Chapter 27 - Jonathan Spangler
A Family Affair:
Cultural Anxiety, Political Debate and the Nature of Monarchy in Seventeenth-Century France and Britain
The arts reflect the concerns of the period in which they are created. This chapter will employ samples of theatre from seventeenth-century Britain and France to examine some of the anxieties that were circulating in those kingdoms with regard to the institution of monarchy, specifically issues around royal successions and the sharing of power by various members of the royal family in a period of increasing centralisation or absolutism. The chapter explores the long history of royal succession patterns, shifting generally from systems of partition to something much more narrowly regulated (legitimate, firstborn, male). A look at the rise and decline of the royal apanage is also crucial in understanding the changing sense of loyalty to a monarch expected of a younger brother or a royal cousin, and their continued need to demonstrate their position in the hierarchy through a ‘duty to revolt’. Many of these very real political concerns were therefore mirrored in writing for the theatre in this period: plots involved princely revolts, wicked uncles murdering young kings, and stability restored once more through the re-establishment of a properly regulated order of succession.
By Jonathan Spangler
Jonathan Spangler
Jonathan Spangler is senior lecturer in history at Manchester Metropolitan University, specialising in courts and elites in France in the early modern period, and in particular on dynastic identity. He is the senior editor of The Court Historian, the journal for the Society for Court Studies, and has published widely on the court of Louis XIV, the Guise family and the Duchy of Lorraine. His current research projects focus on the role of the second son in the French Monarchy, and perceptions of same-sex relationships in early modern court societies. Read profile.
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Related Chapters
Matthias Schnettger: Dynastic Succession in an Elective Monarchy: The Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire (See Chapter 7)
Christoph de Spiegeleer: The Nationalisation and Mediatisation of European Monarchies in Times of Sorrow: Royal Deaths and Funerals in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century (See Chapter 14)
Catriona Murray: Raising Royal Bodies: Stuart Authority and the Monumental Image (See Chapter 21)
Benjamin Wild: Clothing Royal Bodies: changing attitudes to royal dress and appearance from the Middle Ages to modernity (See Chapter 23)
Chad Denton: From Galanterie to Scandal: The Sexuality of the King from Louis XIV to XVI (See Chapter 41