An anti-king, anti king or antiking (; ) is a would-be

king King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

who, due to succession disputes or simple political opposition, declares himself king in opposition to a reigning monarch. OED "Anti-, 2" The OED does not give "anti-king" its own entry, unlike "antipope", but includes it in a list of political "anti-" formations, such as "anti-emperor" and "anti-caesar". The earliest example of anti-king cited is from 1619 (and the next by Dr Pusey). Only the hyphenated form is cited or mentioned. The term is usually used in a European historical context where it relates to elective monarchies rather than hereditary ones. In hereditary monarchies such figures are more frequently referred to as

pretender A pretender is someone who claims to be the rightful ruler of a country although not recognized as such by the current government. The term may often be used to either refer to a descendant of a deposed monarchy or a claim that is not legitimat ...

s or claimants. Anti-kings are most commonly referred to in the politics of the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...

, before the

Golden Bull of 1356 The Golden Bull of 1356 (, , , , ) was a decree issued by the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg and Metz ( Diet of Metz, 1356/57) headed by the Emperor Charles IV which fixed, for a period of more than four hundred years, important aspects of the con ...

issued by Emperor Charles IV defined the provisions of the

Imperial election The election of a Holy Roman Emperor was generally a two-stage process whereby the King of the Romans was elected by a small body of the greatest princes of the realm, the prince-electors. This was then followed shortly thereafter by his coronati ...

. Other nations with elective monarchies that produced anti-kings included

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

and

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. The term is comparable to

antipope An antipope () is a person who claims to be Bishop of Rome and leader of the Roman Catholic Church in opposition to the officially elected pope. Between the 3rd and mid-15th centuries, antipopes were supported by factions within the Church its ...

, a rival would-be

Pope The pope is the bishop of Rome and the Head of the Church#Catholic Church, visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the po ...

, and indeed the two phenomena are related; just as

German kings This is a list of monarchs who ruled over East Francia, and the Kingdom of Germany (), from Treaty of Verdun, the division of the Francia, Frankish Empire in 843 and Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in ...

( Kings of the Romans) and

Holy Roman Emperor The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans (disambiguation), Emperor of the Romans (; ) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period (; ), was the ruler and h ...

s from time to time raised up antipopes to politically weaken Popes with whom they were in conflict, so too Popes sometimes sponsored anti-kings as political rivals to emperors with whom they disagreed. Several anti-kings succeeded in vindicating their claims to power, and were recognized as rightful kings: for example, King

Conrad III of Germany Conrad III (; ; 1093 or 1094 – 15 February 1152) of the Hohenstaufen dynasty was from 1116 to 1120 Duke of Franconia, from 1127 to 1135 anti-king of his predecessor Lothair III, and from 1138 until his death in 1152 King of the Romans in t ...

, Emperor Frederick II, and Emperor Charles IV. The status of others as anti-kings is still disputed: e.g. in the case of Duke

Henry II of Bavaria Henry II (951 – 28 August 995), called the Wrangler or the Quarrelsome (), a member of the German royal Ottonian dynasty, was Duke of Bavaria from 955 to 976 and again from 985 to 995, as well as Duke of Carinthia from 989 to 995. Life He ...

and Margrave Egbert II of Meissen.

List of anti-kings

Germany

German double elections

Bohemia

Hungary

Japan

Korea

Scotland

References

Sources

* Heinrich Mitteis: ''Die deutsche Königswahl. Ihre Rechtsgrundlagen bis zur goldenen Bulle'', 2nd expanded edition, Rohrer, Brünn, Munich, Vienna, 1944, pp. 113 ff. * Dietmar Willoweit: ''Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte. Vom Frankenreich bis zur Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands'', 5th revised edition, expanded with a table of chronology and an attached map, Beck, Munich, 2005, pp. 71 ff., 94 ff., * Gerhard Theuerkauf: ''Gegenkönig''. In: ''Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte'', 2nd, fully revised and expanded edition. Published by Albrecht Cordes, Heiner Lück, Dieter Werkmüller and Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand as philological advisor. Edited by: Falk Hess and Andreas Karg, Vol. I: Aachen-Geistliche Bank, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin. 2008, Sp. 1995–1996, {{ISBN, 978-3-503-07912-4 * Succession Monarchs Royal titles