Stephen (honorific)

The name Stephen (Serbo-Croatian: Stefan / Стефан, Stjepan / Стјепан, Stipan / Стипан, and others), long popular among South Slavic monarchs, was used as an honorific or as a royal title.

[9] The veneration of Saint Stephen was so important that he was depicted on the reverse of the royal seals of the early Nemanjić rulers and on their basic coins.

[10] Historians such as Dušan J. Popović[9] and John Van Antwerp Fine, Jr.[8] maintain that to Serbian rulers, Stephen was more than "a mere name" and "came close to being part of a title".

[9] When the Nemanjić line went extinct with the death of Stephen Uroš V (r. 1355–71) in 1371, Serbia's throne became vacant and the country disintegrated.

The Bosnian ban Tvrtko I (r. 1353–91), a cognatic great-grandson of Stephen Dragutin (r. 1276–1316), started advancing his own claim on the defunct kingdom and had himself crowned King of Serbia and Bosnia in 1377.

Lazar Hrebeljanović (r. 1373–89)[14] and his son-in-law Vuk Branković (r. 1378–89), who ruled two of these states, at times called themselves Stefan although they never claimed the kingship.