Loss of the northwestern provinces deeply upset Norodom, but he was beholden to the French for sending military aid to suppress a rebellion by a royal pretender.

"Here under orders to spill the guts of a royal pretender, I shouldn't doubt."

For official purposes, Portugal simply ignores the orders awarded by the royal pretender, Duarte Pio.

However, some discontented elements among the bagler found a new royal pretender, Sigurd Ribbung, and launched a new rising from 1219.

Now that they have established a royal genetic data base, so to speak, samples from royal pretenders can be matched up and authenticated or disqualified, they said.

Harald Gille was killed in 1136 by Sigurd Slembe, another royal pretender who had himself proclaimed king in 1135.

Giorgi's cousin, Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia is, like him, a royal pretender.

Many royal pretenders claimed to be sons of King Sigurd II, and that was mostly a political statement - their claims were at best dubious.

Often a royal pretender would try to blacken the reputation of rivals by asserting that their mother had in fact been a concubine.

He also named one of his sons as Crown Prince, undercutting claims by a royal pretender in India.