Great King and the equivalent in many languages is
a semantic title for historical titles of
Monarchs, suggesting an elevated status among the
host of
King and
Princes.
This title is most usually associated with
the kings of Persia
under the
Achaemenid dynasty whose vast
empire in Asia lasted for 300 years up to the
year 330 BC.
In pre-classical
Antiquity, there
was a tradition of reciprocally using such addresses between powers
as a way of diplomatically recognizing each other as major, such as
the
Hittites,
Mitanni and the
Pharaoh of
Egypt.
The case
of Maharaja ("Great Raja", great King and
Prince, in Sanskrit and Hindi) on the Indian
subcontinent, originally reserved for the regional hegemon such as
the Gupta, is a striking example how
such a lofty style of this or an alternative model can get caught
in a cycle of devalution by "title inflation" as ever more, mostly
less powerful, rulers adopt the style. This is often
followed by the emergence of one or more new, more exclusive and
prestigious styles, as in this case
Maharajadhiraja ("Great King of
Kings")
The aforementioned Indian style
Maharajadhiraja is also an example of
an alternative semantic title for similar 'higher' royal styles
such as
King of Kings. Alternatively,
a more idiomatic style may develop into an equally prestigious
tradition of titles, because of the shining example of the original
– thus various styles of
Emperors trace back
to the Roman
Imperator (strictly
speaking a republican military honorific) and the family surname
Caesar (turned into an imperial title
since
Diocletian's
Tetrarchy).
As the conventional use of "King" and its equivalents to render
various other monarchical styles illustrates, there are many
roughly equivalent styles, each of which may spawn a "Great
X" variant, either unique or becoming a rank in a
corresponding tradition; in this context "Grand" is equivalent to
"Great" and sometimes interchangeable if convention does not firmly
prescribe one of the two. Examples include:
In fact, there are even cases of such a natural style being
conventionally uses to render an original style that does not
conform to the semantic model, as in "
Great
Sultan".
See also
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