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Alfred the Great, Æthelstan, Clovis I, King of England, King of the English, King of the Franks, King of the Germans, Kingdom of the Belgians, Louis XVI of France, Napoleon, Philip II of France, Popular Monarchy, tribe
Popular monarchy is a term used by Kingsley Martin (1936) for monarchical titles that refer to a people, or a tribe, rather than a territory or a nation state. This manner of titiling a monarch was the norm in classical antiquity and throughout much of the Middle Ages, and such titles were retained in some of the monarchies of 19th- and 20th-century Europe.
For example, Alfred the Great was King of the West Saxons (Wessex) from 871 to 886. In 886, Alfred reoccupied the city of London and set out to make it habitable again. Alfred entrusted the city to the care of his son-in-law Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia. Soon afterwards, Alfred restyled himself as “King of the Anglo-Saxons.” Alfred remained King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899.
Alfred’s grandson, King Æthelstan (c. 894 – 27 October 939), was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927. By 927 Æthelstan had become the first king of all the Anglo-Saxon peoples, and in effect overlord of Britain. That year he adopted the title King of the English a title to his death in 939.
The title “King of the English” or (Rex Anglorum in Latin), was first used to describe Æthelstan in one of his charters in 928. Modern historians regard Æthelstan as the first King of England and one of the “greatest Anglo-Saxon kings”.
The standard title for monarchs from King Æthelstan until King John (1199 — 1216) was “King of the English”. Canute the Great, a Dane, was the first to call himself “King of England.” In the Norman period “King of the English” remained standard, with occasional use of “King of England” (Rex Anglie). From John’s reign onwards all other titles were eschewed in favour of “King” or “Queen of England”.
The Franks, a Germanic-speaking peoples that invaded the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, were first led by individuals called dukes and reguli. The earliest group of Franks that rose to prominence was the Salian Merovingians, who conquered most of Roman Gaul, as well as the Gaulish territory of the Visigothic Kingdom, in 507 AD.
The sons of Clovis I, the first King of the Franks, conquered the Burgundian and the Alamanni Kingdoms. Clovis was a member of the Merovingian Dynasty. The Merovingians were later replaced by the new Carolingian dynasty in the 8th century. By the late 9th century, the Carolingians themselves had been replaced throughout much of their realm by other dynasties.
As inheritance traditions changed over time, the divisions of Francia (the lands of the Franks) started to become kingdoms that were more permanent. West Francia formed the heart of what was to become the Kingdom of France; East Francia evolved into the Kingdom of the Germans (which later evolved into the Holy Roman Empire); and Middle Francia became the Kingdom of Lotharingia in the north, the Kingdom of Italy in the south, and the Kingdom of Provence in the west. West and East Francia soon divided up the area of Middle Francia, and Germany lost Carolingian control in 911 with the election of Conrad I of Franconia as king.
The idea of a “King of the Franks” (or Rex Francorum) gradually disappeared during the 11th and 12th centuries. All the predecessors on the throne of West Francia had been known as Kings of the Franks, but from 1190 onward, Philip became the first French monarch to style himself “King of France” (Latin: Rex Francie)
The Kingdom of the Franks had long been extinct, but the title “Queen consort of the Franks” continued to be used until 1227. That represented a shift in thinking about the monarchy from that of a popular monarchy, the leader of a people, sometimes without a defined territory to rule, to that of a monarchy tied to a specific territory.
During the French Revolution Louis XVI had to change his title to indicate he was “king of the French” rather than “king of France”, paralleling the title of “king of the Franks” (rex Francorum) used in medieval France.
Even Napoleon called himself Emperor of the French and not Emperor of France.
Currently, Belgium has the only explicit popular monarchy, the formal title of its king being King of the Belgians rather than King of Belgium.