Pretender

A pretender is one who claims entitlement to an unavailable position of honour or rank. Most often it refers to a former monarch, or descendant thereof, whose throne is occupied or claimed by a rival, or has been abolished.

Although "claimant" is sometimes preferred, the term in itself is not pejorative. The original meaning of the English word pretend, from the French word prétendre (from the Latin praetendo lit. "to stretch out before") means "to put forward, to profess or claim"; this predates today's more common English meaning of "pretend", which is to claim falsely.

The term "pretender" applies not only to claimants with arguably genuine rights to the throne (as the various pretenders of the Wars of the Roses) who regarded the de facto monarch as a usurper, but also to impostors with wholly fabricated claims (as pretenders to Henry VII's throne Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck). People in the latter category often assume the identities of deceased or missing royalty, and are sometimes referred to for clarity as false pretenders or royal impersonators. A Papal pretender is called an Antipope.

Read more about Pretender:  Pretenders in The Roman Empire, Greek Pretenders, French Pretenders, Russian Pretenders, Ottoman Pretenders, Kingdom of Jerusalem, False Pretenders, Claimant Descendants of Royalty, Japanese Descendants of Chinese Emperors

Famous quotes containing the word pretender:

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