What did figures from various periods in history such as Mithridates I of the Bosporus, William the Conqueror, Alfonso X of Castile, and Matthias Corvinus have in common? They were all kings, obviously, but there is another thing, paradoxically: before reaching the crown, they were what is called antikings. That term is not official, meaning it does not designate a formal position but rather a figure that arises against the reigning sovereign by acclamation of their supporters and ends up usurping the throne.
This is not a concept exclusively tied to monarchy, as anyone who has heard the expression antipope, referring to a prelate who seeks to be the supreme pontiff by displacing the incumbent, with the historical peculiarity that they were not considered usurpers by their followers because that condition was attributed to the other since they were denied true legitimacy. There were thirty-four recognized antipope plus three whose existence is doubtful, to which some current ones, such as those from El Palmar de Troya, should be added.
Except for exceptions, antipopes did not usually arise for doctrinal reasons but due to internal division, where each faction organized its own conclave and corresponding elections (of course, claiming that theirs was the correct one) or by direct intervention of the emperors, first of the Roman Empire and later of the Holy Roman Empire (ironically, as we will see, it would also be a victim of antikings).
If that happened with spiritual power, it is easy to understand that it happened with more reason and frequency with temporal or worldly power. Sometimes there was an interrelation, with kings supporting antipopes and vice versa; after all, the popes were also heads of state and, as such, defended the political interests of the Papal States, which were extensive and powerful in other times.
As the religious case makes clear, the existence of antikings is more typical of elective monarchies than hereditary ones because succession has always been a historical source of conflict and if, as then, it was not cemented, it opened the door to conflict. For that reason, most antikings did not occur in countries where the throne was inherited, supported by divine rights, but in those where the monarch was elected, as usually happened in central and Germanic Europe.
The right of popular resistance was always an integral element of the Germanic-medieval political conception. The medieval historian Fritz Kern explains that in its purely Germanic form, before it mixed with ecclesiastical ideas, we find it in the states of migrating peoples and among the northern Germans. Peoples who claimed from time to time the right to dispose of a king considered inconvenient. Therefore, the history of the Visigothic, Lombard, Anglo-Saxon, and Frankish royalties was a hotbed of rebellions and dethronements.
Whether due to physical or spiritual incapacity, political cowardice, or illegality or illegitimacy, demanding the abandonment of the monarch was normal: the people abandoned the king; they withdrew their obedience and chose a new monarch, most of the time in a formal legal act.
Given that the former monarch always had some supporters, the newly elected went to campaign as antiking against the former. That did not necessarily imply a dethronement, but it usually resulted in one, wielding a right of resistance where it was difficult to distinguish customary law from rebellion by force.
It is not that hereditary monarchies were free from similar situations, and indeed, the list of usurpations and succession wars would be endless; but in such cases, we do not speak of antikings but of pretenders. A simple nuance, if you will, that nevertheless did not avoid continuous bloodshed, although a pretender does not necessarily have to claim their rights to the throne and can be content with the so-called title of claimant that validates their condition.
With the aforementioned example of Mithridates I, we already saw that the idea of the antiking dates back to antiquity (it was Julius Caesar who designated Mithridates to take over the Kingdom of Bosporus by overthrowing his niece Dynamia Philoroman and her husband Asander), and another case could be noted, such as Ashot the Sparapet, who rose against his cousin Ashot II Yergat, sovereign of Bagratid Armenia, driven by the emir of Iranian Azerbaijan, Yusuf ibn Abi’l-Saŷ.
However, the figure of the antiking is more typical of the Middle Ages, perhaps because, contrary to popular belief, it was during this period that the monarchical institution suffered a weakening due to the fragmentation of power toward the nobility that the rise of the feudal system entailed. That is why the list of medieval antikings is as extensive as it is irregularly distributed across that fragmented and changing map that emerged after the fall of Rome.
Yes, some examples can be cited in countries with hereditary monarchies such as France (among others, Guido of Spoleto against Odo of Paris in the 9th century, Robert I against Charles III the Simple in the 10th, or Henry VI of England against Charles VII in the 15th) and England (Sweyn Forkbeard against Æthelred, and Canute the Great against Edmund Ironside and the aforementioned William the Conqueror against Harold III of Norway, all three in the 11th; Louis VIII of France against John Lackland in the 13th; and Henry VI against Charles VII in the 15th), but they are minority cases, although not as rare as those elsewhere.
These include Scotland (Amlaif against Kenneth II in the 10th century, Duncan II against Donald III in the 11th, Edward Balliol against David II Bruce in the 14th), Hungary (successively Ladislaus II and Stephen IV against Stephen III and he, in turn, against Ladislaus II in the 12th century), Bohemia (the aforementioned Matthias Corvinus against George of Poděbrady first and Vladislaus II later in the 15th), Georgia (George VIII against Demetrius III), Bosnia (Radivoj against Tvrtko II and Stephen Thomas), Serbia (Stefan Konstantin against Stephen Uroš II Milutin) and Bavaria (Arnulf the Bad against Henry I the Fowler in the 10th).
Similar circumstances can even be noted outside the continent. Thus, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where European monarchies had so many interests, Charles I of Anjou faced Hugh III of Lusignan in the 13th century.
One could even go further, to the Far East, to Japan, for example, where the Nanbokuchō period (1336-1392) gave birth to two imperial courts, the legitimate one of the South founded by Emperor Go-Daigo and the pretender of the North established by Ashikaga Takauji. Or to Korea, where the Duke of Angyeong rose against King Wonjong of Goryeo in 1249 and, the following century, Prince Wang Ko did the same against Kings Chungsuk and Chunghye of Goryeo.
But the real crux of the matter took place in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, the elective monarchy par excellence at that time. In the 10th century, Henry II the Quarrelsome faced Otto III; in the 11th, Rudolf of Rheinfelden and Hermann of Salm against Henry IV; in the 12th, Conrad III of Hohenstaufen against Lothair of Supplinburg; in the 13th, Frederick II against Otto IV, with the former then being confronted by Henry Raspe and William of Holland; in the 14th, Frederick the Fair and Charles IV successively rose against Louis IV, and the latter also against Gunther of Schwarzburg; and in the 15th, Frederick of Brunswick-Lüneburg against Wenceslaus IV.
The list does not end there, as the Holy Roman Empire, like the papacy, also experienced double elections to Rex Romanorum (King of the Romans, the title for elected emperors who had not yet been crowned by the Pope, often designated by the emperors themselves).
Thus, in the 12th century, there were simultaneously Philip of Swabia and Otto IV; in the 13th, Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso X of Castile; in the 14th, Frederick the Fair and Louis the Bavarian; and in the 15th, Sigismund of Luxembourg and Jobst of Moravia.
Although, as we said, it was fundamentally a medieval phenomenon, there were later cases in the Modern Age. The Golden Bull of 1356, issued that year in Metz by Emperor Charles IV, detailed the process for electing the King of the Romans and specified that the seven prince-electors had to carry out the imperial election. This aimed to end double elections and antikings. We saw that it did not fully achieve its goal, although it paved the way. However, the bull only applied to the Holy Roman Empire, so other states still suffered from this dynamic.
For example, in 16th-century France, Cardinal Charles of Bourbon emerged as a pretender under the name Charles X against Henry IV. In Hungary of the same period, John I did likewise against Ferdinand I of Habsburg.
In Bohemia, this phenomenon extended even further in time, as in the 17th century Frederick V, Elector Palatine, faced Ferdinand II, King of Hungary and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; and even a century later, a similar situation occurred between Charles Albert of Bavaria and Maria Theresa of Austria.
The emergence of modern states, unified around strong monarchies, tended to put an end to the figure of the antiking. This does not mean that the figure completely disappeared, as succession struggles continued to occur in power vacuums, the most evident example being the Portuguese War of Succession (with the Prior of Crato against Philip II) and the Spanish War of Succession (with Archduke Charles of Austria against King Philip V), among others; however, as mentioned before, in such cases, the term “pretender” is preferred.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on July 1, 2024: Antirrey, la característica figura medieval declarada o elegida contra el monarca reinante
SOURCES
Fritz Kern, Derechos del rey y derechos del pueblo
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, El Sacro Imperio Romano-Germánico. Una historia concisa
Peter H. Wilson, El Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico. Mil años de historia de Europa
Meg Matthias, Antipope
Mary Stroll, Popes and antipopes. The politics of eleventh century church reform
Wikipedia, Antirrey
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