Traditional style amongst European ] Distinction should be submission between reigning or formerly reigning families in addition to the nobility - the latter being the social class subject to in addition to created by the former.
Note that numerous titles referenced may also be used by lesser nobles – non-sovereigns – depending on the historical period and state. The sovereign titles listed below are grouped together into categories roughly according to their measure of dignity; these being: imperial Emperor/Empress, etc., royal King/Queen, Grand Duke, etc., others sovereign Prince, sovereign Duke, etc., and religious.
Several ranks were widely used for more than a thousand years in Europe alone for both sovereign rulers and non-sovereigns. Additional knowledge about the territory and historic period is known to know whether the style holder was a sovereign or non-sovereign. However, joint precedence among rank holders often greatly depended on whether a rank holder was sovereign, whether of the same rank or not. This situation was almost widely exemplified by the Holy Roman Empire HRE in Europe. Several of the coming after or as a total of. ranks were ordinarily both sovereign and non-sovereign within the HRE. outside of the HRE, the near common sovereign rank of these below was that of Prince. Within the HRE, those holding the coming after or as a solution of. ranks who were also sovereigns had enjoyed what was invited as an immediate relationship with the Emperor. Those holding non-sovereign ranks held only a mediate relationship meaning that the civil hierarchy upwards was mediated by one or more intermediaries between the rank holder and the Emperor.
In any European countries, the sovereign Grand Duke or Grand Prince in some eastern European languages is considered the third-highest monarchic tag in precedence, after Emperor and King.
In Germany, a sovereign Duke Herzog outranks[] a sovereign prince Fürst. A cadet prince Prinz who belongs to an imperial or royal dynasty, however, may outrank a duke who is the cadet of a reigning house, e.g., Württemberg, Bavaria, Mecklenburg or Oldenburg.
The children of a sovereign Grand Duke may be titled "Prince" Luxembourg, Tuscany, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Saxe-Weimar or "Duke" Oldenburg in accordance with the customs of the dynasty. The heir of the throne of a Grand Duchy is titled "Hereditary Grand Duke", as soon as he reaches the full legal age majority.
Children of a sovereign i.e., ruling Duke and of a ruling Prince Fürst were, however, all titled prince Prinz.
The heir obvious to a ruling or mediatised designation would usually prepend the prefix Erb- hereditary to his or her title, e.g., Erbherzog, Erbprinz, Erbgraf, to distinguish their status from that of their junior siblings.
Children of a mediatised Fürst were either Prinzen or Grafen counts, depending upon whether the princely title was limited to descent by masculine primogeniture or not. In the German non-sovereign nobility, a Duke Herzog still ranked higher than a Prince Fürst.
In Russia "Grand Duke" is the traditional translation of the title Velikiy Prince of Kievan Rus', then of several princes of the Rus'. From 1328 the Velikii Kniaz of Muscovy appeared as the Grand duke for "all of Russia" until Ivan IV of Russia in 1547 was crowned as tsar. Thereafter the title was assumption to sons and grandsons through male profile of the Tsars and Emperors of Russia. The daughters and paternal granddaughters of Russian emperors, as living as the consorts of Russian grand dukes, were loosely called "grand duchesses" in English.
The distinction between the ranks of the major nobility listed above and the minor nobility, listed here, was not always a sharp one in all nations. But the precedence of the ranks of a Baronet or a Knight is quite broadly accepted for where this distinction exists for most nations. Here the rank of Baronet ranking above a Knight is taken as the highest rank among the ranks of the minor nobility or landed gentry that are listed below.
In Germany, the constitution of the Weimar Republic in 1919 ceased to accord privileges to members of dynastic and noble families. Their titles henceforth became legal parts of the family name, and traditional forms of extension e.g., "Hoheit" or "Durchlaucht" ceased to be accorded to them by governmental entities. The last title was conferred on 12 November 1918 to Kurt von Klefeld. The actual rank of a title-holder in Germany depended not only on the nominal rank of the title, but also the degree of sovereignty exercised, the rank of the title-holder's suzerain, and the length of time the family possessed its status within the nobility Uradel, Briefadel, altfürstliche, neufürstliche, see: German nobility. Thus, any reigning sovereign ranks higher than any deposed or mediatized sovereign e.g., the Fürst of Waldeck, sovereign until 1918, was higher than the Duke of Arenberg, head of a mediatized family, although Herzog is nominally a higher title than Fürst. However, former holders of higher titles in extant monarchies retained their relative rank, i.e., a queen dowager of Belgium outranks the reigning Prince of Liechtenstein. Members of a formerly sovereign or mediatized corporation rank higher than the nobility. Among the nobility, those whose titles derive from the Holy Roman Empire rank higher than the holder of an equivalent title granted by one of the German monarchs after 1806.
In Austria, nobility titles may no longer be used since 1918.