King is the title given to a male
monarch in a variety of contexts. A king is an
absolute monarch if he holds the powers of
government without control, or the entire sovereignty over a
nation; he is a limited monarch if his power is restrained by fixed laws; and he is an absolute, when he holds the whole
legislative,
judicial, and
executive power, or when the legislative or judicial powers, or both, are vested in other people by the king. Kings are
hereditary sovereigns when they hold the powers of government by right of birth or inheritance, and elective when raised to the throne by choice.
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 Republic and
Roman Empire).[1]
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,
emperor,
grand prince,
prince,
archduke,
duke or
grand duke, and in the Islamic world,
malik,
sultan,
emir or
hakim, etc.[2]
The term king may also refer to a
king consort, a title that is sometimes given to the husband of a
queen regnant, but the title of
prince consort is more common.
The English term king is derived from the
Anglo-Saxoncyning, 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. It is a derivation from the term *kunjom "kin" (
Old Englishcynn) 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).
The English term 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";
Latinrēx,
Sanskritrājan and
Irishrí; however, see Gothic reiks and, e.g., modern German Reich and modern Dutch rijk).
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.
Currently (as of 2023[update]), seventeen kings are recognized as the heads of state of
sovereign states (i.e. English king is used as official translation of the respective native titles held by the monarchs).
^History Crunch Writers.
"Aztec Emperors (Huey Tlatoani)". History Crunch - History Articles, Summaries, Biographies, Resources and More. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
^
see e.g. M. Mitterauer, Why Europe?: The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path, University of Chicago Press (2010),
p. 28.