Duke
The title dux, Hellenised to doux, survived in the Eastern Roman Empire where it continued in several contexts, signifying a rank equivalent to a captain or general.
In some realms the relative status of "duke" and "prince", as titles borne by the nobility rather than by members of reigning dynasties, varied—e.g., in Italy and Germany.
It lasted only a decade before the disunited magnates, to defend the kingdom from external attacks, elected a new king and even diminished their own duchies to provide him with a handsome royal demesne.
The dukes were the highest-ranking officials in the realm, typically Frankish (whereas the counts were often Gallo-Roman), and formed the class from which the kings' generals were chosen in times of war.
In Burgundy and Provence, the titles of patrician and prefect were commonly employed instead of duke, probably for historical reasons relating to the greater Romanization of those provinces.
In late Merovingian Gaul, the mayors of the palace of the Arnulfing clan began to use the title dux et princeps Francorum: 'duke and prince of the Franks'.
In this title, duke implied supreme military control of the entire nation (Francorum, the Franks) and it was thus used until the end of the Carolingian dynasty in France in 987.
Upon the death of the Black Prince, the duchy of Cornwall passed to his nine-year-old son, who would eventually succeed his grandfather as Richard II.
The following year, Edward III bestowed the title (2nd creation) on his fourth son, John of Gaunt, who was also married to the first duke's daughter.
By 1483, a total of 16 ducal titles had been created: Cornwall, Lancaster, Clarence, Gloucester, York, Ireland, Hereford, Aumale, Exeter, Surrey, Norfolk, Bedford, Somerset, Buckingham, Warwick and Suffolk.
When the Plantagenet dynasty came to an end at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485, only four ducal titles remained extant, of which two were now permanently associated with the crown.
It was restored to his son Thomas thirty years later by Henry VIII, as one of a number of dukes created or recreated by the Tudor dynasty over the ensuing century.
In the 19th century, the sovereign dukes of Parma and Modena in Italy, and of Anhalt, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Nassau, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen and Saxe-Altenburg in Germany survived Napoleon's reorganization.
Such titles are still conferred on royal princes or princesses in the current European monarchies of Belgium, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Other historical cases occurred for example in Denmark, Finland (as a part of Sweden) and France, Portugal and some former colonial possessions such as Brazil and Haiti.
In Belgium, the title of Duke of Brabant (historically the most prestigious in the Low Countries, and containing the federal capital Brussels) is awarded to the heir apparent of the monarch, other dynasts receiving various lower historical titles (much older than Belgium, and in principle never fallen to the Belgian crown), such as Count of Flanders (King Leopold III's so-titled brother Charles held the title when he became the realm's temporary head of state as prince-regent) and Prince of Liège (a secularised version of the historical prince-bishopric; e.g. King Albert II until he succeeded his older brother Baudouin I).
When the Christian Reconquista, sweeping the Moors from the former Caliphate of Córdoba and its taifa-remnants, transformed the territory of former Suevic and Visigothic realms into Catholic feudal principalities, none of these warlords was exactly styled duke.
Beginning in the 11th century, Danish kings frequently awarded the title of jarl (earl) or duke of Schleswig to a younger son of the monarch.
The highest precedence in the realm, attached to a feudal territory, was given to the twelve original pairies (en: peers), who also had a traditional function in the royal coronation, comparable to the German imperial archoffices.
Half of them were ducal: three ecclesiastical (the six prelates all ranked above the six secular peers of the realm) and three temporal, each time above three counts of the same social estate.
As the titles from the HRE were taken over after its dissolution, or in Northern Italy after their territories became independent of the Empire, both countries also had a share of fully sovereign dukes.
In Northern Italy some important sovereign ducal families were the Visconti and the Sforza, who ruled Milan; the Savoy in Piedmont; the Medici of Florence; the Farnese of Parma and Piacenza; the Cybo-Malaspina of Massa; the Gonzaga of Mantua; the Este of Modena and Ferrara.
In the German Confederation the Nassaus, the Ascanians of Anhalt, the Welf branch of Brunswick and the Ernestine lines of the Saxon duchies were the sovereign ducal families.
In the Kingdom of Persians and Ottomans, the systems cannot be fully translated to its European counterparts so they called those generals and kings as Khan, a Mongolian royal and noble rank from the Turco-Mongol word for "lord", analogous to Duke.
However, recent scholarship has identified multiple other meanings for gōng, including the patriarch of a lineage, a non-inheritable title signifying a very broad and senior position within the court, or a respectful appellation for any regional ruler or deceased ancestor.
[8] In works like Mencius[9]: 106 and others that date to the Warring States period, gōng was interpreted as the highest in the "five ranks of nobles" (五等爵) attributed to the Western Zhou dynasty.
[10] However, the title was not in use until the end of the Western Han,[9]: 126 granted to the descendants of the Shang and Zhou royal houses and the eventual usurper Wang Mang.
The title gōng and others were also awarded, sometimes posthumously, during the imperial period of Chinese history to recognize distinguished civil and military officials.
For example, Emperor Lizong of Song granted the posthumous title Duke of Hui (徽國公) to the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi.
The VOC (Dutch East Indies Company), while gradually taking control of Javanese territory, would maintain the existing Mataram administrative structure.
