My kingdom for a word!

[clarentine]

I need a title for a person whose job it is to guard a royal personage with the intent of scaring away anyone who might want to do harm to said royal personage. Guardian is not scary enough. Protector has other specific meanings with regard to royal personages that I am not interested in invoking. Paladin, suggested by Bartleby.com, is associated in my mind with people of shiny good character (thanks so much, Gary Gygax), which need not apply here.

So: what might you suggest for this person encouraged to be a bully, a Doberman (reputation, smarts, capability), a dispenser of warning glares?

(Gosh, it would be nice to be able to just call him a Doberman, but I think he might object.)

Words of foreign derivation are fine if I can make the connotation work. The society in question is not-French, if that helps jog anything loose.

Comments

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

If the society in question is also used to pre-modern implements of war, I'd go with a nice Fist, or Sword, or Shield. Otherwise, I'm all out.

[clarentine]

Hmm. Considering how one would address Sir Fist, Sir Sword, Sir Shield.

[eseme]

Wait, you need to call him Sir Something?

That confuses me. I tend to think of such a person as a warrior, and not one to stand on cerimony...

[clarentine]

He is in direct contact with the prince (who will shortly be king), and the prince is using him as the stick side of carrot-and-stick. He's visible, and intended to be thus. The prince won't use Sir X's family name, since he's given it up, but he won't use his first name, either--that's too familiar--and needs to be able to refer to him as something when pointing him out to recalcitrant ministers and shirelords.

So, Sir X or my lord X.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

It scans reasonable to me. But I'm not exactly the best judge of these things.