FROSTBORN/SEVENFOLD SWORD question: why not dark elven kings?

Joey asks:

“I am currently re-reading Sevenfold Sword: Swordbearer for the 2nd time. While reading a question popped in my head as to “Why aren’t there any Dark Elven kings? I read where you speak of Dark Elven Princes like the Traveler.”

The dark elves did use to have kings. Except the urdmordar killed them all. And by “killed”, of course, I mean “ate alive.” So the title has sort of fallen out of favor among the surviving dark elves.

The Sovereign could have called himself a king, but he generally trained his subjects to revere him as a god. (The Warden did the same thing with the tribes of mutant orcs he kept in Urd Morlemoch.) Also, the dark elves refuse to share their true names with any other kindreds, so they generally become known from the titles the other dark elves give them – the Sovereign, the Warden, the Artificer, the Confessor, and so forth.

Some dark elves have called themselves a king, but since the urdmordar more or less destroyed dark elven civilization, they only rule over tribes of whatever kindreds they can enslave. Early in Andomhaim’s history, the knights of Andomhaim had to fight a dark elven lord who called himself the Nightcrowned King.

But because the dark elves hold all other kindreds in contempt, they regard a dark elf who declares himself a king ruling over humans or tribes or orcs or whatever the same why you and I would regard a man who had a warren of rabbits, declared himself their King, and started trying to pay his electric bill with his own self-issued royal currency with his portrait on it.

So the title of king has more or less fallen out use among the dark elves.

-JM