At times, some of these states and titles were subjected to multiple claims.įollowing the defeat and death of King James III King of Cyprus in 1474, his younger and illegitimate brother, Eugène Matteo de Lusignan, also styled d'Arménie (died 1523) removed to Sicily, then to Malta. Most seriously, after the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and its eventual recovery by Michael VIII Palaiologos, there came to be three Byzantine successor states, each of which claimed to be the Roman Empire, and several Latin claimants (including the Republic of Venice and the houses of Montferrat and Courtenay) to the Latin Empire the Crusaders had set up in its place. Greek pretenders Byzantine Empire ĭisputed successions to the Roman (Byzantine) Empire long continued at Constantinople. Not all of them were afterwards considered pretenders several were actually successful in becoming emperor at least in part of the empire for a brief period. The Loeb translation of the appropriate chapter of the Augustan History therefore represents the Latin triginta tyranni by 'Thirty Pretenders' to avoid this artificial and confusing parallel. These are customarily referred to as the Thirty Tyrants, which was an allusion to the Thirty Tyrants of Athens some five hundred years earlier although the comparison is questionable, and the Romans were separate aspirants, not (as the Athenians were) a Committee of Public Safety.

In the Roman Empire Īncient Rome knew many pretenders to the offices making up the title of Roman emperor, especially during the Crisis of the Third Century. The French and Latin words have no pejorative connotation. This word is derived from Middle English pretenden, from Old French pretendre, and ultimately from Latin praetendere (to extend before). The word 'pretender' was created by adding an -er to the end of the verb pretend. This episode established Gotha as an authority on the titles of deposed monarchs and nobility, many of which were restored in 1815 at the end of Napoleon's reign. In 1807, French Emperor Napoleon complained that Almanach de Gotha continued to list German princes that he had deposed.

The word was popularized by Queen Anne, who used it to refer to James Edward Stuart, the Jacobite heir, in an address to parliament in 1708: “The French fleet sailed from Dunkirk with the Pretender on board.” The word may refer to a former monarch or a descendant of a deposed monarchy, although this type of claimant is also referred to as a head of a house.

The term is often used to suggest that a claim is not legitimate. 'The Young Pretender', Charles Edward Stuart (1720 – 1788), was head of the House of Stuart and claimed the thrones of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland.Ī pretender is someone who claims to be the rightful ruler of a country although not recognized as such by the current government.

Crusader kings 2 fabricate claim