Self-styled orders

Pseudo-chivalric order or self-styled order is an organisation which claims to be a chivalric order, but is not recognised as legitimate by countries or international bodies. Most self-styled orders arose in or after the mid-18th century and many have been created recently. Most are short-lived and endure no more than a few decades.

Many countries do not regulate the wearing of decorations, and remain neutral as to whether any particular order is legitimate or not.

Other countries explicitly regulate what decorations are accepted as legitimate. The criteria of France provide an illustrative example of those nations which take a more regulatory approach: Only decorations recognised by the Chancery of the Legion of Honour may be worn publicly, and permission must be sought and granted to wear any foreign awards or decorations. Dynastic orders are prohibited unless the dynasty in question is currently recognised as sovereign. (For example, the Royal Victorian Order is explicitly recognised, whereas the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus is not.) Failure to comply is punishable by law. A non-exhaustive list of collectively authorised orders is published by the French government. Other examples include the United Kingdom, where legitimacy of any particular order is determined by the Monarch - some societies have permission from the Monarch to award medals, but these are to be worn on the right side of the chest. No UK citizen may accept and wear a foreign award without the Sovereign's permission, moreover, the government is explicit that permission for foreign awards conferred by private societies or institutions will not be granted. In Sweden, decisions about medals and orders worn on a military uniform has been delegated to the General Staff.

The International Commission for Orders of Chivalry (ICOC) also maintains a set of principles to evaluate whether a chivalric order is genuine. The ICOC is not officially recognised by any international treaty, and their definition is explicitly rejected by many countries (see examples above of France, UK, and Sweden). The ICOC was created as a temporary committee of the International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in August 1960, though it has been transformed into a permanent and independent international body. The ICOC argues that a chivalric order must have a fount of honour (or fons honorum) as either its founder or its principal patron in order to be considered genuine. A fount of honour is a person who held sovereignty either at or before the moment when the order was established. The ICOC considers that holding sovereignty before the founding of an order is considered effective in creation of a genuine chivalric order only if the former sovereign had not abdicated his sovereignty before the foundation of the order but, instead, had been deposed or had otherwise lost power. In the ICOC's view, some organisations create a false fons honorum in order to satisfy this requirement and give themselves apparent legitimacy; often, the founder or patron of a self-styled order has assumed a false title of nobility as well as supposed current or former sovereignty. The ICOC maintains a list of which organizations they consider to be genuine chivalric orders.

...
Wikipedia