noun
definition
Someone who has strong influence over the choice of a leader.
definition
A player who is unable to win but powerful enough to decide which of the other viable players will eventually win.
Examples of kingmaker in a Sentence
His queen, Anne Neville, the daughter of the kingmaker, was on her death-bed.
On the death of Anne, his only child, in 1449, his vast inheritance passed to Anne, his sister of the whole blood, wife of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury ("the Kingmaker"), who thereupon became earl of Warwick.
King Edward IV.'s two surviving sons, Edward and Richard (the princes in the Tower), had been mysteriously put to death in 1483, so that the only male descendant of the house of York, and indeed of the whole Plantagenet race, was the duke of Clarence's son Edward, earl of Warwick (grandson of " the Kingmaker "), who was imprisoned by Richard III.
It was taken with Henry and handed to the Yorkist, George Neville, bishop of Exeter, brother of the kingmaker, earl of Warwick, in London on 25th July following.