A pretender is a claimant to an abolished throne or to a throne already occupied by somebody else. The English word pretend comes from the French word prétendre, meaning "to put forward, to profess or claim". The term pretender is also applied to those persons on whose behalf a claim to a throne is advanced, regardless of whether that person himself actually makes an active claim. Significantly, the word pretender applies both to claimants with arguably genuine rights to the throne (such as the various pretenders of the Wars of the Roses), and to those with wholly fabricated claims (such as the pretender to Henry VII's throne Lambert Simnel). People in the latter category often assume the identities of deceased or missing royals, and are sometimes referred to for clarity as false pretenders or royal impersonators. A Papal pretender is instead called an Antipope, but some antipopes did rule as pope, and might only be declared an antipope afterward.

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