cases be heir apparent) with a younger sister, a still-younger brother, and an even-younger brother: let's call them Andrew, Betty, Charles, and David. In the most common systems, succession following King Andrew's death is as follows:
- In agnaticnote primogeniture, Charles is the heir-presumptive, followed by David. However, if Charles has any sons, they come before David. Betty and her descendants are totally cut off from the throne unless things really go to hell.
- In a variant of agnatic primogeniture, the semi-Salic succession, Betty and her line are not cut off, but all of her uncles and cousins in the male line would be eligible before her. So if Andrew, Betty, Charles, and David's grandfather George had a brother (Henry), Henry, his son Isaac, and his son James would come after Charles and David and their descendants but before Betty in the succession. Note that in some variants of the semi-Salic succession, the woman (Betty) herself may not inherit, but her son might.
- In male-preference primogeniture, Charles is the heir-presumptive, followed by David, followed by Betty. However, were Andrew to have a daughter, this new girl Eleanor would automatically become heir-presumptive before Charles. Similarly, if Charles has any daughters, they would bump David and Betty further down the list; and if Charles has any sons, they would in turn bump their sisters down, leading to this line of succession: Eleanor->Charles->Charles's sons->Charles's daughters->David->Betty. Confused enough yet?
- And let us note, if Andrew's wife should gift Eleanor with a younger brother, Fred, he would be placed in line ahead of her, but both of them would still come before her uncles, cousins, and aunt.
- We should further note that there is only one situation in which a female may be an heir apparent under male-preference primogeniture: that is, when an heir apparent has children but dies before the monarch, and the only such children alive at the time the monarch dies are female. So for instance: suppose Andrew's son Fred gets married and has two children, Katherine in Year 1, and Lawrence in Year 3. Fred dies in Year 15. At this point, Lawrence becomes the heir apparent, as he is the eldest son of an heir apparent who has died—nothing unusual there. But suppose Lawrence dies unmarried and childless in Year 20 doing some idiotically dangerous thing 16-year-olds do. At that point, Katherine becomes heir, of course, but unlike the sole daughter of a living monarch (like her aunt Eleanor before Fred was born), she does not become heiress presumptive—she becomes heiress apparent. This is because she "takes" her father Fred's place in the succession, and since Fred is dead and can have no more children, she cannot be displaced—she will inherit when Andrew dies. This has happened precisely zero times in the history of the British monarchy (the most notable to have applied male-preference primogeniture for any long period), and doesn't seem to have happened that often in other countries, either.
- In absolute primogeniture, Betty is the heir-presumptive, followed by Charles, followed by David. Eleanor becomes the heir-apparent, regardless of Fred's presence.
- In agnatic seniority, Charles is the heir-apparent, followed by David. Eleanor and Fred are left out in the cold for the time being, because Charles and David both have stronger claims on the throne than them. Fred might have a shot at the throne after his uncles die; Eleanor, on the other hand, is pretty much out of luck. It gets pretty complex after that.
- Also note: the above only covers rules applying in modern or relatively recent European monarchies. There are other systems, as well. For instance, in many medieval and some early modern monarchies the done thing was that the monarch would give each of his sons part of his realm (the history of France from at least the time of Charlemagne to the time of Hugh Capet was driven in part by the fact that the kings kept having to divide their realms; the Capetians finally found a way around it in the late 10th century). The most headache-worthy, however, are those of the Arab monarchies, in which the heir-apparent is traditionally chosen from among the eligible princes, be they the king's brothers, sons, uncles, cousins, or nephews. This is done in two ways: appointment by the current King (as in Jordan) and election by said eligible princes (as in Saudi Arabia). However it's done, it leads to two surprising conclusions, which might be exploited for entertainment:
- The Crown Prince can be stripped of his title before succeeding to the throne, leading to a high degree of uncertainty. This came very close to happening in Jordan very recently: the appointment of current Jordanian King Abdullah II was not a sure thing, and it was only after a lot of heming and hawing and mulling that King Hussein appointed his eldest son on his deathbed (he had previously considered passing the throne to his brother Hasan and then to his younger son Ali). Abdullah, remembering the annoyance of the situation, has since appointed his son (named, inevitably, Hussein) Crown Prince in 2009 (shortly after his 15th birthday, at which point he was certain that Hussein was neither ill nor a dolt).
- The Crown Prince can be unfit to rule well before he takes the throne. This is already a problem with agnatic seniority, but when you toss politics—and especially family politics—into the mix, things can get downright crazy. From 2005 to 2011, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, was in his eighties and in even poorer health than than the King (who's not in particularly great shape himself), and finally kicked the bucket in November 2011; he was succeeded as Crown Prince by Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, who died in 2012, and then by Salman bin Abdul Aziz,note who became King when Abdullah died in January 2015. The youngest member of the current generation is Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, was born in 1945 and was made Crown Prince in 2015 a few months short of his 70th birthday. Although the nominally-elective system would seem to allow for the election of a younger king, there are two factors preventing this: first, the system is really "agnatic seniority unless we really don't like the idea of the most-senior guy as king", and second, the older princes, besides being senior to everyone else in the House of Saud, are also more powerful—having had more time to build up alliances, find useful evidence for blackmail, buy loyalty, and generally play the game than their younger counterparts. As a result, they have more influence, which they leverage to their personal advantage. At the end of the day, all the guys at the top are ancient, and a Succession Crisis will almost inevitably ensue when the last of the old generation dies. An attempt has been made at averting this—the relatively young Muhammad bin Nayef (born 1959) was made Deputy Crown Prince (i.e. second-in-line) upon King Salman's accession to the throne in 2015, when Muhammad was a relatively sprightly 55—but if Salman and Muqrin have lives as long as their predecessors (Abdullah died at age 90, and before him King Fahd died at 84), even he will be very firmly a senior citizen by the time he reaches the throne.
- This general system does have one advantage, which (besides tradition) is why the countries that have it keep it: it's an excellent way to prevent royal incompetence. When the king is appointed by his predecessor or elected by his family, it generally means that someone has vetted him for the skills necessary to be king, guaranteeing that even if the next king is terrible to his people, he'll be a good administrator—and the family will stay in power.
- Of course, even if the family stays in power, that doesn't mean any particular member will get to enjoy it for very long. A system where a new successor to the monarch can be appointed at any time may also lead to a near-permanent Succession Crisis. This was certainly the state of affairs in many phases of the Ottoman Empire, where cabals led by princes and their mothers would launch intrigues to have the Sultan name their candidate his successor and where a new Sultan often would begin his reign by having his brothers massacred (later: put in "golden cages" on the Princes' Islands). Peter the Great instituted a similar system in Russia, enacting a law that the reigning monarch could appoint whomever he or she wanted as heir to the throne (his own successor was Empress Catherine I - his widow). It is probably not a coincidence that many of the successions that followed were settled by palace revolution and murder.
- "Prince" causes almost as many headaches as "Lord". Depending on the situation it can mean any one of the following (though within fiction the first two are by far the most common):
- A male member of a royal family who is not himself the monarch. (e.g., Prince William)
- The claimant to an abolished throne. (e.g., Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoléon - he would hold the title 'Emperor of the French' if the French Empire still existed)
- The ruler of a principality. (e.g., Prince Albert II of Monaco)
- A high ranking title of aristocracy. (e.g., Otto von Bismarck, made 'Prince of Bismarck' by the German Emperor)
- For further confusion, the word "Duke" may also be used in the latter two senses, to translate from languages that have a term separate from the royal son (e.g. German Fürst, Slavic knyaz/knÞe). For example, St. Wenceslas may be interchangeably referred to in English as a Duke of Bohemia or a Prince of Bohemia; he is also the subject of the carol Good King Wenceslas, even though no Czech monarch would hold that title until after more than a hundred years after his death.
- A old fashioned generic term for monarchs. (e.g. Elizabeth I using the title to refer to herself: "The word "must" is not to be used to princes." Likewise, Machiavelli's work "The Prince" is about monarchs in general.)
- And in Animorphs, for some reason, if seems to be synonymous with "Captain", even with Translator Microbes.
- "Empire" itself is a headache. The word descends from "imperium" meaning basically "the power to command" (same word as imperative) and originally pertaining exclusively to military authority. Emperor is of the same root of course. All places ruled by emperors seem to be empires, but not all empires are ruled by emperors. Hence one can speak of "The French Empire" (for a long period with a president and a prime minister) the "Swedish empire" (ruled by a king). And just to make things worse, the term has been used in modern political rhetoric as a metaphor (e.g., the "American Empire"). Note that the "British Empire" did have an emperor or empress, but strictly speaking they were only Emperor of the Empire of India (the reinvented Mughal Empire), not of the entire (rather legally amorphous) entity.
- To make it worse: After Napoleon had crowned himself "Emperor of the French" his realm continued to be officially called the "French Republic" for a few years.
- And before that the French First Republic had sometimes been colloquially referred to as "l'Empire", for instance in the patriotic song Veillons au salut de l'Empire, which eventually became the anthem of the Napoleonic Empire.
- As a subtrope of this it should be noted that most "Emperor" titles in Europe descend from the Romans (either in the form of Imperator or Caesar) this includes the Roman empire of course, their Byzantine successors (and through them the Serbian czars and Bulgarian czars, Ottoman sultans and eventually Russian czars as well) and the western variants (Carolingian emperors > Holy Roman Emperors > Emperors of Austria). The French Empire (that is, the Napoleonic one) was obviously meant to come back to that legacy as well (symbolically if nothing else) which more or less just leaves the German empire (1871-1918) as the sole European empire with no real connection to the Romans (as they never really knit things back to the HRE)
- The Chinese and Japanese (as well as Moghul) titles of "Emperor" (as well as a bunch of others) are not derived from the Romans but European translations of native terms. The Moghul title seems to have been Padishah ("King of Kings") which goes all the way back to the Achaemenids...
- The first Europeans in Japan rendered the Shogun as the Emperor and the Emperor as the Pope. Given the religious significance of the Emperor (whose title actually translates to "Heavenly Sovereign"), the only inaccuracy was that the Pope frequently had more political power in Europe.
- To make things worse, "Padishah" is better translated as "Great King." The difference is important because of a phrase in the Qur'an; Shahanshah ("King of Kings") is called out as a wicked title for a man to claim...but according to the Mughals and Ottomans, Padishah is okay. The difference is Serious Business: Malik al-Muluuk ("King of Kings" in Arabic) is a name/title of God Himself (or rather, associated with his name Malik al-Mulk, "Sovereign of Sovereignty"). Taking that title would be setting yourself equal to Him. That's shirk
, which is worse than blasphemy. "Great King" is a less faithful translation, but it doesn't have the theological issues that Shahanshah has.
- To make it worse: After Napoleon had crowned himself "Emperor of the French" his realm continued to be officially called the "French Republic" for a few years.
- There are issues regarding the actual application of titles to characters - for example, do you say "Lord Firstname" or "Lord Surname"? (The fact that some aristocrats are actually referred to as "Lord Placename" certainly doesn't help, either.) To that end, here's a schematic (primarily applicable to British titles, but with some application across Europe):
- For the actual holder of a Peerage:
- If the title attached to a place (e.g. Marquess of Bute, Earl of Chatham, Earl of Grantham), the short form is "Lord Placename" (thus "Lord Bute", "Lord Chatham", "Lord Grantham"). Note that all dukedoms are named for places, but nobody uses the "Lord Placename" form for dukes; the only generally accepted form of reference for dukes is "Duke of Placename".
- If the title is attached a surname (e.g. The Earl Russell, Baron Rothschild]], Baron Mandelson), the short form is "Lord Surname" (thus "Lord Russell", "Lord Rothschild", "Lord Mandelson"). Note that these tend to be more recent creations!
- Wives of Peers are addressed "Lady" [Husband's title]. Thus Cora Crawley was "Lady Grantham" and Patricia Russell was "Lady Russell".
- Since dukes and marquesses always have subsidiary titles (i.e. titles lower than duke or marquess in addition to the main one), the eldest son (and thus heir apparent) of a duke or marquess is addressed by courtesy by the seniormost of his father's subsidiary titles. Thus the heir apparent to the Duke of Norfolk is called the Earl of Arundel.note Earls also almost always have subsidiary titles, and similarly the heirs apparent of earls are also almost always known by that title (which is almost always a viscountcy).
- Younger sons of dukes and marquesses are known by courtesy as Lord [Firstname] [Surname]. Thus Sir Winston Churchill's father Randolph was known as Lord Randolph Churchill, as his father was the Duke of Marlborough. This title shortens to Lord [Firstname]; if you were speaking to him, you would call him Lord Randolph, not Lord Churchill. There is no Lord Churchill; see the bit about dukes above.
- Daughters of dukes, marquesses, and earls are known by courtesy as Lady [Firstname] [Surname]. Thus the second daughter of the Earl of Grantham on Downton Abbey is Lady Edith Crawley. This usage survives marriage if the peer's daughter's husband is of lower rank than her; for instance, from the same show, Edith's younger sister, born Lady Sybil Crawley, became Lady Sybil Branson when she married her Irish chauffeur. (Technically, the same is true of her elder sister Lady Mary Crawley, but that's just weird considering that her husband Matthew is a male-line fourth cousin with the same last name and heir-presumptive to the Earldom besides, despite being a middle-class solicitor from Manchester. Such is television.) This again shortens to Lady [Firstname] (oh, just see Live Action TV below).
- For the actual holder of a Peerage:
- A Baroness is a woman who is of Baronial rank. A woman who is married to a Baron X is not a Baroness and is simply called Lady X (men married to Baronesses are out of luck entirely). Baronets and Baronetesses are a lower rank (a bit like a hereditary knighthood).
- Only true for the British Isles and France. The wife of a German Baron was addressed as a Baroness or Baronin, although it should be noted that in Germany a "Baron" officially is usually a Freiherr, his wife a Freifrau and his daughter a Freiin. What is even more important: In Germany Freiherren (or Barons) belong to the low nobility, while in Britain and France Barons are part of the high nobility or peerage.
- The difference between nobility and Peerage. We should note here that strictly speaking, the Peerage only appears in the Franco-British tradition of aristocracy; outside of France and the British Isles, the systems are either rather different (e.g. grandeeship in Spain) or conscious 19th-century imitations of the British system. In the Franco-British tradition, the Peerage is a political classification, only held by heads of certain noble families with fixed roles in the institutions of state. In contrast, the nobility is a social class: circumscribed somewhat by law, but mostly referring to those who had noble titles or could trace their recent male-line ancestry to someone who did; since Britain does not have a legal definition of the nobility, it gets rather fuzzy. Therefore, it is rare to speak of English/Scottish/Irish "nobles" after about the Tudor era or so, and in the usual reference point is the gentry, which included more or less anyone with traceable noble ancestry—if they owned land.
- In Ancien Régime France, the number of Peers (Pairs in French) was very small—just nine at first, brought up shortly thereafter to twelve. By the end of the Ancien Régime, there were 43. These peers had certain duties in the coronation of the monarch and special rights in various things across the kingdom. The peerage was of course abolished after the establishment of the First Republic, and it remained in abeyance in the First Empire. After the Bourbon Restoration, the French government was remodelled on British lines: all the old pre-revolutionary Peers (except for the duc d'Aubigny, who was also the very British Duke of Richmond and couldn't possibly hold political position in the new France),note plus a large number of other notables, were gathered into a new Chambre des Pairs (House/Chamber of Peers), intended to be equivalent to the British House of Lords; the old Peers kept their ceremonial jobs but not their special legal rights. From 1815 to 1830, the Peers were mostly hereditary lords linked to the pre-revolutionary aristocracy, but after the July Revolution of 1830, the King appointed a large number of life Peers from among the notables of the realm (one of whom, funnily enough, was Victor Hugo). The French Peerage was formally abolished in 1848, and was not revived.
- In Britain (and before the Acts of Union, in England, Scotland, and Ireland), the Peerage historically consisted of those currently holding titles and thus entitled to sit in the House of Lords; these titles were thus held by only one person at a time, designated the "head" of the aristocratic "dynasty" according to the rule applicable to the title (usually, this meant senior descendant of the "founder" of the dynasty in the direct male line, but some titles—like the notorious Scottish Earldom of Selkirk—have other rules). Since the Peerage in Britain was tied to the House of Lords, the British monarchs tended to hand them out like candy as political favours to friends, supporters, and favourites, and after the current British Political System got up and running, the Government started to be able to persuade the monarch to do this (or threaten to do this, as happened in 1911 when the Lords refused to pass the Parliament Act) to stack the House in their favour. As a result, there are over eight hundred hereditary peerages in Britain.
- This is why the sons of still-living Peers were allowed to stand for Parliament and often did so—since the English "nobility" is not a legal classification but a social one, even the heir apparent of a duke was legally a commoner, and so the heirs of living Peers were not barred from sitting in the House of Commons.note The heir apparent to a living Peer who distinguished himself in the Commons might then apply for a writ of acceleration, by which he would take one of his father's secondary titles and sit in the Lords as a Peer. The House of Lords Act 1999 abolished the practice of acceleration, but also rendered it meaningless; the hereditary Peers were stripped of their right to sit in the Lords, instead electing some of their number to sit in a mostly-appointed House. Any heir apparent to a peerage believed deserving of a seat in the Lords today would simply be given a life peerage. In the meantime, although hereditary Peers remained Peers, they won the right to be elected to the House of Commons if they weren't already sitting in the Lords. Several chose to do so, most notably John Sinclair, 3rd Viscount Thurso (who prefers to go by John Thurso and represents Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, i.e. the very northern tip of mainland Scotland; he sat on the Lib-Dem frontbench before the coalition meant there weren't enough seats on the government frontbench for him and so now heads the Finance and Services Select Committee).
- Again, this is the British system, which is not followed by other countries which still have or which used to have a legally defined nobility. In Germany until 1918, for instance, all the sons of a Count were called Count (Graf) and the male members of the reigning family of a duchy were called Duke (Herzog), so if you had to set them apart, the head of the family was called the "reigning Duke" (regierender Herzog).
