This Section provides examples of saints’ lives from around the millennium, in the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan of Winchester on the life of Æthelwold, in the work of the author known as ‘B.’ on the life of St. Dunstan (an excerpt describing a miracle involving Dunstan’s harp in the house of a woman where Dunstan was designing an embroidery) with excerpts from the biographies of DUnstan written by post-Conquest writers, namely Osbern of Canterbury, Eadmer and William of Malmesbury, for the sake of comparison. Finally an excerpt is given from Byrhtferth’s life of bishop Oswald, describing his role at the coronation in Bath of king Edgar in 973.

Turning to more ceremonial, less habitual actions in which a young heir’s active participation could be vital, this chapter stresses the political community’s wider investment in children as political actors. Royal children were both enablers and facilitators of diplomacy rather than merely pawns in the diplomatic and political games of adults. Children’s participation could be decisive to acts of association and diplomacy, and thus vital to readying the realm for their succession and rule. The chapter first examines attempts to secure magnate loyalty to children through oaths of fidelity and performances of homage. The earliest stages of the male life cycle had unique attributes in regard to demonstrations of loyalty, and there were substantial benefits in securing oaths to children when they were so young. The chapter then turns to focus on children’s incorporation within performances of cross-kingdom diplomacy, an important aspect of children’s education. The final section foregrounds the chanson de geste Le couronnement de Louis to examine the importance of children’s dynamic contribution at coronation and the wider political community’s investment in boy kings.

The final chapter explores music theatre as a cultural expression of the Empire. Dramatists and composers responded to current events by creating works of varying genres for the Empire's stages. Focusing on Günther von Schwarzburg (Mannheim, 1777; German serious opera) by Ignaz Holzbauer (1711–83), Oberon, König der Elfen (Vienna, 1789; Singspiel) by Paul Wranitzky (1756–1808), Heinrich der Löwe (Frankfurt am Main, 1792; Singspiel) by Carl David Stegmann (1751–1826), Die Feier des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1794; melodrama) by Siegfried Schmiedt (1756–99), the anonymous Der Retter Deutschlands (Vienna, 1797; melodrama), and Achille (Vienna, 1801; opera seria) by Ferdinando Paer (1771–1839), this chapter argues that music theatre portraying the Reich called for cooperation in uncertain times by appealing to a sense of belonging to both local Estate and the Empire. Studies of these works tend to view them as expressions of an emerging German nationalism. This chapter challenges such perceptions, arguing that although the Reich was not a nation-state, composers nevertheless portrayed it as a complex nation and state, placing its past, present, and future centre stage.

The patronage bestowed by British royalty on the arts in the twentieth century has been very little explored. This chapter looks at the most prominent examples of how the monarch, and senior members of the royal family, supported individual writers, artists, musicians, and performers up to the 1970s. A mere royal command or even just interest in a certain work can greatly increase the attention it receives and further its creator’s reputation and success. All the same, royal patronage in this period became a more formalised enterprise. In contrast to previous centuries, royal patronage concentrated more and more on professional organisations and distinct groups, rather than on selected individuals.

Chapter 9 discusses royal inaugurations. It starts out with three particularly well-documented case studies: the enthronement of Emperor Conrad II in 1024, of King Richard Lionheart of England in 1189 and of King Alexander III of Scotland in 1249. The chapter draws attention to the variety of practices adopted in high medieval Europe, and shows that inaugurations cannot be reduced to just one event, but that they include a series of interlocking acts, such as the inauguration itself, but also processions and feasts. Each stage was designed to reinforce basic principles of the royal office, to ensure the continuity of the realm and to display the right order of the world. Particular attention is paid to the process of inauguration as reflecting the status not only of the ruler, but also of his leading subjects, and to the relationship between the ruler and the divine. Kingship was inherently sacred and sacral, but that meant something quite different in a high medieval context than in the modern imagination.

Norms in the Latin west, and the sources they drew upon, were surprisingly consistent: those in power were supposed to be just, pious, generous, humble and valiant; they were to protect the defenceless and heed advice from wise and prudent men; so said the Bible, the Church Fathers, authors of classical antiquity and a body of medieval writers. For real insight into medieval thinking about power, we should look at the debates around these norms and their interpretation, and who had the resources and capabilities to engage in these debates. Surplus resources and widening literacy helped new social groups to emerge, challenging traditional clerical elites and adapting, appropriating and ultimately transformed existing discourses. Social and linguistic diversification, shifts in how a realm was defined, and the emergence of new actors and audiences – all affected how power was conceived. This diversity led to a multiplicity of opinions on how shared norms were constructed and interpreted. An inherent flexibility and elusiveness, along with the vigorous and even violent debates they engendered, define the norms and values of power in the Latin west.

Relations with Assyria dominated from the tenth to the late seventh century. Marduk’s reputation was tarnished as Babylon lost power. Tribes of Chaldeans and Arameans moved into the Sealand, where some settled, becoming literate and powerful. Iron gradually replaced bronze. Fine stone carving continued. Warlike Assyrian kings venerated Babylon, incorporated its gods into their pantheon, and treated the city separately from the rest of Babylonia; but Assyria and Babylon clashed east of the Tigris at Der. Chaldeans intermittently took the throne. Tiglath-pileser III, the first Assyrian king to become king of Babylon, took part in the New Year festival; Sargon II, the second, deposed a Chaldean and deported many disloyal groups, but invested in the city. When Sennacherib ruled Assyria, various rulers of Babylon and interference from Elam ended when he sacked Babylon, which remained kingless for seven years. His patricidal son Esarhaddon made some restitution. At his early death, Esarhaddon’s elder son took the throne, dominated by his younger son, Ashurbanipal, whose library at Nineveh included many Babylonian texts. Betrayed by his brother under Elamite influence, Ashurbanipal sacked Babylon. Royal records end, and three subsequent kings are poorly attested. Nabopolassar, a Babylonian general working in the Assyrian army, defected and took the throne of Babylon.

In the decades between 1204 and 1261 the bronze horseman would be little more than a distant memory. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1261 by Michael VIII of Nicaea, the horseman was rediscovered. It became an intensely treasured relic of a bygone imperial era. In devastated, post-Crusader Constantinople two monuments continued to serve as grand symbols of a once proud empire: Hagia Sophia and Justinian’s column. Michael VIII made the column of Justinian part of the land holdings of the Great Church. Though the horseman triumphed over Latin adversity, the column did not emerge unscathed. The shaft of the column was stripped of its Justinianic bronze panels, which had originally made the column glow like gold. Palaiologan rulers had neither the funds nor the craftsmen to restore the metallic splendor of the column’s original appearance. Until the fall of Constantinople, they continuously invested their ever-diminishing resources into maintaining these two monuments, even as others (including the Holy Apostles) gradually crumbled. The soaring horseman became central to the elevation ritual in imperial coronations. Michael VIII payed homage to and competed with the bronze horseman by erecting a new column. Even though Michael VIII attempted to rival the column of Justinian and to cement his own legacy, he failed.

The Moscow principality was the scene of an intense battle over succession in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. After its end Prince Vasilii II designated his son Ivan as his successor. Ivan III’s two marriages created a problem. Ivan Ivanovich, his son by the first wife, died, leaving a son Dmitrii as a possible heir. Ivan III’s second wife, Sophia Palaiologina, had a son, Vasilii. In 1497 Ivan chose Dmitrii as his heir, but soon changed his mind. The designated heir was his son Vasilii. Vasilii in turn had no children by his first wife, Solomoniia Saburova, so he sent her to a convent and married the Lithuanian princess Elena Glinskaia. During this time the ceremonial oaths of loyalty came to include not just the Grand Prince but his wife and family.

This chapter traces the sequence of events leading to the withdrawal of French forces from Chad in April 1980. It begins with the French decision to overthrew Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Empire, partly in response to his increasingly close relations with Gaddafi. However, the French-organized coup also fatally undercut their peacemaking strategy in Chad.Goukouni, now the president of Chad’s transitional government, became worried that France might attempt to overthrow him as well. This led him patch up his relationship with Gaddafi’s regime in preparation for an imminent struggle with Hissène Habré. This chapter examines these events, analyzing the rapid decline in the ability of French policymakers to influence the Chadian political scene. As fighting broke out between Habré’s forces and those allied with Goukouni, a sharp debate erupted among French policymakers about whether to intervene actively on the side of Goukouni or attempt to maintain an increasingly untenable neutrality. Instead, in April 1980, Giscard decided on a complete withdrawal, judging the risks of intervention too high, with little expected gain.

This chapter begins by discussing the ways that kings tried to ensure that they would be succeeded by their sons, through designation or coronation in the father’s lifetime. Such strategies would also remove the danger of interregna, kingless gaps between reigns. Written rules of succession are also found, increasingly frequently in the later Middle Ages, a period that also saw the development of formal titles for the heir, such as Dauphin and Prince of Wales, although such titles did not in fact make the succession any more secure. Eventually it came to be commonly held that the heir succeeded immediately on the king’s death. Since kings’ sons were brought up to expect to rule, they sometimes became impatient waiting for their fathers to die and this could lead to armed conflict between father and son. The short life expectancy of the medieval period also meant that kings often died while their sons were young and hence decisions had to be made about whether to accept a minor king. Some systems, e.g. the Irish, excluded this possibility, but there are at least 90 medieval cases, when arrangements for some form of regency were necessary, with all the competitive politics it involved.

The fifth chapter explores the sacralisation and liturgification of the royal investiture ceremony in eighth- and ninth-century Western Europe. With the progressive fusion of the rites of unction and coronation in the Carolingian monarchy, the royal investiture ceremony was sacralised and liturgified, and confirmed the increasingly prominent function of the bishop as its ordinary minister. Ceremonial liturgification and iconographic Christification are the two main processes in the consolidation of the ideology and practice of Western monarchies from the eighth century. Carolingian ceremonial practices developed the basic ceremonies of royal accession which would become prevalent in medieval Europe and early modern monarchies, and constitute the main formative period for the ideology and rituals of medieval royalty in the West, between the mid-eighth century and the mid-ninth century. This sacralisation preludes the transgressive nature of the performance of self-coronation among some late Western medieval kings, in which the mediating function of the priest will be damaged. The iconographical Christ substitutes (or, perhaps more accurately, is transferred from) the pagan and theocentric models of pre-Carolingian ceremonies and rites.

The second chapter explores diverse forms of mediation in pre-Christian civilisations, from the Israelite to the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Persian and Greek monarchies, and the symbolic meanings connected with the idea of ‘consecration without mediation’. Based on textual, epigraphic and iconographical evidence, it privileges the analysis of the royal investiture ceremony in Achaemenid and Sassanid Persia, since the practice of self-coronation decisively influenced subsequent periods, reaching Islamic and even contemporary Persia (including the self-coronations of Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1926 and his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1967) and expanding beyond its borders, in Byzantium and central Asia.The objective of this chapter is try to find proof of the growing presence of the investiture and coronation ceremony in the images and narrations that have been preserved from antiquity, such as cave reliefs, coins, murals and historical texts. A natural consequence of the consolidation of this ceremony among the monarchies of the ancient civilisations was the multiplication of the ritual forms in which it appeared, and the consequent images that preserved the ceremony or imagined it. These images necessarily imply, regardless of whether they had a ceremonial reality, the unequivocal message of consecration-without-mediation of the sovereign, a resistance to priestly mediation.

This chapter demonstrates the popularity of Queen Victoria in women's rights campaigning, with a particular focus on the period from 1832 to 1876. It was during this period that a range of influential women's rights activists, including William Johnson Fox, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Harriet Taylor, and John Stuart Mill featured Victoria in their campaigning. The chapter discusses why so many activists found Victoria compelling and how they leveraged her in their arguments for women's emancipation.