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When he refused to leave the Nashville public park where he has lived for the past several years, Williams became one of a handful of homeless people in the country to be arrested and charged with a felony for camping on public property. Eleven states have passed homeless camping bans over the last four years, according to the National Homelessness Law Center. In the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public, more than 300 municipalities have joined them. Supporters of these laws say they enable public officials to enforce rules that already exist and provide incentive for unhoused people to seek shelter. But opponents call the laws cruel and say that an arrest record only makes it harder for those experiencing homelessness to secure a job or a home. The maximum penalty for felony camping in Tennessee is six years in prison. Williams pled to a lesser charge and was released from jail after nine days. "The slickest thing was asking me if I knew what I was pleading to," Williams said. "I'm just trying to plead to get out of here." [...] Williams was one of two people arrested in the park on June 28 and charged under Tennessee's no-camping law — the only one in the country to make sleeping on public property a felony. Though the law was passed in 2022, advocates for the unhoused say they have never before seen it used like this. [...]

Homelessness in Nashville has been on the rise, according to the city's Homelessness Planning Council, which in December 2025 estimated that roughly 4,300 people experience homelessness in the city, an uptick of more than 30% in less than a year. Nationally, homelessness has dipped slightly after reaching record levels in 2024. But chronic homelessness has grown, according to 2025 data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD's most recent tally of chronically homeless people in the U.S. found more than 155,000. Camping bans differ from state to state — some enable the state to level penalties against cities that refuse to enforce the ban; others make it easier for law enforcement to involuntarily commit people experiencing homelessness — but the broad strokes are the same. No camping, or sleeping, on public property. Many state legislatorshave taken inspiration, or even borrowed legislative language, from the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank founded by tech billionaire Joe Lonsdale. Lonsdale is a co-founder of Palantir, whose data mining software has been used by local and federal law enforcement, including the CIA and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). [...] Devon Kurtz, who oversees Cicero's homelessness and public safety policy efforts, has been a vocal critic of the longstanding program model known as Housing First, saying it is ineffective. Housing First, which has long been promoted by experts and homeless outreach workers, aims to get unhoused people into stable housing before attempting to address any other needs, such as mental illness and drug or alcohol addiction. [...]

"My hope is that no one is ever convicted under any of these camping bans," Kurtz said. "The intention is not to jail people. I've also said, however, that sometimes, at the margins, it is essential that law enforcement has the ability to jail them because it can save lives." Nashville's oldest homeless enclave, Old Tent City, was disbanded last year. The area along the Cumberland River where more than 100 people once lived is now encircled by fences and no-trespassing signs. Krinks said the encampment had been there since the 1980s. Krinks has seen more security cameras installed around public parks and benches ripped out of the ground in downtown Nashville. The no-camping felony, she said, only makes things more dire for the city's homeless community. "Punishing people and using police to address homelessness only makes the crisis worse, and it prolongs people's experience of homelessness," said Krinks, who also helped start the statewide coalition Housing for All Tennessee. "Most people I know experiencing homelessness are so hungry for freedom, for agency, for their dignity to be seen and recognized and understood. Jail erodes every aspect of a person's agency." If you ask Williams how long he's been living in the park, he'll say he doesn't think of it that way. It's not living, he says. It's a place he goes to stay because he doesn't feel like he has anywhere else. Williams has been offered a bed at a Nashville shelter. He's been approached by service providers over the years. But he doesn't trust those organizations, and doesn't want to leave the neighborhood he considers his own. Instead, he sleeps sprawled across the wooden picnic tables, heats his food up in the sun and does pullups on the monkey bars at the playground. But the park is not home. Home is the aging public housing complex just up the hill; that's where he grew up. Williams can see it from the picnic benches. No one lives there now. [...]

Last month, prosecutors charged Williams with two felony counts of camping and one misdemeanor charge of evading arrest. According to charging documents, Williams attempted to flee after police officers told him they had a warrant for his arrest. That's when he was tased. Alissa Heydari, a court-appointed attorney who represented Williams in the camping case, said the arrest "makes what is already a very difficult life situation for Mr. Williams harder and worse." Williams pled guilty to the misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to time served. Prosecutors dropped the two felony counts on the condition of his plea, Heydari said. He was released from custody on July 6, nine days after his arrest. As far as Cicero is concerned, this is the law working as it should.

Nobility isn't just a vibe. Every title on this list used to mean something specific, land owned, duties owed, and exactly how much power a person had over the people beneath them. Here's the hierarchy, top to bottom, plus the special cases that trip people up.

The Sovereigns

Emperor/Empress — Sits above a king. Rules over multiple kingdoms or territories rather than just one, historically. Think the Holy Roman Emperor, or Queen Victoria's later title of Empress of India.

King/Queen Regnant — The sovereign ruler of a single kingdom in their own right. "Regnant" specifically means she rules, as opposed to a queen who's just married to one.

Tsar/Tsarina — The Russian equivalent, literally derived from "Caesar."

Kaiser — The German equivalent, same Caesar root, different flavor.

Archduke/Archduchess — An Austrian Habsburg-specific title, ranking above a regular duke but below an emperor. Useful if you want a tier between king and duke without inventing one.

Immediate Royal Family

Prince/Princess — A child or close relative of the monarch. In British tradition, it also extends to spouses of princes, which trips up a lot of writers who assume it's blood-only.

Crown Prince/Princess — Specifically the heir apparent, not just any prince.

Grand Duke/Duchess — Used for smaller sovereign states entirely (Luxembourg still has one) or for junior royals in places like Russia. Ranks below a king but above a regular duke.

Prince Consort — The husband of a reigning queen. Prince Albert is the textbook example, married to Victoria but never a king himself.

Queen Consort — The wife of a reigning king. Not a ruler in her own right, just married to one.

Country-Specific Heir Titles

Worth knowing if you want your world to feel less generically medieval-European and more specific:

Dauphin — the French heir apparent

Tsarevich — the Russian heir apparent

Infante/Infanta — Spanish and Portuguese term for a royal child who isn't the heir apparent

Regency & Special Circumstances

This is the section most lists skip, and it's exactly the kind of detail that makes a fictional court feel lived-in.

Regent — Anyone (a person, sometimes a council) who rules temporarily on behalf of a monarch who can't, usually because they're a minor, incapacitated, or absent.

Prince Regent — Specifically a prince acting as regent. The most famous real example is George, who ruled as Prince Regent for years while his father, George III, was unfit to rule, before becoming George IV himself.

Queen Mother — The mother of the current reigning monarch, once she's no longer queen consort or queen regnant herself. It's an honorary title, not a governing one.

Dowager [Title] — Applies to widows generally, not just queens. A Dowager Duchess or Dowager Countess is the widow of the previous title-holder, still using the title while her heir holds the actual position.

Heir Apparent vs. Heir Presumptive — An heir apparent can't be displaced by anyone born later. An heir presumptive can be, if someone with a stronger claim shows up (say, a son born after a daughter was next in line). This distinction alone can drive an entire succession plot.

The Peerage (hereditary, non-royal nobility)

Duke/Duchess — The highest rank below royalty. Historically ruled an actual duchy, meaning real territory and real armies, not just a fancy name.

Marquess/Marchioness — Ruled border territories, the "marches," that needed extra defense. That's genuinely where the name comes from.

Earl — The specifically British term for this tier. Comes from the Old English/Norse "jarl," and it's the oldest of the English titles, older than duke or marquess.

Count/Countess — The Continental European equivalent of an earl. Oddly, there's no male "earless" counterpart term, an earl's wife is still called a countess.

Viscount/Viscountess — Literally "vice-count," acting as a deputy to a count. A step down, still meaningful.

Baron/Baroness — The lowest formal rank of the peerage, but still a direct vassal to the crown rather than to another noble.

Titled but Not Peerage

Baronet — Hereditary, but not technically part of the peerage. A British-specific quirk that trips people up constantly.

Knight/Dame — Granted for life, not inherited. Earned through service rather than blood, which makes it a useful title for a character who rose up rather than was born into power.

Prince-Bishop — A real historical oddity, a bishop who also held temporal, political power over territory, common in the Holy Roman Empire. Genuinely useful if your world blends religious and political authority.

Lord/Lady — A general courtesy title that gets applied loosely across several of the ranks above. Not a rank on its own so much as a way of addressing one.

Untitled but Still Someone

Esquire/Gentry — Landowning, educated, socially significant, but no actual title. Your side character who's clearly well-off but not nobility probably belongs here.

Chatelaine — Not a rank, but a real functional role, the woman (often but not always the lady of the house) who ran an entire castle's household. Worth knowing if you want a character with real day-to-day power that has nothing to do with her title.

Quick note on forms of address, since getting this wrong is its own kind of tell: monarchs are "Your Majesty," dukes and duchesses are "Your Grace," most other peers are "My Lord/My Lady," and knights are addressed by first name with "Sir" or "Dame" in front of it, never the surname alone.

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Closest match: Argentina silus genome assembly, chromosome: 11 Common name: Greater Argentine