Provinces
A territory governed as an administrative or political unit of a country or empire.
A division of territory under the jurisdiction of an archbishop.
provinces Areas of a country situated away from the capital or population center.
A comprehensive area of knowledge, activity, or interest: a topic falling within the province of ancient history. See Synonyms at field.
The range of one's proper duties and functions; scope or jurisdiction.
Ecology An area of land, less extensive than a region, having a characteristic plant and animal population.
Any of various lands outside Italy conquered by the Romans and administered by them as self-contained units.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
States
The supreme public power within a sovereign political entity.
The sphere of supreme civil power within a given polity: matters of state.
A specific mode of government: the socialist state.
A body politic, especially one constituting a nation: the states of Eastern Europe.
One of the more or less internally autonomous territorial and political units composing a federation under a sovereign government: the 48 contiguous states of the Union.
ADJECTIVE:
______________________________________
vice royalties
A viceroy is a royal official who governs a country or province in the name of and as representative of the monarch. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and roi, meaning king. His province or larger territory is called a viceroyalty. The relative adjective is viceregal. A vicereine is a woman in a viceregal position (rare, as it usually includes military high command), or a Viceroy's wife.
The etymological allusion to the royal style makes it be perceived as higher than governor-general and lord lieutenant, even when in some cases it is a synonym for that administrative rank, and not necessarily above several "provincial" (lieutenant-) governors.
In some cases, the title (and the office, unless the title is not permanently attached to the job) is reserved for members of the ruling dynasty. It was not uncommon for potential heirs to the throne to obtain such a post (or an equivalent one, without the viceregal style) as a test — and learning stage, not unlike the even loftier "associations to the throne", such as the Roman consortium imperii — or the Caesars in Emperor Diocletian's original Tetrarchy.
------------------------------------------------------------
Kingdom
A political or territorial unit ruled by a sovereign.
The eternal spiritual sovereignty of God or Christ.
The realm of this sovereignty.
A realm or sphere in which one thing is dominant: the kingdom of the imagination.
One of the three main divisions (animal, vegetable, and mineral) into which natural organisms and objects are classified.
In the Linnaean taxonomic system, the highest taxonomic classification into which organisms are grouped, based on fundamental similarities and common ancestry. The Linnaean system designates five such classifications: animals, plants, fungi, prokaryotes, and protoctists. See Table at taxonomy.
------------------------------------------------------------------
empire
A political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority.
The territory included in such a unit.
An extensive enterprise under a unified authority: a publishing empire.
Imperial or imperialistic sovereignty, domination, or control: "There is a growing sense that the course of empire is shifting toward the . . . Asians" (James Traub).
------------------------------------------------
Differnces between kingdom & empire
An empire (also known technically, abstractly or disparagingly as an imperium, and with powers known among Romans as "imperium") comprises a set of regions locally ruled by governors, viceroys or client kings in the name of an emperor. By extension, one could classify as an empire any large, multi-ethnic state ruled from a single center. Like other states, an empire maintains its political structure at least partly by coercion. Land-based empires (such as Mongol or Achaemenid Persia) tend to extend in a contiguous area; sea-borne empires, also known as thalassocracies (the Athenian and British empires provide examples), may feature looser structures and more scattered territories.The actual political concept predates the Romans by several hundred years: empires began to appear soon after the first cities made the necessary administrative structures possible. The Akkadian Empire of Sargon of Akkad furnishes one of the earliest known examples. Compare the concept of "empire" with that of a federation, where a large, multi-ethnic state — or even an ethnically homogeneous one like Japan or a small area like Switzerland — relies on mutual agreement amongst its component political units. Also, one can compare physical empires with potentially more abstract or less formally structured hegemonies, which add cultural influences to their power repertory within their spheres of influence, compare empires with superpowers.
In politics, a country (or in some cases, a group of countries) over which a king or queen reigns, is a kingdom
