What's the difference between an emperor and a king?

What's the difference between an emperor and a king?

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An emperor is a king of kings

Size of realm.

Fancier title.

Depends on the emperor and the king.
Those are titles, not categories of a solid and rational classification.

the name

It's complicated.
In theory, an Emperor is the King of Kings. A man of high power and status.
In reality, it really depends on the realm they're leading.
Back in the middle ages, Philip IV of France had much more power than the Holy Roman Emperor, for exemple.
Napoleon decided to call himself "Emperor" to show he brought back the monarchic tradition while still inspiring himself off Rome, showing he wasn't an absolute pompeous Bourbon, but it was for the show more than anything.

An Emperor rules a empire where as a King rules a kingdom.

An emperor is the head of an empire. A king is the head of a kingdom.

A king is a monarch. The emperor is the monarch of Rome. By association, we call emperor those monarchs that make us think of the roman emperor.

Just like we call some states "empires" when actually the only real empire was Rome and all other empires get the same name because some of their qualities remind us to Rome, which makes seemingly very different states to both be called empire.

This is a meme. A king of kings is a king of kings. Both emperor and king of kings are above kings, but they're different concepts.

Freaky.

Are you me?

A king is entitled by his heritage. An emperor is entitled by his heritage AND the church.

Nothing. People will try to define it but every classification is broken through some historical example or another. Also remember that these are English and Latin concepts (King-Rex/Emperor-Imperator), whereas say the Japanese Emperor doesn't necessarily think he's not a King.

The difference between a king of emperor is what he calls himself.

Not accurate at all. England, before and after it ruled an empire and still today has monarch that is also head of the state church.

No, all european monarchs are/were entitled by the church.

It's a cooler title.

1000 development and 75 presitge

Does that mean when a female monarch takes the throne, it becomes a Queendom?

Not gonna lie. I laughed

>An Emperor rules a empire where as a King rules a kingdom.

Might sound retarded but is far from off. The key here are the concepts of Kingdom and Empire. A kingdom usually implies 'nationality', a sort of homogeneous group of people by culture, ethnicity, etc... and they have their King. An Empire is like one category above that of Kingdom. Many peoples of many cultures, ethnic origins, traditions, language and possibly former kingdoms being united under one Imperial authority.

If you go by that definition of empire, several empires were governed by kings.

Thats more of a modern interpretation.

No, it becomes a country.

kek

>A kingdom usually implies 'nationality'
No. It's a meme modern interpretations. Kingz n shiet ruled over multiple peoples as well as empires.

Not to mention Kings don't see themselves as members of a nation. They see themselves as...rulers of a Kingdom.

How is a Persian King of Kings honestly any different from a Roman Emperor, for example? Can you cite specific reasons?

You shouldn't be so categorical. It really depends of the time and place you're talking about.
France for a long time was populated by people speaking different languages, having different laws and where local landowners had more power than the "King of the Franks". However, thanks to the Capets (And later the house of Valois), it slowly built itself a uniform identity : The langue d'oil, the roman catholicism, the ordinances of the King... Louis XVI was a completly french king and considered himself french.

Kill yourself right now

Behead those who insult Queen Lizzie.

youtube.com/watch?v=CY2g-jJpffE

Fuck off Stephanie.

The persians themselves made the difference. The persian king of kings is the shahanshah, while the roman emperor is the Kesar. Never was the roman emperor called king of kings, or king.

Kings is black. Emperers is chinese mayn

That's semantics. Both were the leaders of empires, both addressed themselves as imperial powers, both had dozens if not hundreds of client and vassal kings or leaders answering to them.

So what is the tangible difference between the Caesar/Augustus/Emperor vs Great King/King of Kings/Khosrow?

You will have to further define what's a "tangible difference" for you, since it's clearly something very specific and unique of yourself.

The cultural connotations behind the Augustus and the Shahanshah were completely different, as different as the ideology of both empires and the culture of it's peoples was. The persian monarch can only be called emperor in english (or any other western or western-influenced language) by association with the emperor of Rome, which is exactly what you¡re doing right now and my point from the start.

Now for the specific comparison with the iranian rulers one might believe it's just pointless semantics. But it helps a lot when you start asking yourself why we don't call Louis XIV an emperor but we do it with Tenno of Japan.

If you can call yourself emperor without being laughed at by the other sovereigns and also possibly future historians, you're an emperor.

How do you achieve not being laughed at? It seems it's kind of random.

Tangible is clearly an implication that I'm asking for something that actually grants a notable difference between an Emperor vs a King of Kings.

By being powerful or dignified.
Of course this may be provincialism since under my definition Norton was a legit Emperor.

The title of "Emperor" is used to signal that you are a special fucking snowflake with a authority (that may or may not be relevant or actually existent) higher than a king which is usually not the case, examples are Napoleon, the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the austrian emperors

>the title of Holy Roman Emperor
To be fair they did hold rule over kings at various points.

Yeah, but when it was first created by the pope for Charlie, it was basically just "I'm the successor of the Roman emperors by the grace of God, please accept my authority"

>chucky franky never just laid claim to the wre and bro'd it up with the ere to lay waste to pagans and moors

The shahanshah is the product of a long tradition of iranic epic and monarchic tradition, while the emperor is not.

>the persian king of kings is the anshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshahanshah

In latin the origin of the word is imperator or commander. Caesar kept the title as he was commander of his army but transitioned into 'first citizen' or prince in latin.

It used to be more of a title assocaited with a military victory. Anyway Augustus used it has his title when he founded the Roman Empire.

When a jap or a non latin kingdom has an emperor it just means he is the highest authority in said land.

The Roman Empire had the initail culture of and land of Rome. However, for example the Kingdom of Egypt paid tribute to the Roman Empire as one of its vassals. The pharoah of Egypt was still king but he paid homage to the emperor.

A kingdom is usually considered to be of 'one nation' and culture with monarch. France had a powerful monarchy and ruled over culturally French people.

Denmark is a Kingdom made up of Duchies. The Dukes pay homage to the King. The Duchies are made up of counts who pay homage to the duke.

Same Story with Sweden. When Sweden had its "Swedish Empire" the King controlled Sweden Finland the baltics and Pomerania. The Monarch however was a King. Why? He did not have Kings as his vassals.

The Holy Roman Empire as it existed at its height of centralization had the Kingdom of Austria and Bohemia as its vassals.

In Short an Empire sees one culture or people expanding its borders to rule over different nations.

Napoleon was the French Emperor, and he controlled Germans in the confederation of the Rhine and the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Belgium were his vassals.

The Queen of England did not have any kings as vassals and thus was never an emperor. She was however the head of an empire when they gained control over India.

Emperor is a formal rather prestigious office that indicates the (self viewed)power of a state and autocratic rule. This second point is important to the British Empire, since the title 'emperor' hints at despotism parliament wouldn't support the monarch claiming this title since it would be against British democratic and anti despotic values. This is why Queen Victoria could only take the secondary title "Empress of India" rather than the primary title "Empress of the British Empire".

A King may answer to a higher authority like a Pope, or be indebted/obligated to others. Whereas there is no authority higher than the Emperor and the Emperor answers to no one.

Which would kind of make the Holy Roman Emperor not an Emperor, but the HRA seem to always 'not be' what they say are, ifuknowwhatimean senpai.

The reason why European kings before Napoleon didn't take the title 'emperor' is actually simple: the Roman Emperor was viewed as the only person who could claim the title of emperor in Europe, this was a rule generally respected by European monarchs, and since the office of Roman Emperor was generally occupied by the Holy Roman Emperor no one could take the title. Napoleon taking the title 'emperor' was partially a gesture of ending the Ancienne Regime by breaking this ages old tradition.

An emperor is someone ruling over an area that consisted of several kingdoms, whether they're absolved or vassalized.

That's still not the answer or response for a definition separating the two's status. Both an Emperor and the Great King/King of Kings are monarchs, both of them wield absolute power, both of them are the heads of their states.

So what's the real difference?

An emperor has multiple kingdoms under his crown.
An Empire is multi-ethnic, though not necessarily multicultural.

>"The whole human race knows that the Roman and Persian kingdoms resemble two great luminaries, and that, like a man's two eyes, they ought mutually to adorn and illustrate each other, and not in the extremity of their wrath to seek rather each other's destruction."