Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics, c.1500-1800

Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics examines the roles that queens consort played in dynastic politics and cultural transfer between their natal and marital courts during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This collection of essays analyses the part that these queens played in European politics, showing how hard and soft power, high politics and cultural influences, cannot be strictly separated. It shows that the root of these consorts’ power lay in their dynastic networks and the extent to which they cultivated them. The consorts studied in this book come from territories such as Austria, Braunschweig, Hanover, Poland, Portugal, Prussia and Saxony and travel to, among other places, Britain, Naples, Russia, Spain and Sweden. The various chapters address different types of cultural manifestation, among them collecting,portraiture, panegyric poetry, libraries, theatre and festivals, learning, genealogical literature and architecture. The volume significantly shifts the direction of scholarship by moving beyond a focus on individual historical women to consider ‘queens consort’ as a category, making it valuable reading for students and scholars of early modern gender and political history.

List of Figures Acknowledgements Note on Proper Names Notes on Contributors Introduction: Politics, Culture and Queens Consort Adam Morton Art Collections as Dynastic Tool: The Jagiellonian Princesses Katarzyna, Queen of Sweden, and Zofia, Duchess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel Almut Bues The Consort in the Theatre of Power: Maria Amalia of Saxony, Queen of the Two Sicilies, Queen of Spain Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly The ‘Two Bodies’ of the Female Sovereign: Awkward Hierarchies in Images of Empress Maria Theresia, Catherine the Great of Russia and their Male Consorts Christina Strunck Luise Ulrike of Prussia, Queen of Sweden, and the Search for Political Space Elise Dermineur and Svante Norrhem Marriage in a Global Context: Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland Clarissa Campbell Orr Dynastic Positioning and Political Newsgathering: Hedwig Eleonora of Schleswig-Gottorf, Queen of Sweden, and her Correspondence Jill Bepler Greeting the Stuart Queens Consort: Cultural Exchange and the nuptial texts for Henrietta Maria of France and Catherine of Braganza, Queens of Britain Anna-Marie Linnell Sanctity and Suspicion: Catholicism, Conspiracy and the Representation of Henrietta Maria of France and Catherine of Braganza, Queens of Britain Adam Morton Four Weddings and Five Funerals: Dynastic Integration and Cultural Transfer between the Houses of Braunschweig and Brandenburg in the Eighteenth Century Thomas Biskup Afterword: Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly Index

Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly is Professor of German Literature at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Among her books are Court Culture in Dresden from Renaissance to Baroque (2002) and, most recently, Beauty or Beast? The Woman Warrior in the German Imagination from the Renaissance to the Present (2010). Adam Morton is Lecturer in British History at Newcastle University. He is the editor of Getting Along? Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England (2012) and Illustrated Religious Texts in the North of Europe 1500-1800 (2014).