KING, a title, in its actual use generally implying sovereignty of the most exalted rank (0. Eng. cyning, abbreviated into cyng, cing; cf. O.H.G. shun- kuning, chun- kunig; M.H.G. kiinic, kiinec, /dim ; Mod. Ger. Konig; 0. Norse konungr, kongr ; Swed. konung, kung). Any inclusive definition of the word "king" is, however, impossible. It always implies sovereignty, but in no special degree or sense; e.g., the sovereigns of the British Empire and of Siam are both kings, and so too, at least in popular parlance, are the chiefs of many barbarous peoples, e.g., the Zulus. The use of the title is, in fact, involved in considerable confusion, largely the result of historic causes. It is used to translate the Homeric ava equally with the Athenian (3ao-Aein or the Roman rex. Yet the Homeric "kings" were but tribal chiefs ; while the Athenian and Roman kings were kings in something more than the modern sense, as supreme priests as well as supreme rulers and lawgivers (see ARCHON ; and ROME : History). In the Eng lish Bible, too, the title of king is given indiscriminately to the great king of Persia and to potentates who were little more than Oriental sheikhs. A more practical difficulty, moreover, presented itself in international intercourse, before diplomatic conventions became, in the 19th century, more or less stereotyped. Originally the title of king was superior to that of emperor, and it was to avoid the assumption of the superior title of rex that the chief magistrates of Rome adopted the names of Caesar, imperator and princeps to signalize their authority. But with the develop ment of the Roman imperial idea the title emperor came to mean more than had been involved in that of rex; very early in the history of the Empire there were subject kings; while with the Hellenizing of the East Roman Empire its rulers assumed the style of 13ctacXE in, no longer to be translated "king" but "emperor." From this Roman conception of the supremacy of the emperor the mediaeval Empire of the West inherited its traditions. With the barbarian invasions the Teutonic idea of kingship had come into touch with the Roman idea of empire and with the theocratic conceptions which this had absorbed from the old Roman and Oriental views of kingship. With these the Teutonic kingship had in its origin but little in common.
Etymologically the Romance and Teutonic words for king have quite distinct origins. The Latin rex corresponds to the Sanskrit raja, and meant originally steersman. The Teutonic king on the contrary corresponds to the Sanskrit janaka, and "simply meant father, the father of a family, the king of his own kin, the father of a clan, the father of a people." The Teu tonic kingship, in short, was national; the king was the supreme representative of the people, "hedged with divinity" in so far as he was the reputed descendant of the national gods, but with none of that absolute theocratic authority associated with the titles of rex or (3aucXein. This, however, was modified by contact
with Rome and Christianity. The early Teutonic conquerors had never lost their reverence for the Roman emperor, and were from time to time proud to acknowledge their inferiority by accepting titles, such as "patrician," by which this was implied. But by the coronation of Charles, king of the Franks, as emperor of the West, the German kingship was absorbed into the Roman imperial idea, a process which exercised a profound effect on the evolution of the Teutonic kingship generally. In the symmetrical political theory of mediaeval Europe, pope and emperor were sun and moon, kings but lesser satellites; though the theory only partially and occasionally corresponded with the facts. But the elevation of Charlemagne had had a profound effect in modifying the status of kingship in nations that never came under his sceptre nor under that of his successors. The shadowy claim of the emperors to universal dominion was in theory everywhere acknowledged ; but independent kings hastened to assert their own dignity by surrounding themselves with the ceremonial forms of the Empire and occasionally, as in the case of the Saxon bretwaldas in England, by assuming the imperial style. The mere fact of this usurpation showed that the title of king was re garded as inferior to that of emperor ; and so it continued, as a matter of sentiment at least, down to the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the cheapening of the imperial title by its multiplication in the 19th century. To the last, moreover, the emperor retained the prerogative of creating kings, as in the case of the king of Prussia in 1701, a right borrowed and freely used by the emperor Napoleon. Since 1814 the title of king has been assumed or bestowed by a consensus of the Powers; e.g., the elector of Hanover was made king by the con gress of Vienna (1814), and per contra the title of king was re fused to the elector of Hesse by the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818). In general the title of king is now taken to imply a sovereign and independent international position. This was im plied in the recognition of the title of king in the rulers of Greece, Rumania, Serbia and Bulgaria when these countries were de clared absolutely independent of Turkey. The fiction of this independent sovereignty was preserved even in the case of the kings of Bavaria, Saxony and Wurttemberg, who were technically members of a free confederation of sovereign states, but were not independent, since their relations with foreign Powers were almost entirely controlled by the king of Prussia as German emperor.