Grand Duke - Grand Prince

Grand Prince

Grand princes or great princes were medieval monarchs who ruled usually several tribes and/or were overlords of other princes. At the time, they were usually treated and translated as kings. However, grand princes were not as elevated sovereign as later Western European kings, and thus they are treated lower than kings, particularly in later literature. Grand Princes ruled in Central and Eastern Europe, notably among Slavs and Lithuanians.

The title grand prince is Velikiy Knjaz (Великий князь) in Russian. The Slavic word knjaz and the Lithuanian kunigas (today translated as prince) are actually cognates of King. Thus, Veliki Knjaz and Didysis Kunigas was more like "high king" than "grand duke".

These countries developed in a way that the position of the head of the dynasty became more elevated. In such situations, those monarchs assumed a higher title, such as tsar or king. Grand Prince Ivan IV of Muscovy was the last monarch to rule without any higher title, until he assumed the style Tsar of Russia in 1547.

The rulers of the Turkish vassal state of Transylvania used the title of Grand Prince, this title was later assumed by the Habsburgs on their conquest of Hungary. The Polish kings of the Swedish Vasa dynasty also used the grand-princely title for their non-Polish territory.

The title grand prince (which in many of those lands already was in later medieval centuries awarded simultaneously to several rulers of the more expanded dynasty) continued, in modern times, as a courtesy title for all or several members of the Russian dynasty, such as the Grand Duke of Russia (veliki knjaz) in Russia's imperial era.