Rulers in Kiev and Novgorod were referred as princes (knyaz) before Christianization as well. Rurik, Oleg and Igor.
Khagan title was used by Mongol and Turkic tribes, not by the Slavs, even during the Yoke time.
The King wasn't used in Rus at all IIRC, may be with exception of Daniil of Galicia.
If they were not granted the title "prince" by the Christians but used it before -
Then why dis they reduce themselves to a lower level of monarchy?
Who was the greater overlors in their system?
In my understanding, the title of prince was given when there was a superior king around...
Confusion between titles is furthered when you realise that the Slavic word knyaz does come from ‘kuningaz’ (modern day English ‘King’) and that Tsar comes from the Roman ‘Cæsar’ (the hard plosive C mutated into a fricative before the Slavs adopted it) and ‘Korol’ from ‘Carolus’ i.e. Charlemagne, ‘the Great’ King of the Franks and also inspiration for the early disorganised Slavs.
Aaand probably everyone in here already knows this, but it derives from Augustus' title Princeps, which roughly translates as First Citizen.
The Princeps senatus is a ‘First Senator’, actually.
Dignitas without
auctoritas, which is the wiser choice for somebody seeking power. They also did call themselves
Princeps civitatis (First citizen) sometimes, but it's confusing… see below.
Buster's Uncle said:
Eeev'rything goes back to the Romans - the traditional pointy crown? A stylized olive wreath, originally. Tsar and Kaizer because they couldn't spell Ceasar.
Wasn't imperium actually originally a legal term, referring to a magistrate's right to have offenders flogged - and related authority? That Imperator -General- thus Emperor is in the mix confuses things, but that was to do with generals being selected from magistrates, and holding imperium over their men and their conquests...
Imperium is, indeed, the command capacity or official scope of authority.
Imperator is someone who ‘roolz’, so to speak. It was a honorific conferred to a military commander by his own troops
if they thought his victory on the field had been especially impressive. Later it became part of the parafernalia of titles that the Roman monarchs applied to themselves, but the first era is called the Principate because of that. Roman ‘emperors’ actually were supposed to walk the political path and hold magistracies like the prætorship and, of course, the consulship.
The Dominate came later, when they were called ‘Domine’ (vocative of ‘dominus’, i.e. lord) but even then the Senate and many of the magistracies of the Republic still existed.
During the principate the title of Imperator became attached to the ruler; not even his immediate family could bear it after a while and it became synonymous with that of ruler. Note that the Roman aristocracy of the time spoke Latin
and Greek at the same time and in Greek they
always called him basileus, i.e. king, but in Latin they had to find a word to not call him rex (lit. ‘king’) because Rome legally couldn't have
reges i.e. kings within the sacred limit of the city (the
pomerium) but somebody who just happened to be called king in all languages but Latin and happened to wield all the authority of a monarch, such as presiding the legislature, being allowed to veto legislation, being a major priest, and commanding the army, was
totally another thing… for more info, check the
title itself out.
