Grand prince in the context of "List of Russian monarchs"

King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. In a modern context, the title may refer to the ruler of one of a number of modern monarchies (either absolute or constitutional). The title of king is used alongside other titles for monarchs: in the West, emperor, grand prince, prince, archduke, duke or grand duke, and in the Islamic world, malik, sultan, emir or hakim, etc.

The term king may also refer to a king consort, a title that is sometimes given to the husband of a queen regnant, but the title of prince consort is more common.

A boyar or bolyar was a member of the highest rank of the feudal nobility in many Eastern European states, including Bulgaria, Kievan Rus' (and later Russia), Moldavia and Wallachia (and later Romania), Lithuania and among Baltic Germans. Comparable to Dukes/Grand Dukes, Boyars were second only to the ruling princes, grand princes or tsars from the 10th to the 17th centuries.

A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. Prince is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. The female equivalent is a princess. The English word derives, via the French word prince, from the Latin noun prīnceps, from primus (first) and caput (head), meaning "the first, foremost, the chief, most distinguished, noble ruler, prince".

In a related sense, now not commonly used, all more or less sovereign rulers over a state, including kings, were "princes" in the language of international politics. They normally had another title, for example king or duke. Many of these were Princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and above sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranked below grand dukes and above or below princes, depending on the country or specific title. The title comes from French duc, itself from the Latin dux, 'leader', a term used in republican Rome to refer to a military commander without an official rank (particularly one of Germanic or Celtic origin), and later coming to mean the leading military commander of a province. In most countries, the word duchess is the female equivalent.

Following the reforms of the emperor Diocletian (which separated the civilian and military administrations of the Roman provinces), a dux became the military commander in each province. 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. Later on, in the 11th century, the title Megas Doux was introduced for the post of commander-in-chief of the entire navy.

Koppány, also called Cupan was a Hungarian lord in the late 10th century and leader of pagans opposing the Christianization of Hungary. As the duke of Somogy, he laid claim to the throne based on the traditional idea of seniority, but was defeated and executed by Stephen (born with the pagan name Vajk), son of the previous grand prince Géza.

According to modern scholars' consensus view, he was a member of the royal Árpád dynasty. Koppány was the lord of the southern region of Transdanubia during the reign of Géza, who ruled between the early 970s and 997. After the death of Géza, Koppány laid claim to the throne against Géza's devout Christian son, Stephen. His claim was mainly supported by pagan Hungarians, but the royal army routed his army near Veszprém in 997 or 998. Koppány was killed either in the battle or in his duchy, whither he had fled from the battlefield. His corpse was cut in four pieces to be displayed on the walls of four major strongholds of Hungary, Győr, Veszprém, Esztergom and Gyulafehérvár (now Alba Iulia, Romania).