King

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 city-states of the Aztec Empire each had a tlatoani. These were the kings of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. The Huey Tlatoani was the emperor of the Aztecs.^[3]

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 word king is derived from the Anglo-Saxon cyning, meaning “ruler” or “leader,” derived from Proto-Germanic kuningaz. This root also gave rise to similar terms across other Germanic languages, such as Dutch koning, Old Norse konungr, Danish konge, and German König. The precise origin of "kuningaz" remains uncertain, but it may be linked to Old English cynn (“family, race”), suggesting that a king was originally viewed as the “leader of the kin” or “head of the people.” 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).

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"; Latin rēx, Sanskrit rājan and Irish ríg; however, see Gothic reiks and, e.g., modern German Reich and modern Dutch rijk).^[4]

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).^[5]

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 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 Grand Duchy of Moscow 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.

Currently (as of 2023), eighteen kings are recognized as the heads of state of sovereign states. Most of these kings serve as heads of state in constitutional monarchies. However, those ruling over absolute monarchies include the King of Saudi Arabia and the King of Eswatini.^[6][7]

Sovereign state	Portrait	King	Title	House	Since	Monarchy
Antigua and Barbuda		Charles III	King	Windsor (official) Glücksburg (agnatic)	8 September 2022	Hereditary, constitutional
Australia			King
The Bahamas			King
Belize			King
Canada			King, Roi
Grenada			King
Jamaica			King
New Zealand			King, Kīngi
Papua New Guinea			King
Saint Kitts and Nevis			King
Saint Lucia			King
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines			King
Solomon Islands			King
Tuvalu			King
United Kingdom			King
Bahrain		Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa	ملك (malik)	Khalifa	14 February 2002	Hereditary, semi-constitutional
Belgium		Philippe	Koning, Roi, König	Saxe-Coburg and Gotha	21 July 2013	Hereditary, constitutional
Bhutan		Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck	འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་པོ་ (druk gyalpo)	Wangchuck	9 December 2006	Hereditary, constitutional
Cambodia		Norodom Sihamoni	ស្ដេច (sdac)	Norodom	14 October 2004	Elective, constitutional
Denmark		Frederik X	Konge	Glücksburg (official) Monpezat (agnatic)	14 January 2024	Hereditary, constitutional
Eswatini		Mswati III	Ngwenyama	Dlamini	25 April 1986	Hereditary, absolute
Jordan		Abdullah II	ملك (malik)	Hashim	7 February 1999	Hereditary, semi-constitutional
Lesotho		Letsie III	Morena, King	Moshesh	7 February 1996	Hereditary, constitutional
Malaysia		Ibrahim Iskandar	Yang di-Pertuan Agong (يڠ دڤرتوان اݢوڠ)	Temenggong	31 January 2024	Elective, constitutional
Morocco		Mohammed VI	ملك (malik), ⴰⴳⵍⵍⵉⴷ (agllid)	Alawi	23 July 1999	Hereditary, semi-constitutional
Netherlands		Willem-Alexander	Koning	Orange-Nassau (official) Amsberg (agnatic)	30 April 2013	Hereditary, constitutional
Norway		Harald V	Konge	Glücksburg	17 January 1991	Hereditary, constitutional
Saudi Arabia		Salman	ملك (malik)	Saud	23 January 2015	Hereditary, absolute
Spain		Felipe VI	Rey	Bourbon	19 June 2014	Hereditary, constitutional
Sweden		Carl XVI Gustaf	Konung	Bernadotte	15 September 1973	Hereditary, constitutional
Thailand		Vajiralongkorn (Rama X)	กษัตริย์ (kasat)	Chakri	13 October 2016	Hereditary, constitutional
Tonga		Tupou VI	Tuʻi, King	Tupou	18 March 2012	Hereditary, constitutional

• Cannadine, David; Price, Simon, eds. (1987). Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33513-2. LCCN 86-29881.
• Craughwell, Thomas J. (2009). 5,000 Years of Royalty: Kings, Queens, Princes, Emperors & Tsars. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. ISBN 978-1-60376-189-5.
• Hani, Jean (2011). Sacred Royalty: From the Pharaoh to the Most Christian King. The Matheson Trust. ISBN 978-1-908092-05-2.

Look up cyning in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Media related to Kings at Wikimedia Commons

Wikiquote has quotations related to King.

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