royal consort

A royal consort is a person granted official status through an intimate relationship, often through marriage or concubinage, with a monarch. The term originates from the Latin consors, meaning "partner", and can be used in everyday English as a synonym for that word, and as a verb meaning "to associate". As it pertains to royalty, the term "has its roots in seventeenth-century vocabulary in both New England and England", where it was initially used to mean simply a spouse. It has since been extended to encompass similar relationships with other significant figures, such as a head of state. It has been recently noted that consort, "though literally denoting a partner or spouse, is a heavily loaded term, for a consort is usually implied to be a mere appendage, far inferior in power and statu...