Hacker News Reader

Princes are not necessary the sons of monarchs: independent principalities can and do exist (see for example Monaco).

Prince comes from princeps (the first), a title used by the Emperor Augustus.

Well if we want to dig in the etymology then princeps meant the first in the order (in battle) of the soldiers. This was used during the Roman republic and the connotation was indeed that the first soldiers were the best, more experienced ones Over time Romans realized that it was more effective to not deploy their best soldiers first and so the princeps (the best most experienced soldiers) were in the back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com