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This article is on royal styles in history; for "Great King" in fiction See Great King (Myst)
Great King and the equivalent in many languages is a semantic model for historical titles of
Monarchs, suggesting an elevated status among the host of
Kings and minor
Princes. This title is most usually associated with the kings of
Persia under the
Achaemenid dynasty whose vast empire 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", for example great King/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 model 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 command) 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 doesn't 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 doesn't conform to the semantic model, as in "
Great Sultan".
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