

After the medieval era, the exclusive right to confer nobility, titles, knighthoods and membership in Europe's state-recognized orders of chivalry was reserved to sovereigns.
The International Commission for Orders of Chivalry (ICOC) maintains a list of which organizations they consider to be genuine chivalric orders. The ICOC also maintains a set of principles to evaluate whether a chivalric order is genuine.
False titles of nobility are titles of nobility that are not recognized by any government, even in countries in which titles of nobility once existed or still exist. They are often connected to occult or pseudo-masonic groups. They have received an increasing amount of press attention, as the number of schemes that attempt to sell these titles has increased. These titles are sometimes connected to self-styled orders of chivalry.
Pseudo-chivalric orders or self-styled orders are organizations which claim to be chivalric orders, but are not recognized as legitimate by countries or international bodies. Most self-styled orders arose in or after the mid-eighteenth century and many have been created recently. Most are short-lived and endure no more than a few decades.
Self-styled orders may share certain characteristics:
Additionally, many self-styled orders might share other characteristics:
This project can be used for profiles of historical people who used bogus titles, such as Count Count Alessandro di Cagliostro and the Sobieski Stuarts.