Gender-neutral royal titles?

[elemtilas]

Mostly it's because one of my close friends is writing a similarly non-patriarchal world, and she uses generic terms like "Monarch" and "Heir", so I kind of want to veer away from that. Especially since we discuss our stories with each other fairly often.

Just so long as you also veer away from horrific perversions of English like "princex"! YUK!

I too would expect that the native language(s) of the peoples in this world would have normal titles for its rulers that recognise the local society's slant on gender. I'd suggest, if it's not now too late!, just making and using such words. So long as it is somehow made clear that, functionally, a jarda and a warkun are the same as a monarch as far as role and dignity go but are distinct as far as gender are concerned, then why not just refer to "the jarda of Arcutre" or "warkun Zibilus"?

"I love you. I would rather be in exile with you, than Queen without you."
~ Líadan

I wonder how many Liadans there are out there in the Land of Story...

I have some parts of a story whose main character is Liadan. I've a cousin who wrote a beautiful story (Birds of Ale'a) whose main character is Liadan. And now I come across this story with a character called Liadan! Pretty nifty, that!

 

[Yzjdriel]

"Your Majesty" seems entirely gender agnostic, though I would venture to guess that everyone would know the sex and gender of their Sovereign.

Alternatively, you can just refuse to give a care and go the route of the Dragons in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and just call the monarch "King" regardless of gender.

 

[SMAndy85]

There's an anime I watch, called Fate: Stay Night. The title isn't great, but it's got a decent referece for this. If you know it, but haven't seen it and want to, stop reading now because SPOILERS!

One of the main characters, referred to by the name "Saber" is a female knight in appearance, and is totally kickass. Later on, you discover that she's actually King Arthur. She is called King because the legend states "Whomsoever draws the sword from the stone shall become King." and they took it literally.

In history, I always think that titles for the female part (duchess, princess etc) is just the male version with an alteration. If you google "Define Prince" it comes back with "the son of a monarch". Who is to say you couldn't just change that to the "child of a monarch" and leave it there?

Equally, the synonyms has "dynast" as an option. That sounds very gender neutral! Perhaps you could get some ideas for other titles the same way.

 

[Viorp]

If I were you I'd to a barebones conlang.

Make up sounds + phonotactics.
With that you can make realistic words.
If you also use it to name places it will sounds natural.

Now invent names for rulers like example:

King/Queen - Selkir
Emperor/Empress - Kulnalkir
Fudal Lord (male+female) - Inelkir

 

[Chekaman]

First Citizen. That would be a good gender neutral title.

 

[elemtilas]

First Citizen. That would be a good gender neutral title.

Right. First Citizen = Princeps = Prince.

 

[Chekaman]

Princess also came from Princeps.

 

[DeathtoTrite]

A few ideas-

Canon, Theurgist, Oracle, Hierarch, Hierophant: maybe a bit of a religious flavor
Magister/ Magistrate
Seneschal
Caesar (or selected variant. The cognomen weren't gender specific iirc)
Despot/ Autocrat (These have a very negative connotation that wasn't always the case. Russian tsars would adopt "autocrats of all Russia" for added imperial flavor)
Qadi
Volvi
Lawspeaker
Yabgu
Viceroy

A few of these might not be truly gender-neutral but rely on western ignorance (by which I mean my own). Many are shamelessly stolen from-

Honorary titles - Crusader Kings II Wiki

 

[Surad]

From what I understand, Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt wasn't a reference to a person, but a place. Pharaoh was like 'the house of the king' or something. So it could easily translate to just 'house of royalty' which is why female pharoahs like Nefertiti were still called Pharaohs even though most Pharaohs were men.

 

[skip.knox]

It may be worth pointing out that king itself is not exactly male in origin.
Online Etymology Dictionary
as the article says, it's complicated.
OTOH, queen is specifically female in origin
Online Etymology Dictionary
It's also worth pointing out that Queen Jadwiga of Poland was technically King Jadwiga of Poland. So there's that.

But gender neutral? Almost no historical words are gender neutral. If I were going for that, I'd make up words.

 

[Daelhar]

You could always invent words for the titles. If it's a fantasy book, you could randomly create ones, or make a combination of words and titles for that position. Hoped this helped!

 

[QuingHyppolita]

One of the fantasy worlds I've created is a vaguely medieval society which nonetheless has a much greater awareness and acceptance of non-binary, non-cisgender and non-straight people and pairings than many of our world's cultures did at the time. This is so because the human race was created by demigod-like dragons, who also have a large number of the aforementioned.

The MC of the story is a cisgender, asexual girl from modern Earth who is whisked away to the fantasy world via a magic portal she accidentally creates. She initially befriends an MtF transgender dragoness before getting pulled into human affairs and encountering the royals of the kingdom. The dragoness uses the human language of that world to speak with the MC, which is rendered as English due to magical Translation Convention. (This is also lampshaded in-story by the MC, who notices that people's mouth movements don't match up with the words she hears them speak, and vice-versa.)

Now, in a society with so many non-cis/het/etc. individuals, I would logically expect their language to have a non-gendered equivalent of such gendered titles as king, queen, prince, princess, etc. I've come up with the term "princet" for a gender-neutral heir to the throne, but others are not coming so easily to mind. Nor do I know how that would or should factor into the Translation Convention trope. I don't really want to use generic terms like "Monarch" and "Heir", either. Any thoughts on how I should handle this?

What about QUING as a non binary queen/king

 

[Nirak]

Armiger is a cool way of saying lord/lady - it means one who has a right to display heraldry.

 

[Miles Lacey]

I simply refer to the person who rules as Emperor or Empress in my WIP as the Monarch.

 

[D. Gray Warrior]

Maybe take a look at Japanese honorifics. The honorific "san" appears gender neutral, so maybe you could have a system similar to Japanese but where all of the honorifics are gender neutral.

 

[Queshire]

I've used Crown as a title, though the guy with it is cis. I've also used Divine of X instead of God/Goddess of X for my nonbinary death divine.

 

[Nighty_Knight]

I've used Crown as a title, though the guy with it is cis. I've also used Divine of X instead of God/Goddess of X for my nonbinary death divine.

Crown of X, (such as Crown of Aragon or Crown of Castile) works great for a sovereign ruler. Imo.

 

[Cu Mara]

High Ruler seems to say it quite literally.
As for the heir; 1st in Line or (when shortened) the “First”.
Just a thought.

 

[Josie]

For Prince/Princess there's Prinx or Prinxette that my friend came up with
For Queen/King I use Quing which I made up

 

[S J Lee]

Start saying "the throne / the crown..."?

In English, female pharaohs are just called pharaohs....
hatshepsut - Bing
Hatshepsut (/ h æ t ˈ ʃ ɛ p s ʊ t /; also Hatchepsut; Egyptian: ḥꜣt-šps.wt "Foremost of Noble Ladies"; 1507–1458 BC) was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt.She was the second historically-confirmed female pharaoh, the first being Sobekneferu.

Chief?
Ruler?
Dictator? eg, dictatrix sounds silly... pompous fake Latin... doubt the Romans ever used that word
Mob boss... no female version

EG, The Guardian now just calls female actors "actors". "Actress" is dying....