Honour in the context of "Slander"

Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honor, assumed competence, and deference. On one hand, social scientists view status as a "reward" for group members who treat others well and take initiative. This is one explanation for its apparent cross-cultural universality. People with higher status experience a litany of benefits—such as greater health, admiration, resources, influence, and freedom; conversely, those with lower status experience poorer outcomes across all of those metrics.

Importantly, status is based in widely shared beliefs about who members of a society judge as more competent or moral. While such beliefs can stem from an impressive performance or success, they can also arise from possessing characteristics a society has deemed meaningful like a person's race or occupation. In this way, status reflects how a society judges a person's relative social worth and merit—however accurate or inaccurate that judgement may be. Because societies use status to allocate resources, leadership positions, and other forms of power, status can make unequal distributions of resources and power appear natural and fair, supporting systems of social stratification.

An emperor (from Latin: imperator, via Old French: empereor) is the (male) ruler of an empire. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules in her own right and name (empress regnant or suo jure). Emperors are generally recognized to be of the highest monarchic honour and rank, surpassing king. In Europe, the title of Emperor has been used since the Middle Ages, considered in those times equal or almost equal in dignity to that of Pope due to the latter's position as visible head of the Church and spiritual leader of the Catholic part of Western Europe. The emperor of Japan is the only currently reigning monarch whose title is translated into English as "Emperor", although he no longer reigns over an empire.

Both emperors and kings are monarchs or sovereigns, both emperor and empress are considered monarchical titles. In as much as there is a strict definition of emperor, it is that an emperor has no relations implying the superiority of any other ruler and typically rules over more than one nation. Therefore, a king might be obliged to pay tribute to another ruler, or be restrained in his actions in some unequal fashion, but an emperor should in theory be completely free of such restraints. However, monarchs heading empires have not always used the title in all contexts—the British sovereign did not assume the title Empress of the British Empire even during the incorporation of India, though she was declared Empress of India.

Chivalry, or the chivalric language, is an informal and varying code of conduct that developed in Europe between 1170 and 1220. It is associated with the medieval Christian institution of knighthood, with knights being members of various chivalric orders, and with knights' and gentlemen's behaviours which were governed by chivalrous social codes. The ideals of chivalry were popularized in medieval literature, particularly the literary cycles known as the Matter of France, relating to the legendary companions of Charlemagne and his men-at-arms, the paladins, and the Matter of Britain, informed by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written in the 1130s, which popularized the legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.

The code of chivalry that developed in medieval Europe had its roots in earlier centuries. It arose in the Carolingian Empire from the idealisation of the cavalryman—involving military bravery, individual training, and service to others—especially in Francia, among horse soldiers in Charlemagne's cavalry. Over time, the meaning of chivalry in Europe has been refined to emphasize more general social and moral virtues. The code of chivalry, as it stood by the Late Middle Ages, was a moral system which combined a warrior ethos, knightly piety, and courtly manners, all combining to establish a notion of honour and nobility.

An order is a visible honour awarded by a sovereign state, monarch, dynastic house or organisation to a person, typically in recognition of individual merit, that often comes with distinctive insignia such as collars, medals, badges, and sashes worn by recipients.

Modern honour systems of state orders and dynastic orders emerged from the culture of orders of chivalry of the Middle Ages, which in turn emerged from the Catholic religious orders.

The German sociologist Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification that defines a status group (also status class and status estate) as a group of people within a society who can be differentiated by non-economic qualities such as honour, prestige, ethnicity, race, and religion. The German terms are Stand (status group) and Stände (status groups)

To date, sociologists study the matter of "status incongruence" in both in post-industrial societies, and in pre-industrial societies. Status groups emerge from "the house of honor", and that such status-honor stands in contrast with: