Choosing a bride -- Waiting for sons to be born -- Fathers and sons -- Female sovereigns -- Mistresses and bastards -- Family dynamics family dynamics family dynamics -- Royal mortality -- Names and numbering -- Saints, images, heraldry, family trees -- Responses to dynastic uncertainty : prophecy and astrology -- Pretenders and returners : dynastic imposters in the Middle Ages -- New families and new kingdoms -- Dynasties and the non-dynastic world. "The subject of this book is the family politics of royal and imperial dynasties in Latin Christendom and Byzantium in the period 500-1500. Family politics means competition and cooperation within the ruling family, shaped at every point by the human life-cycle of birth, marriage and death, and also by ideas of what a dynasty was. Hence the two parts of the book, the life-cycle and a sense of dynasty. The main dynasties are listed in Appendix A. A full bibliography on this subject would fill a library but references have been given for all direct quotations and for facts other than those easily accessible A few directly relevant titles have also been cited"-- | 
Blood royal [0,32 mb]