Grand prince

Grand prince or great prince (feminine: grand princess or great princess) is a , used either by certain monarchs or by members of certain monarchs' families.

Grand duke is the usual and established, though not literal, translation of these terms in English and the Romance languages, which do not normally use separate words for a "prince" who reigns as a monarch (e.g., Albert II, Prince of Monaco) and a "prince" who does not reign, but belongs to a monarch's family (e.g., Prince George of Wales). Some Slavic and Germanic languages do use separate words to express this concept, and in those languages, grand prince is understood as a distinct title (for a cadet of a dynasty) from grand duke (hereditary ruler ranking below a king). Some recent sources also use archduke.

The title of grand prince was once used for the sovereign of a grand principality. The last titular grand principalities vanished in 1917 and 1918, the territories being united into other monarchies or becoming republics. Already at that stage, the grand principalities of Lithuania, Transylvania and Finland had been for centuries under rulers of other, bigger monarchies, so that the title of grand prince was superseded by the titles of king and emperor there.

The title of veliky knyaz (translated as either grand prince or grand duke) was used for the Russian sovereign until Ivan IV was crowned as tsar in 1547. It is also a Russian courtesy title for members of the family of the Russian tsar (from the 17th century), although the people who held this title were not sovereigns.