A Pretender is a claimant to an abolished or already occupied throne.Note that the French word prétend, a source of the English word "pretend", simply means "claim", with no implication of falsity, and that for the present purpose the English word retains the sense of the French word and not the modern English definition. In the context of the modern languages, they are, therefore, false friends, because the two words have noticeably different meanings in the two languages despite being almost identical (except for the acute accent in the former, bearing in mind that French has adopted the use of diacritical marks only since the French Revolution). Therefore a pretender, whether to a throne or anything, as the phrase meant in the past, is simply a claimant. Indeed in the cases of pretenders to a throne, they would not be a serious problem if there were no hint of validity to the claim. Contrariwise, persons with a potential claim to a throne automatically become pretenders, whether they press their claim or not, and this has led such persons to take extraordinary measures, such as emigrating to a foreign country under an assumed name, to preserve their safety against threats from other claimants or their allies. Deposed monarchs are not seen as pretenders, as the term only applies to those who have never occupied the throne. The papal equivalent is the antipope.

Modern pretenders