The feudal aspect of the princely class stemmed, in Armenia as in Iberia, from the attempt of the Great King to involve the dynasts in the service mechanism of the monarchy. This inevitably implied the fiction of a delegation of sovereignty, to explain from the Crown's point of view the historical 'polygenetic' sovereign rights of the dynastic aristocracy, and, consequently, also involved the theory of a 'monogenetic' sovereignty (187). the most important, though not the highest, office imposed upon the princes was, as in Iberia, that of duke, or naxarar (188). An additional proof that the Armenian Princes were