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'''[[Blue Blood|Hereditary Peerages]]''' (all titles have female equivalents):
* Duke (Duchess): The highest title of the lot. Address as "Your Grace" when you are talking to him. Prince Philip iswas the Duke of Edinburgh. Of course Prince Philip iswas a Royal Duke, which is to say a prince of the [[Royal Blood|Royal family]] who holds a ducal title. There are non-Royal dukes also, who feature lower in the pecking order. The overwhelming majority of Dukes (2523 of 3130, as of FebruaryOctober 20192021) are non-royal.
** Parodied by [[Mark Twain]] in the story of ''The Million Pound Banknote'' where the owner of the note becomes so famous that the Times reports his doings above those of "Any duke not royal".
** The Grace bit is mentioned in ''[[Blackadder the Third]]''. Prince George in disguise calls the Duke of Wellington 'My Lord', who then proceeds to correct him with a blow to the head.
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* Give the government or governing party a lot of money. Baronetcies were originally always purchased. Even without direct payment, rich people were always more likely to receive any honour, partly because some honours required the holder to live in a certain way (knights, for instance, were originally military officers who had to afford a horse, armor, grooms, servants, etc.) and because poor people wouldn't be able to do any of the things that would bring them to the sovereign's attention. (To be fair, they wouldn't likely be interested in doing any of those things either, since the attitude of the poor of the time was that it was best to keep one's head down and not be noticed.) Officially the grant of titles or honours in exchange for donations to the government, political parties or individuals has been illegal since the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925, which was introduced after a major scandal involving the near-open sale of titles by [[David Lloyd George]]'s Liberal administration. However, there have been strong public and media suspicions about the number of party donors who have been granted honours by both Labour and Conservative governments in the last thirty years or so. Pissing away vast quantities of money, oddly enough, can work (Sir Fred Goodwin), [http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/goodwin-knighthood-decision but only temporarily.]
* Be a [[Teen Genius|Teenage Girl]] who sails around the world in a yacht. Jessica Watson won the [[Awesome Aussie|Order of Australia]] by doing this at the age of 16. She is not quite a Dame (the Order of Australia has several levels), but she is not to be sneezed at.
* Buy/own literally any amount of land in Scotland, no matter how small. By Scottish law and custom you are then a lord (or lady).
* Throw (surprisingly little) money at a micronation like the [https://sealandgov.org/ Principality of Sealand].
* Have an ancestor who signed on with the right faction in a [[Succession Crisis]].
* Have an ancestor who was a rich commoner when there were [[Wars of the Roses|no nobles left alive]] to compete for disputed estates.
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=== Web Comics ===
* [http://irregularwebcomic.net/1347.html The Honourable Sir Schliemannian Chair Professor Doctor Doctor Jones, CBE, DCM, JP, FRS] from ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]''
 
=== Web Original ===
* [[The Spiffing Brit]] has ''bought'' several [https://sealandgov.org/buy-noble-titles/ noble titles] from [[w:Principality of Sealand|the Principality of Sealand]] (which follows British usage), usually as a strange incentive for viewers to add "likes" to his videos. And as part of an early 2021 video he has [https://www.establishedtitles.com/ acquired several square feet of land in Scotland], which by Scottish law and custom actually makes him a lord.
 
== Analogous (not English/Scottish or British) honoured characters ==
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=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===
* In ''[[GurpsGURPS]] [[Traveller]]'' the volume ''Nobles'' details the system of Nobility of the Third Imperium. The titles are for the most part drawn from the British system. One quirk is that the duties are separated from the fiefdoms (a Baron is effectively hereditary mediator between a single planet and the Emperor but this fief is not his planet; in even higher grades, the fief is likely to be far away from the world where their duties take place). The fief is officially given to provide expenses for the noble life, and unofficially to provide a hostage for the Noble's behavior, and is traditionally a landed estate but may take another form. It is to be noted that there are several levels of nobility, including "honor" nobility who got it for achievement, "rank" nobility to adjust the level of precedence of Imperial military or civil servants, and "high" nobility who are actually a type of satrap or as has been said a mediator with the public of a given planet or group of planets.
**As the Imperium is [[The Federation|decentralized]] and has planets who were acquired by willing annexation, conquest, colonization or some combination thereof some planets have local systems of nobility some of which existed even before the Imperium. If there is likely to be confusion between titles the adjective "parochial" is placed on (I.E. it is illegal to have a planetary ruler be an Emperor for obvious reasons but he can be a "parochial emperor").
 
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