What is the difference between a kingdom and an empire?
Good question!
An empire was historically supposed to be made up of multiple kingdoms (hence why so many emperors also had some title akin to “King of Kings”) and nations (in the sense of peoples), ruled over by a single all-powerful figure (to distinguish an empire from a federation).
A kingdom, by contrast, was seen as made up of one nation (hence why you would have titles like “King of the Franks” or “King of the Belgians”) that supposedly shared a common language, origin, ethnicity, etc. Now, obviously this was usually more of a shared fiction than strictly objective fact, but that was the idea.
So to take a historical example: Charlesmagne was King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, and was then crowned Emperor of the Romans, although arguably by holding the Kingdom of the Franks and the Kingdom of Lombardy he already ruled an empire before he was crowned.
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