It is not only the fortunate with a need to justify their good fortune who legitimate their governing identities. The legitimation of those aspiring to be fortunate is at least as important, and rebels legitimate themselves as vigorously as do rulers. Aspiration is less tangible than achievement, and a conviction of one's own authority can have a relatively greater role in the identity of someone who, waiting on the success of rebellion, lacks armies, palaces, or government offices, and has little more than a belief in their own authority to sustain them. Nor is such legitimation restricted to those rebels who challenge existing government in its entirety by aiming for control of the state. Those vigilantes who seek by coercive direct action against other subjects or citizens to appropriate some of the functions of government by compelling others to act in accordance with their own political, religious, cultural or moral beliefs, will engage in a corresponding legitimation of themselves as the proper exercisers, in a bespoke manner, of governmental power. For rebels and vigilantes alike, self-legitimation, by the cultivation and creation of distinctive identity, is a defining aspect of their political activity. In legitimating themselves in this way, they are defining themselves as set apart from those whom they aspire and claim to lead, govern, or represent.