Women, Power and Culture in the European Transition between the XVIIth and the XVIIIth Centuries

Many studies have already reconstructed the biographies of princesses and queens, but, still, too few have focused on the networks of relationships such women engaged in. Were they properly taken into account, such networks would reveal a very complex court space, and a female-oriented power management even more vital and effective than the one usually emphasized in the historical narrative. Indeed, besides the close-up protagonists, a mosaic of personalities with political tasks in informal spaces happened to play crucial roles in the diplomatic negotiations that do not emerge from the official sources, however important they were for the management of the courts’ politics. These study sheds light on the relocation and exchange of women in the European courts’ system. This resulted also in the circulation of cultural models, languages, lifestyles, and the crossbreeding of the different cultures that entered into contact with them. Indeed, the study of the network of relationships that women built inside the courtly world of the Ancien Régime allows us to expand the historian’s viewpoint in a multidisciplinary way, embracing the political, social, economic, cultural, artistic and religious history.