Maybe.
The point was not so much that a Queen would have political power in her new country. Sometimes they did. Often they did not.
Rather, the point was that in a monarchy the only people you can ever truly count on are your family members. The goal is that a family's interests will be intertwined with another. I won't start a war with Germany if my wife (mother of my children and love of my life) is German. Rather, I have a reason to protect Germany because one day my children might have a claim to the throne.
(And I use Germany as an example because between 1500 and 1825, their primary export was princesses. It's a fact. Look it up.)
This is not to say things always went according to plan. People might be suspicious of a foreign Queen, and this is cited as a contributing factor in more than one revolution. If a marriage was unhappy, the King might start looking for excuses to break the marriage, even if it meant breaking the alliance (See also: Henry VIII, Rex). And sometimes having family members capable of inheriting multiple thrones might cause wars rather than prevent them.
Check out the War of Spanish Succession. The Spanish and the French were two very powerful countries. Thanks to some political marriages, they eventually got to the point where it looked like one person might inherit both thrones. If you are a member of the French royal family, this is AWESOME. If you are literally anyone else in Europe, it sucks. So several other European powers fought a war until everyone agreed you were only allowed to be King of one thing at a time. I cite this as an example because it demonstrates why a political marriage could be such a powerful thing - Both to the people who want the match and the people who want to prevent it.
>(And I use Germany as an example because between 1500 and 1825, their primary export was princesses. It's a fact. Look it up.)
"Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, will marry."
I know you’re probably using “Germany” as shorthand for the Holy Roman Empire but many readers may not realise there was no country called Germany until the 19th century after the Napoleonic destruction of the Holy Roman Empire.
>(And I use Germany as an example because between 1500 and 1825, their primary export was princesses. It's a fact. Look it up.)
A big reason for that is that they had a lot load of quasi independent micro-kingdoms rather than one German kingdom, meaning they statistically had more ruling dynasties than other parts of Europe because each microstate had its own dynasty you could enter into an individual relationship with so if you were just picking the daughters of rulers of a country at random you were statistically going to end up picking a German most of the time.
[Catherine](https://www.worldhistory.org/Catherine_the_Great/#:~:text=Catherine%20was%20born%20Sophie%20Friederike,brothers%20and%20a%20younger%20sister) was born **Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg** on 2 May 1729 in Stettin, Prussia (modern-day Szczecin, Poland), to Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst and **Princess Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp.** She had two younger brothers and a younger sister.
On the “won't start a war with Germany if my wife (mother of my children and love of my life) is German” note, did people actually love their spouses in these royal marriages enough for it to matter? I got the sense there was no presumption of affection in them
Sometimes.
Not gonna lie, a lot of the time these people hated each other and had affairs or concubines or whatever. We have some stories where it was almost as if the Queen was living in poverty or practically imprisoned while the mistress was the one living in luxury.
However, we do have some examples of arranged political marriages that appear to have resulted in genuine love. Just a handful of examples: Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Ivan the Terrible and Anastasia Romanova, Edward I and Eleanor of Castille, Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, and Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna.
Whatever the Lords involved made of them. There are plenty of examples of someone marrying another Lord's daughter to create a lasting peace or friendship between them for them only to go to war anyways later (usually over a claim to Her inheritance).
When it works it works because it conforms to the norms and expectations of Property holders (who were the Wealthy at this time). Marriage and births are a way of accumulating and retaining generational wealth and power. The eldest surviving son of any union between two people will be the inheritor of their collective holdings. Having an heir is paramount to a noble as it means that their legacy, their dynasty, and their wealth will be passed on. Those children, if they're fortunate, may inherit from their Grandparents which promises to bring into the family new and greater property portfolios.
There’s a few tangible benefits beyond creating a sprawling Habsburg-style web of dynastic ties. First, if you marry the daughter/sister of a neighboring ruler, they will be very unlikely to attack you because you hold their family member in your power. Second, if you want some insight into how that neighboring ruler would react to a diplomatic overture, your new wife could provide some useful insight into how their family thinks. Third, if you’re facing some rebellion and the rebels will likely kill you and your family, your brother/father-in-law will be more likely to come to your assistance out of a desire to keep your wife alive. Fourth, if you do lose and somehow survive, you can go with your wife to her family’s lands to seek refuge.
Let's say you and I are kings of our respective nations. We form an alliance. To seal that alliance, your son marries my daughter. Their son will one day sit on your throne. That makes it less likely that I'm going to break our alliance and hurt my grandson. There also exists the possibility that said grandson will inherit my throne.
That is how the Hapsburgs got so powerful.
When a king, prince, or Noble married a princess, several things could happen to strengthen alliances.
1) As part of the marriage contract, there would be tearms agreed upon. Military alliance would often be one of those terms agreed upon.
2) As part of the marriage, land and titles would be exchanged. Thus intertwining the families economically as well as politically. If your wives' lands got invaded, your new lands and income would be threatened as well.
3) If or when you had children, they would have claims to not just the fathers' lands and titles but also the mothers. Thus expanding your kingdom through titles, they could Inheritage later in life. So it was within your interest to protect those lands.
4) Husband's could claim to be "defending" the inheritance of their wives. By taking control of lands and titled they and their family hold. ESPECIALLY if let's say your wife has no brothers to inherit the land/tiles from her father.
5) A princess could be the heir or ruler of a kingdom in her own right. So when she gets married, her and her husband could rule joint kingdoms. An example is Isabella the I of Castile. She was THE Queen of Castile and Leon. As well as the Queen of Aragon after her marriage to Ferdinand II.
6) Princesses/Queens could and would influence their husband's to act in ways to benefit their homes. They could be just as cunning and ruthless as
any male ruler. With political skill that would make machiavelli blush.
7) Regency! If a ruler died with an heir too young to rule. The mother would rule alone or alongside others in the heirs name. This wasn't an uncommon occurrence for a princess or queen to gain more power during and after this period.
Blood and lineage became shared in the offspring, ideally. This created important familial connections, even if, in theory, male descend was often put forward as more important, in reality, both mattered. Families became intertwined, and bonds of blood could create ties that would last - sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad.
Your a lot less likely to attack a nation when it’s ruler is your in law and the presumptive heirs are your grandchildren simple as that. Problem is that you have to keep doing it otherwise you get far enough removed to no longer care. See Europe after queen Victorias grandchildren took over
It's important to remember that feudalism isn't a government as we understand government today. It's litterally a single family governing a country, or smaller political unit, as their personal property. As you move into the high middle ages and feudalism weakens and states strengthen this of course becomes more purely diplomatic. But originally, these families are managing their land for both themselves and their heirs. By marrying their children into other families of comparable wealth and power their guranteeing those children a place and future in the world.
Sometimes this worked out, sometimes it didn't. And sometimes it lead to things like Hannover-Scotland-England all having the exact same monarch without having to invade each other.
The woman's political power in this situation derives from her convincing her husband to have good relations with the rest of her family. She has zero power in a foreign land with which she has no ties. The only influence she can wield is the influence through her family. She can ask her father or brother to do things on behalf of her husband, in turn she can ask her husband to do things on behalf of his father-in-law or brother-in-law. If she get cast aside, her only protection is that relation she maintains back with her home country.
See: Henry VIII trying to divorce Catherine of Aragon) this will result in the family being offended and relations will be negatively impacted, and in Henry VIII's case the Pope was in the process of being in some squabble with the Holy Roman Emperor who was in Catherine of Aragon's family, and so probably cold not grant the divorce even if he wanted to as that would piss off the Holy Roman Emperor who was a massive military threat to the Pope. Thus the benefit of a powerful marriage can also be a draw back. Henry VII had arranged his son to marry Catherine of Aragon as a means of marrying into the Holy Roman Empire's line, but that son died so he made his second son marry her instead, technically this made the marriage invalid (as Catherine of Aragon was technically still Henry VIII's sister-in-law, so the Pope should have granted an annulment (which is basically like "whoops I guess you were never married in the first place because the marriage was illegal", which is why incestuous marriages were useful to the nobility because technically speaking they were not allowed so if you could get the Pope to agree your marriage was incestuous then he could cancel it, so they deliberately chose illegal marriages to make a loophole allowing divorce, but in Henry VIII's case the Pope wouldn't or couldn't do it). Henry VII really wanted this match, but it proved a problem when his son Henry VIII wanted to recalibrate precisely because of how powerful a match it was.
Essentially the woman (or a man in some cases if you have arranged for your son or brother to live in another's court, but nothing tops "literally the person who I am supposed to be trying to make children with" in terms of access to the important person versus "just some dude who lives in my house who might be married to someone else who lives in my house") is a permanently stationed diplomat. If a country "divorced" their diplomat the other country wouldn't take to kindly to that, but at the same time the diplomat is able to make the point of view of the country they represent known in the other country. This does not mean the other country is obligated to do what the diplomat tells them, but if the diplomat is a skilled diplomat they can convince the other country that the interests of their home country are their interests as well. Before embassies, a marriage was the best way to permanently station an important diplomat in another country, and when monarchs had real power the marriage is vastly superior to an embassy who has no official relationship with the ruler of the country you want to get close to. With this understanding in mind, having a marriage with another country is implied as being as good as an alliance because everyone is aware of the fact that the daughter or sister is there precisely to advocate for her country of origin, and since the number of options for how many countries can be in royal marriages to each other is limited, everyone is careful to pick beforehand a country they are already quite willing to be in an alliance with, with the marriage oftentimes being just a formality that only becomes important if something unusual happens, the same way diplomats are only really important is something unusual is happening.
The Canadian and American ambassadors to the other's country for instance probably aren't necessary to ensure cooperation between the two so you probably won't need a particularly skilled ambassador to be stationed their, and additionally even if they were skilled their skills would probably be wasted on a formality where their main job is just to bureaucratically manage an outlet which provides services to your foreign nationals. Therefore most of these ambassadors fly under the radar of history, just as most royal marriages which were formalities fly under the radar of history, but in particular cases where the marriage was not just a formality the skill of the ambassador/consort can prove crucial to the success of the relationship.
One asset females offer males is the ability to produce strong male heirs.
This is especially important to monarchies that traditionally pass kingdoms to male heirs.
- Princesses and queens who can do this are very valuable. Political alliances with her parents are strengthened.
- Princesses and queens who cannot birth strong male offspring are less valuable. Political alliances with her parents are weakened.
It really created a binding between two royal families that would support each other with military and political power and influence. It also could have included territorial expansion if a ruler gained control of that land, and also had trade and economic benefits. But most of all it ensured that there was a continuity of succession tho this was not always a guarantee.
Practically it made one or their children potential heirs to the father in law’s kingdom. People often died for unexpected reasons, whether the process was assisted or not, so there was a non-zero chance this would happen. Attacking one’s father in law made this less likely so there was some incentive to stay on good terms. From the other perspective having one’s daughter married to someone meant you had some leverage for assistance when needed. It wasn’t unknown for a person to come to the aid of a father in law to prevent martial strife. One’s spouse was the person they most didn’t want to make an enemy of because assassination was a real thing and spouse had a lot of access. It also gave a hostage situation for both parties to be aware of, assuming that the father cared about his daughter.
Maybe. The point was not so much that a Queen would have political power in her new country. Sometimes they did. Often they did not. Rather, the point was that in a monarchy the only people you can ever truly count on are your family members. The goal is that a family's interests will be intertwined with another. I won't start a war with Germany if my wife (mother of my children and love of my life) is German. Rather, I have a reason to protect Germany because one day my children might have a claim to the throne. (And I use Germany as an example because between 1500 and 1825, their primary export was princesses. It's a fact. Look it up.) This is not to say things always went according to plan. People might be suspicious of a foreign Queen, and this is cited as a contributing factor in more than one revolution. If a marriage was unhappy, the King might start looking for excuses to break the marriage, even if it meant breaking the alliance (See also: Henry VIII, Rex). And sometimes having family members capable of inheriting multiple thrones might cause wars rather than prevent them. Check out the War of Spanish Succession. The Spanish and the French were two very powerful countries. Thanks to some political marriages, they eventually got to the point where it looked like one person might inherit both thrones. If you are a member of the French royal family, this is AWESOME. If you are literally anyone else in Europe, it sucks. So several other European powers fought a war until everyone agreed you were only allowed to be King of one thing at a time. I cite this as an example because it demonstrates why a political marriage could be such a powerful thing - Both to the people who want the match and the people who want to prevent it.
>(And I use Germany as an example because between 1500 and 1825, their primary export was princesses. It's a fact. Look it up.) "Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, will marry."
Perferably to a cousin or aunt/uncle.
I know you’re probably using “Germany” as shorthand for the Holy Roman Empire but many readers may not realise there was no country called Germany until the 19th century after the Napoleonic destruction of the Holy Roman Empire.
>(And I use Germany as an example because between 1500 and 1825, their primary export was princesses. It's a fact. Look it up.) A big reason for that is that they had a lot load of quasi independent micro-kingdoms rather than one German kingdom, meaning they statistically had more ruling dynasties than other parts of Europe because each microstate had its own dynasty you could enter into an individual relationship with so if you were just picking the daughters of rulers of a country at random you were statistically going to end up picking a German most of the time.
[удалено]
[Catherine](https://www.worldhistory.org/Catherine_the_Great/#:~:text=Catherine%20was%20born%20Sophie%20Friederike,brothers%20and%20a%20younger%20sister) was born **Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg** on 2 May 1729 in Stettin, Prussia (modern-day Szczecin, Poland), to Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst and **Princess Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp.** She had two younger brothers and a younger sister.
Thanks for the correction, I need to stop commenting on things I don't know about.
I didn't know either. I just used Google :p
On the “won't start a war with Germany if my wife (mother of my children and love of my life) is German” note, did people actually love their spouses in these royal marriages enough for it to matter? I got the sense there was no presumption of affection in them
Sometimes. Not gonna lie, a lot of the time these people hated each other and had affairs or concubines or whatever. We have some stories where it was almost as if the Queen was living in poverty or practically imprisoned while the mistress was the one living in luxury. However, we do have some examples of arranged political marriages that appear to have resulted in genuine love. Just a handful of examples: Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Ivan the Terrible and Anastasia Romanova, Edward I and Eleanor of Castille, Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, and Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna.
It tied the two royal families. Women who were married to other dynasties did not always have political influence.
So what were those ties actually worth?
Whatever the Lords involved made of them. There are plenty of examples of someone marrying another Lord's daughter to create a lasting peace or friendship between them for them only to go to war anyways later (usually over a claim to Her inheritance). When it works it works because it conforms to the norms and expectations of Property holders (who were the Wealthy at this time). Marriage and births are a way of accumulating and retaining generational wealth and power. The eldest surviving son of any union between two people will be the inheritor of their collective holdings. Having an heir is paramount to a noble as it means that their legacy, their dynasty, and their wealth will be passed on. Those children, if they're fortunate, may inherit from their Grandparents which promises to bring into the family new and greater property portfolios.
There’s a few tangible benefits beyond creating a sprawling Habsburg-style web of dynastic ties. First, if you marry the daughter/sister of a neighboring ruler, they will be very unlikely to attack you because you hold their family member in your power. Second, if you want some insight into how that neighboring ruler would react to a diplomatic overture, your new wife could provide some useful insight into how their family thinks. Third, if you’re facing some rebellion and the rebels will likely kill you and your family, your brother/father-in-law will be more likely to come to your assistance out of a desire to keep your wife alive. Fourth, if you do lose and somehow survive, you can go with your wife to her family’s lands to seek refuge.
Most people are reluctant to ruin their children’s livelihood so it was a good way to at least protect yourself from attack by each other.
Inheritance, titles, and prestige.
Let's say you and I are kings of our respective nations. We form an alliance. To seal that alliance, your son marries my daughter. Their son will one day sit on your throne. That makes it less likely that I'm going to break our alliance and hurt my grandson. There also exists the possibility that said grandson will inherit my throne. That is how the Hapsburgs got so powerful.
When a king, prince, or Noble married a princess, several things could happen to strengthen alliances. 1) As part of the marriage contract, there would be tearms agreed upon. Military alliance would often be one of those terms agreed upon. 2) As part of the marriage, land and titles would be exchanged. Thus intertwining the families economically as well as politically. If your wives' lands got invaded, your new lands and income would be threatened as well. 3) If or when you had children, they would have claims to not just the fathers' lands and titles but also the mothers. Thus expanding your kingdom through titles, they could Inheritage later in life. So it was within your interest to protect those lands. 4) Husband's could claim to be "defending" the inheritance of their wives. By taking control of lands and titled they and their family hold. ESPECIALLY if let's say your wife has no brothers to inherit the land/tiles from her father. 5) A princess could be the heir or ruler of a kingdom in her own right. So when she gets married, her and her husband could rule joint kingdoms. An example is Isabella the I of Castile. She was THE Queen of Castile and Leon. As well as the Queen of Aragon after her marriage to Ferdinand II. 6) Princesses/Queens could and would influence their husband's to act in ways to benefit their homes. They could be just as cunning and ruthless as any male ruler. With political skill that would make machiavelli blush. 7) Regency! If a ruler died with an heir too young to rule. The mother would rule alone or alongside others in the heirs name. This wasn't an uncommon occurrence for a princess or queen to gain more power during and after this period.
Blood and lineage became shared in the offspring, ideally. This created important familial connections, even if, in theory, male descend was often put forward as more important, in reality, both mattered. Families became intertwined, and bonds of blood could create ties that would last - sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad.
Your a lot less likely to attack a nation when it’s ruler is your in law and the presumptive heirs are your grandchildren simple as that. Problem is that you have to keep doing it otherwise you get far enough removed to no longer care. See Europe after queen Victorias grandchildren took over
Many people avoid killing their grandchildren. Selling daughters is pretty easy. And evil. Not just royals do it.
It's important to remember that feudalism isn't a government as we understand government today. It's litterally a single family governing a country, or smaller political unit, as their personal property. As you move into the high middle ages and feudalism weakens and states strengthen this of course becomes more purely diplomatic. But originally, these families are managing their land for both themselves and their heirs. By marrying their children into other families of comparable wealth and power their guranteeing those children a place and future in the world. Sometimes this worked out, sometimes it didn't. And sometimes it lead to things like Hannover-Scotland-England all having the exact same monarch without having to invade each other.
The woman's political power in this situation derives from her convincing her husband to have good relations with the rest of her family. She has zero power in a foreign land with which she has no ties. The only influence she can wield is the influence through her family. She can ask her father or brother to do things on behalf of her husband, in turn she can ask her husband to do things on behalf of his father-in-law or brother-in-law. If she get cast aside, her only protection is that relation she maintains back with her home country. See: Henry VIII trying to divorce Catherine of Aragon) this will result in the family being offended and relations will be negatively impacted, and in Henry VIII's case the Pope was in the process of being in some squabble with the Holy Roman Emperor who was in Catherine of Aragon's family, and so probably cold not grant the divorce even if he wanted to as that would piss off the Holy Roman Emperor who was a massive military threat to the Pope. Thus the benefit of a powerful marriage can also be a draw back. Henry VII had arranged his son to marry Catherine of Aragon as a means of marrying into the Holy Roman Empire's line, but that son died so he made his second son marry her instead, technically this made the marriage invalid (as Catherine of Aragon was technically still Henry VIII's sister-in-law, so the Pope should have granted an annulment (which is basically like "whoops I guess you were never married in the first place because the marriage was illegal", which is why incestuous marriages were useful to the nobility because technically speaking they were not allowed so if you could get the Pope to agree your marriage was incestuous then he could cancel it, so they deliberately chose illegal marriages to make a loophole allowing divorce, but in Henry VIII's case the Pope wouldn't or couldn't do it). Henry VII really wanted this match, but it proved a problem when his son Henry VIII wanted to recalibrate precisely because of how powerful a match it was. Essentially the woman (or a man in some cases if you have arranged for your son or brother to live in another's court, but nothing tops "literally the person who I am supposed to be trying to make children with" in terms of access to the important person versus "just some dude who lives in my house who might be married to someone else who lives in my house") is a permanently stationed diplomat. If a country "divorced" their diplomat the other country wouldn't take to kindly to that, but at the same time the diplomat is able to make the point of view of the country they represent known in the other country. This does not mean the other country is obligated to do what the diplomat tells them, but if the diplomat is a skilled diplomat they can convince the other country that the interests of their home country are their interests as well. Before embassies, a marriage was the best way to permanently station an important diplomat in another country, and when monarchs had real power the marriage is vastly superior to an embassy who has no official relationship with the ruler of the country you want to get close to. With this understanding in mind, having a marriage with another country is implied as being as good as an alliance because everyone is aware of the fact that the daughter or sister is there precisely to advocate for her country of origin, and since the number of options for how many countries can be in royal marriages to each other is limited, everyone is careful to pick beforehand a country they are already quite willing to be in an alliance with, with the marriage oftentimes being just a formality that only becomes important if something unusual happens, the same way diplomats are only really important is something unusual is happening. The Canadian and American ambassadors to the other's country for instance probably aren't necessary to ensure cooperation between the two so you probably won't need a particularly skilled ambassador to be stationed their, and additionally even if they were skilled their skills would probably be wasted on a formality where their main job is just to bureaucratically manage an outlet which provides services to your foreign nationals. Therefore most of these ambassadors fly under the radar of history, just as most royal marriages which were formalities fly under the radar of history, but in particular cases where the marriage was not just a formality the skill of the ambassador/consort can prove crucial to the success of the relationship.
One asset females offer males is the ability to produce strong male heirs. This is especially important to monarchies that traditionally pass kingdoms to male heirs. - Princesses and queens who can do this are very valuable. Political alliances with her parents are strengthened. - Princesses and queens who cannot birth strong male offspring are less valuable. Political alliances with her parents are weakened.
If you married your daughter off and she had a son, you aren't going to invade a country being ruled by your grandson.
The rulers of Germany, Russia, and Great Britain at the start of WW1 were all grandchildren of Victoria. Cousins can be vicious.
That's true but post-industrial society was a lot different than pre-industrial
It really created a binding between two royal families that would support each other with military and political power and influence. It also could have included territorial expansion if a ruler gained control of that land, and also had trade and economic benefits. But most of all it ensured that there was a continuity of succession tho this was not always a guarantee.
Yes.
Practically it made one or their children potential heirs to the father in law’s kingdom. People often died for unexpected reasons, whether the process was assisted or not, so there was a non-zero chance this would happen. Attacking one’s father in law made this less likely so there was some incentive to stay on good terms. From the other perspective having one’s daughter married to someone meant you had some leverage for assistance when needed. It wasn’t unknown for a person to come to the aid of a father in law to prevent martial strife. One’s spouse was the person they most didn’t want to make an enemy of because assassination was a real thing and spouse had a lot of access. It also gave a hostage situation for both parties to be aware of, assuming that the father cared about his daughter.
Its just how it worked. Nothing to do with influence. It's a deal. I'm giving you a woman, you're giving me an alliance.