Minnyi Mintha (Burmese: မင်းညီမင်းသား, pronounced [mɪ́ɰ̃ɲ̥ì mɪ́ɰ̃ðá]) was the common title for all Princes of the Blood of the Burmese monarchy (i.e. sons, grandsons, brothers and nephews of a sovereign), who were all assigned fiefdoms when they came of age, and promoted to this rank.

Specific ranks and titles for dynasty members

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It was divided into four principal grades, as follows, awarded individually:

  • The Great Deputy King: Maha Uparaja Anaudrapa Einshay Min (‹See Tfd›မဟာဥပရာဇာအနောက်ရပအိမ်ရှေ့မင်း), incorrectly termed Crown Prince by Europeans, and addressed as His Royal Highness.
  • Viceroy or governor of a province: (territorial title) Bayin Khan (‹See Tfd›ဘုရင်ခံ), i.e. Viceroy, with the style of His Royal Highness.
  • Great Princes, a maximum of eighteen at any one time, divided into nine great princes of the left and nine great princes of the right: Minthaya-gyi (‹See Tfd›မင်းသာရကြီး)), together with the rank of Thado Min (‹See Tfd›သတိုးမင်း), i.e. Prince, with the style of His Royal Highness.
  • Middle Princes, a maximum of eighteen at any one time, divided into nine middle princes of the left and nine middle princes of the right: Mintha-lat (‹See Tfd›မင်းသားလတ်)), together with the rank of Min Ye (‹See Tfd›မင်းရဲ, Prince, with the style of His Royal Highness.

Specific titles were also used not by office, but by birth; however these were NOT indicative of the succession, for which there were no effective rules, a power struggle in the palace was the rule.

  • The eldest son of the sovereign, by his chief Queen: Shwe Kodaw-gyi Awratha (‹See Tfd›ရွှေကိုယ်တော်ကြီးဩရသ), i.e. Prince with the style of His Royal Highness.
  • younger sons of the sovereign, by his chief Queen: Shwe Kodaw-gyi Rajaputra (‹See Tfd›ရွှေကိုယ်တော်ကြီးရာဇာပုတြာ), i.e. Prince with the style of His Royal Highness.
  • sons of the sovereign, by his senior Queens: Shwe Kodaw-gyi (‹See Tfd›ရွှေကိုယ်တော်ကြီး), i.e. Prince with the style of His Royal Highness.
  • sons of the sovereign, by his junior wives: Kodaw-gyi (‹See Tfd›ကိုယ်တော်ကြီး), i.e. Prince with the style of His Royal Highness.
  • sons of a Prince, by a junior wife: Hteik Tin (‹See Tfd›ထိပ်တင်), i.e. Prince.

References

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See also

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