Crown Prince

A crown prince or crown princess is the heir or heiress apparent to the throne in a royal or imperial monarchy. The wife of a crown prince is also titled crown princess.

The term is now borne as a title only in Thailand and the Scandinavian monarchies; but it may also be used generically to refer to the person or position of the heir apparent in other kingdoms. However, heirs apparent to non-imperial and non-royal monarchies (i.e., wherein the hereditary sovereign holds a title below that of king/queen, e.g., grand duke or prince), crown prince is not used as a title, although it is sometimes used as a synonym for heir apparent.

In Europe, where primogeniture governs succession to all monarchies except those of the Papacy and Andorra, the eldest son (Spain and United Kingdom) or eldest child (Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden) of the current monarch fills the role of crown prince or princess, depending upon whether females of the dynasty enjoy personal succession rights. The eldest living child of a monarch is sometimes not the heir apparent or crown prince, because that position can be held by a descendant of a deceased older child who, by "right of representation", inherits the same place in the line of succession that would be held by the ancestor if he or she were still living (e.g., Carl Gustaf, Duke of Jämtland, was de facto Crown Prince of Sweden from 1950 to 1973, as the senior grandson by male primogeniture of King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, although the former Prince Sigvard, Duke of Uppland, was Gustaf VI's eldest living son, and Prince Bertil, Duke of Halland, his eldest living dynastic son during those years).

In some monarchies, those of the Middle East for example, in which primogeniture is not the decisive factor in dynastic succession, a person may not possess the title or status of crown prince by right of birth, but may obtain (and lose) it as a result of an official designation made on some other legal or traditional basis, e.g., former Crown Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan.

Compare heir apparent and heir presumptive. In Scandinavian kingdoms, the heir presumptive to the crown holds a different title than the heir apparent; Hereditary Prince (German: Erbprinz, French: prince héréditaire). That is also the title borne by the heirs apparent of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, and by the heir or heiress presumptive of Monaco. In the Germanic monarchies abolished in 1918, hereditary prince, rather than crown prince, was also the title borne by the heirs apparent of the kingdoms of Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony and Württemberg, as well as those of grand duchies, of sovereign duchies and principalities, and of mediatized princely families.