Ottoman diplomatic protocol demoted foreign monarchs to mere provincial rulers

Evidence

From the Ottoman point of view, the Ottoman Sultan was the ruler of the world; outside there were enemies or vassals, and Ottoman protocol was not willing to use the full titles which these outside rulers claimed for themselves. Thus, in letters addressed to Queen Elizabeth—polite, friendly letters—she is addressed as ‘Queen of the vilayet of England’. The Holy Roman Emperor him­ self, in Vienna, is called ‘the king of Vienna’. The words used for ‘king’ and ‘queen’—kural and kiralic¸e—are European, not Turkish or Islamic. The Ottomans in Europe, like the British in India, used native titles for native princes. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 191

Categorization

• SEED: A short essay on how diplomatic title-deflation — calling an emperor a ‘king of Vienna’ — functions as calibrated insult in international protocol, from the Ottomans to modern disputes over naming (e.g. Taiwan, North Korea).
• CANDY: Fun fact: the Ottoman Sultan’s letters to Queen Elizabeth addressed a fellow sovereign as merely ‘Queen of the province of England’.