The old king whose rolling head got everything going wasn’t much of a monarch, just the type of ersatz [ˈɛrˌsɑts] ruler who crops up between the decline of one great kingdom and the rise of another.

ersatz
adj [ˈɛrˌsɑts]

Ersatz describes a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation.

Evidence of ersatz in English dates to the middle of the 19th century, but the word didn’t come into prominence until World War I. Borrowed from German, where Ersatz is a noun meaning "substitute," the word was frequently applied as an adjective to modify terms like coffee (made from acorns) and flour (made from potatoes)—ersatz products necessitated by the privations of war.

English