In the complex world of medieval Europe, royal succession was governed by a blend of tradition, power struggles, and divine favor. Understanding these unwritten rules reveals how kings and queens rose to power, often through a delicate balance of lineage, acclaim, and strategic alliances.
By James Turner
Within the idiosyncratic mesh of legal theory and cultural traditions that shaped medieval European conceptions of royalty, there were four primary criteria for royal succession. These were ‘lineage,’ ‘acclaim,’ ‘divine favour,’ and ‘appointment.’ ‘Lineage’ is perhaps the most obvious; an aspiring king should have some sort of familial connection to one or more of the throne’s previous incumbents. Ideally, they would be a close and direct member of the former king’s bloodline, such as a son, grandson, or younger brother.
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‘Acclaim’ referred to the support of the kingdom’s aristocracy and regional powerbrokers, the individuals and families with which the king would have to come to some manner of accommodation to exercise power. Any would-be king who attempted to claim the throne without securing the support of a significant portion of the aristocracy would have achieved little other than making themselves targets for other, better connected or more solicitous, candidates.
The importance of ‘acclaim’ was usually signalled within the various coronation services formulated by each kingdom during this period, in which it was common to invite the gathered aristocracy to publicly express their support for or “acclaim” the newly crowned king. As such, coronation ceremonies became increasingly sophisticated. It also became common for particularly powerful or well-connected aristocrats to participate in the ceremony.
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While falling short of the theory of the ‘Divine Right to Rule’ promulgated during the early modern period, medieval European society in the early 13th century had a sense that the institution of kingship was distinct from other secular offices and titles. Kings were not simply Counts or Earls writ large; the title came with a very real, if somewhat vague, spiritual remit and corresponding obligations to the Church.
The coronation ceremony, which had for centuries been considered a crucial prerequisite of legitimate kingship, was presided over by one or more of the kingdom’s senior bishops or archbishops. Most, but not quite all, of the Catholic kingdoms of thirteenth-century Europe featured ‘anointing’ as a crucial part of the coronation ceremony, in which new kings were blessed with the same holy oils and unguents used in the elevation of bishops. The tangentially sacral nature of kingship meant that candidates to the throne would greatly benefit from being able to present themselves as enjoying a degree of divine favour. Generally speaking, this usually manifested itself in securing the support and acquiescence of the kingdom’s bishops.
Of course, the amount of land and resources controlled by a kingdom’s bishops and the central importance of their clerks and clerics to the running of the kingdom’s administration represented an important practical dimension to this requirement. Beyond positive relations with the kingdom’s bishops, and ideally the Papacy itself, royal candidates who were able to point to incidents of divine favor, say through triumph on the battlefield, acquired a degree of legitimacy that transcended mere military coercion.
‘Appointment,’ the last of these criteria, simply meant that the previous king had publicly endorsed the claim of that individual and nominated them as their successor to the throne. The importance of ‘appointment’ depended in large part on the status and prestige of the incumbent king and his dynasty. The Capetian family, who at this time had held the throne of France for around two hundred years, developed the practice of crowning a king’s nominated successor in their own lifetime. This had the effect of easing instability during successions and deepening the association between the dynasty and the kingdom, since the Capetians were able to provide their supporters and subjects with an already crowned and anointed ‘junior’ king ready to step into the senior role.
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King Henry II of England attempted to replicate this system by crowning his eldest son Henry in 1170. However, he faced some opposition from the English bishops who viewed the coronation as the imposition of an alien and legally questionable tradition. Henry II’s refusal to meaningfully share power with his son and his attempts to keep the younger Henry on a tight financial rein inspired the younger king to stage a number of revolts against his father, and the experiment was not repeated.
The relative importance of each of these criteria changed dramatically throughout the medieval period and in reaction to specific political contexts. As a rough rule of thumb, ‘acclaim’ began as the most important criterion before having to make increasing accommodations for the importance of lineage as inheritance practices became both increasingly sophisticated and codified.
The Coronation of Hugh Capet depicted in a medieval manuscript. BnF MS Français 2815, fol. 58v
The Capetian rulers of France first claimed the throne near the very nadir of royal authority within the kingdom in 987. Hugh Capet, a powerful and well-connected noble whose family had been embedded as high-level functionaries within the royal court for several generations, was able, after a fierce internecine struggle, to convince the nobility that he was more capable of holding the royal heartland than the remaining members of the previous royal dynasty, the Carolingians.
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By the early 1170s, the idea of the French nobility trying to set aside the established Capetian line of succession and elect a new king from amongst their number would have been a very hard sell indeed. The Capetians, who had been steadily increasing their power and authority over the course of the twelfth century, still faced considerable opposition from their aristocracy, and armed clashes between the forces of French kings and their nominal subjects were far from uncommon. However, none of these truculent nobles explicitly challenged the Capetians’ right to the throne or legitimacy as the ruling family. Instead, they contested the extent and remits of the authority granted by this royal status. Indeed, the King of France in this period, Louis VII, derived considerable political cachet and authority from his conspicuous personal piety—a carefully cultivated perception that consciously drew parallels to the near-saintly reputation of his ancestor, Robert II.
Of course, while inheritance and succession practices were steadily becoming more standardized during this period, they were still only conventions as opposed to strictly enforced or defined laws. The intricacies and idiosyncrasies of individual situations continued to exert a powerful effect on the relative importance of the criteria for kingship and succession. A good example of this was the accession of King John of England in 1199. When the childless Richard I of England died, there were two obvious candidates for the throne, Duke Arthur of Brittany, the son of Richard’s now-deceased younger brother Geoffrey, and John, Richard and Geoffrey’s younger brother.
Arthur, who was just entering his teens at the time of his uncle’s death, was supported by the majority of the nobility of Brittany and Anjou. John, on the other hand, commanded the support of most of the more powerful aristocracy of Normandy and England. The direction in which inheritance practices were developing clearly favoured Arthur, the candidate from the senior or “stem” branch of the family. On the other hand, John had the more powerful and numerous aristocratic following, and his followers were far better placed to secure the throne of England, which was the family’s only royal title.
King John depicted with his crown falling off
As a result of his greater aristocratic support, John was able to have himself crowned as King of England as well as inheriting the majority of the family’s subsidiary domains and titles. The unfortunate Arthur was then placed under house arrest, only to die soon afterward in mysterious circumstances. There exist numerous but thoroughly contradictory accounts from contemporary chroniclers of Arthur’s death, although most attribute John with at least some level of culpability for his nephew’s premature demise.
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It is also worth examining a “hidden” fifth criterion for succession, seldom discussed in depth purely because it seemed so obvious and natural to contemporary commentators. This, of course, was gender. There was a degree of bias against allowing women to directly inherit royal titles and rule kingdoms in their own right, known in modern parlance as a queen regnant. In some places within Europe at this time, there seemed to be some perception that kingship or monarchy as an institution, with all its connotations, enhanced remit and prestige that elevated it above lesser aristocrats, was not especially compatible with women.
Something I neglected to mention in the succession dispute between Duke Arthur and Prince John was that Arthur had an elder full sister, Eleanor. According to the prevailing ideas about succession and legal conventions at the time of Richard I’s death, Eleanor should be behind her younger brother Arthur but above her uncle John in the order of succession. The political reality of the situation, however, was that while some Breton and Angevin aristocrats were willing to take a gamble on supporting Arthur, none were willing to transfer their support to Eleanor once her brother had been displaced and murdered. Instead, John, all too aware of the danger his niece’s arguably superior claim to the throne could pose, kept her imprisoned for the entirety of his reign.
Medieval queenship is a highly nuanced and tricky subject to talk about because despite a recurrent reluctance to allow a woman to reign in her own right, many medieval queens wielded an enormous amount of power in ways that were both conspicuous and direct. Once installed, queens could exercise a great deal of control over the mechanism of the royal administration and distribution of royal offices and resources, either in their own right or by acting as proxies to their husbands and relatives. Medieval queen consorts were usually selected for the advantageous political and dynastic ties they could bring to their husband and his family. Far from occupying a passive role as a mere conduit of alliances, queens, and other aristocratic women in similar situations, were participants in and mediators of these crucial political alliances. It should therefore be of little surprise that such queens had their own formidable networks of highly placed allies and associates both within and without the kingdom they helped to rule.
Aristocratic marriage practices during this period typically meant that, with the notable exception of dowries, which were often subject to intensive negotiations, the vast majority of a woman’s land and property became her husband’s at the time of marriage. Of course, it should be noted that developments in legal conventions over the course of the twelfth century introduced notable caveats into this process. By the mid-twelfth century, husbands who had come into the possession of property through their wives were increasingly expected to acknowledge their wife as the source of their ownership in charters and legal documents pertaining to the use of that property. This increasingly routine acknowledgment was accompanied by the explanation that the husband was managing the property in question on behalf of his wife and their joint heirs.
Such conventions tended to add a level of complexity to the prospect of women inheriting European thrones because it meant that their spouses, whoever they were, would become king. While the exact balance of power reached between royal spouses was heavily influenced by the alchemy of personal relationships and cultural and political circumstances of their courts, a king consort would undoubtedly wield enormous power and authority within the kingdom. Such dynastic minglings or transfers required far more than the accommodation of a new king.
These incoming royal spouses had their own families and allies, all eager to benefit from the political and financial advantages that came with proximity to the crown. The shift this influx of new royal relatives and favourites brought to the balance of power inevitably created winners and losers, as the newcomers vied with established courtiers for the finite rewards of government. The tumult and uncertainty created by such successions was the true reason why many medieval aristocrats, apprehensive and jealous of their own positions, were often reluctant to countenance the prospect of a woman inheriting the throne.
Henri I of England and his daughter Matilda in the 13th-century Genealogical Chronicle of the English Kings. Wikimedia Commons
Empress Matilda, the nominated heir and only surviving child of Henry I of England, fell afoul of this dynamic. Matilda was married to Geoffrey ‘the Handsome,’ the heir to the county of Anjou. This connection invoked the ire and resentment of many of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy who considered the habitually aggressive Angevins as natural enemies. This situation was made much worse when Henry I died while Geoffrey and his father Fulk were at war with the English king. This reluctance to accept an existing rival as their new king encouraged many Anglo-Norman aristocrats to transfer their allegiance to Matilda’s cousin, Stephen, once he presented himself as an alternative candidate.
Of course, on the other hand, successions and the making of a new monarch were always accompanied by some upheaval as the new ruler attempted to establish their authority while the aristocracy and senior Churchmen had the opportunity to attempt to renegotiate the parameters of their relationship with the king. In a political culture in which rebellion was seen as an acknowledged, albeit extreme, form of protest by overlooked or discontented aristocrats, even succession by members of the same dynasty did not preclude a history of conflict or violence between royal heirs and their predecessors. Male heirs to the throne often had their own supporters and favorites who would have to jostle for position with the old guard of royal functionaries and proxies. As noted above, virtually every king’s wife came with an established retinue of supporters and family members who would need to be accommodated.
That is to say nothing of the disruption to the political status quo caused by the transfer of a kingdom or polity to a new ruling dynasty in the aftermath of conflict or dynastic misfortune. The succession of such new dynasties, who typically secured the throne through a combination of aristocratic support and military success, was often accompanied by a level of political disruption far in excess of that required to accommodate female heirs and their husbands. It is clear that early thirteenth-century European aristocrats, ever eager to protect their own interests, tended to eschew the idea of women inheriting rule of a polity or kingdom. However, it is just as clear that the accommodations and compromises that accompanied such successions differed from that of male heirs only by a matter of degrees, and there was no fundamental difference between the succession of a female or male heir.
If the aristocracy and senior Churchmen of any given polity judged that their collective interests would be best served by the succession of a female candidate to the throne rather than the tumult that would follow the transfer of power to a new dynasty entirely, then they would happily and publicly support the new queen. This meant, as a rough rule of thumb, that the kingdoms and independent polities happiest to acquiesce to the rule of a queen who held the throne through hereditary right usually had a history of difficult successions contested by powerful aristocratic factions or found themselves under threat from an external enemy. Both factors repeatedly played an important role in the succession of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had five ruling queens over the course of the kingdom’s nearly two hundred years of existence.
As we have touched upon, inheritance laws and legal practices became increasingly codified as the medieval period wore on. Aristocrats and other interested parties usually supported, or at least refrained from resisting, this trend because knowing with whom their families’ inheritable interests were most likely to end up allowed them to more effectively plan for the future and protect those assets. Despite this overall trend and the renewed ideological weight that the Renaissance and early modern period would heap upon the monarchy, for much of the medieval period, royal succession was effectively governed by conventions rather than laws. The seemingly variable importance placed upon the criteria for royal succession in different times and locations was the direct result of this distinction. Ultimately, a kingdom’s throne went to the candidate who was best able to take and hold it. Everything else, such as whether their support was predicated upon their membership of a certain dynasty or appointment by the previous king, was merely rationalization after the fact.
It has often been repeated that the medieval Kingdom of France was governed by or followed ‘Salic Law,’ a legal tradition in which women or even men who traced their dynastic claims through a woman were unable to inherit the throne. As a result of the kingdom’s adherence to this system, when Charles IV died in 1328, neither his sister Isabella nor her son Edward were eligible to inherit the throne. Instead, the kingdom passed to Charles’ eldest paternal cousin, Philip.
However, ‘Salic Law’ is an early modern construct that had no bearing or influence upon the reality of royal succession in medieval France. Until 1328, the Capetian family had a run of remarkable dynastic success and were always able to pass the crown to a close male relative such as a son or younger brother. The death of Charles IV marked the first time in which the throne could not be passed on to an immediately obvious male member of the stem family, many of whom had been crowned as co-rulers during their predecessor’s lifetime. Philip VI succeeded to the throne not because of an arcane and fictitious law code but because he was the candidate best positioned to win the support of the French monarchy, which he duly did. At the time of her brother’s death, Isabella was, alongside her political and romantic partner Roger Mortimer, engaged in a war for control of England, having already overthrown her husband, King Edward II.
Meanwhile, her son, the sixteen-year-old Edward III, was the foreign king of a rival country. In the face of the imposition of these disruptive and foreign influences, the French aristocracy rallied around one of their own, Philip. Isabella and Edward were, in the short term at least, far too overwhelmed by domestic affairs in England to even think about contesting the French succession. Meanwhile, later French monarchs simultaneously systematized and mythologized this ad hoc act of enlightened pragmatism as a way of legitimizing a powerful new vision of the French monarchy and its place within the Kingdom.
James Turner has recently completed his doctoral studies at Durham University before which he attended the University of Glasgow. Deeply afraid of numbers and distrustful of counting, his main research interests surround medieval aristocratic culture and identity. You can follow James on X/Twitter @HistorySchmstry
In the complex world of medieval Europe, royal succession was governed by a blend of tradition, power struggles, and divine favor. Understanding these unwritten rules reveals how kings and queens rose to power, often through a delicate balance of lineage, acclaim, and strategic alliances.
By James Turner
Within the idiosyncratic mesh of legal theory and cultural traditions that shaped medieval European conceptions of royalty, there were four primary criteria for royal succession. These were ‘lineage,’ ‘acclaim,’ ‘divine favour,’ and ‘appointment.’ ‘Lineage’ is perhaps the most obvious; an aspiring king should have some sort of familial connection to one or more of the throne’s previous incumbents. Ideally, they would be a close and direct member of the former king’s bloodline, such as a son, grandson, or younger brother.
‘Acclaim’ referred to the support of the kingdom’s aristocracy and regional powerbrokers, the individuals and families with which the king would have to come to some manner of accommodation to exercise power. Any would-be king who attempted to claim the throne without securing the support of a significant portion of the aristocracy would have achieved little other than making themselves targets for other, better connected or more solicitous, candidates.
The importance of ‘acclaim’ was usually signalled within the various coronation services formulated by each kingdom during this period, in which it was common to invite the gathered aristocracy to publicly express their support for or “acclaim” the newly crowned king. As such, coronation ceremonies became increasingly sophisticated. It also became common for particularly powerful or well-connected aristocrats to participate in the ceremony.
While falling short of the theory of the ‘Divine Right to Rule’ promulgated during the early modern period, medieval European society in the early 13th century had a sense that the institution of kingship was distinct from other secular offices and titles. Kings were not simply Counts or Earls writ large; the title came with a very real, if somewhat vague, spiritual remit and corresponding obligations to the Church.
The coronation ceremony, which had for centuries been considered a crucial prerequisite of legitimate kingship, was presided over by one or more of the kingdom’s senior bishops or archbishops. Most, but not quite all, of the Catholic kingdoms of thirteenth-century Europe featured ‘anointing’ as a crucial part of the coronation ceremony, in which new kings were blessed with the same holy oils and unguents used in the elevation of bishops. The tangentially sacral nature of kingship meant that candidates to the throne would greatly benefit from being able to present themselves as enjoying a degree of divine favour. Generally speaking, this usually manifested itself in securing the support and acquiescence of the kingdom’s bishops.
Of course, the amount of land and resources controlled by a kingdom’s bishops and the central importance of their clerks and clerics to the running of the kingdom’s administration represented an important practical dimension to this requirement. Beyond positive relations with the kingdom’s bishops, and ideally the Papacy itself, royal candidates who were able to point to incidents of divine favor, say through triumph on the battlefield, acquired a degree of legitimacy that transcended mere military coercion.
‘Appointment,’ the last of these criteria, simply meant that the previous king had publicly endorsed the claim of that individual and nominated them as their successor to the throne. The importance of ‘appointment’ depended in large part on the status and prestige of the incumbent king and his dynasty. The Capetian family, who at this time had held the throne of France for around two hundred years, developed the practice of crowning a king’s nominated successor in their own lifetime. This had the effect of easing instability during successions and deepening the association between the dynasty and the kingdom, since the Capetians were able to provide their supporters and subjects with an already crowned and anointed ‘junior’ king ready to step into the senior role.
King Henry II of England attempted to replicate this system by crowning his eldest son Henry in 1170. However, he faced some opposition from the English bishops who viewed the coronation as the imposition of an alien and legally questionable tradition. Henry II’s refusal to meaningfully share power with his son and his attempts to keep the younger Henry on a tight financial rein inspired the younger king to stage a number of revolts against his father, and the experiment was not repeated.
The relative importance of each of these criteria changed dramatically throughout the medieval period and in reaction to specific political contexts. As a rough rule of thumb, ‘acclaim’ began as the most important criterion before having to make increasing accommodations for the importance of lineage as inheritance practices became both increasingly sophisticated and codified.
The Capetian rulers of France first claimed the throne near the very nadir of royal authority within the kingdom in 987. Hugh Capet, a powerful and well-connected noble whose family had been embedded as high-level functionaries within the royal court for several generations, was able, after a fierce internecine struggle, to convince the nobility that he was more capable of holding the royal heartland than the remaining members of the previous royal dynasty, the Carolingians.
By the early 1170s, the idea of the French nobility trying to set aside the established Capetian line of succession and elect a new king from amongst their number would have been a very hard sell indeed. The Capetians, who had been steadily increasing their power and authority over the course of the twelfth century, still faced considerable opposition from their aristocracy, and armed clashes between the forces of French kings and their nominal subjects were far from uncommon. However, none of these truculent nobles explicitly challenged the Capetians’ right to the throne or legitimacy as the ruling family. Instead, they contested the extent and remits of the authority granted by this royal status. Indeed, the King of France in this period, Louis VII, derived considerable political cachet and authority from his conspicuous personal piety—a carefully cultivated perception that consciously drew parallels to the near-saintly reputation of his ancestor, Robert II.
Of course, while inheritance and succession practices were steadily becoming more standardized during this period, they were still only conventions as opposed to strictly enforced or defined laws. The intricacies and idiosyncrasies of individual situations continued to exert a powerful effect on the relative importance of the criteria for kingship and succession. A good example of this was the accession of King John of England in 1199. When the childless Richard I of England died, there were two obvious candidates for the throne, Duke Arthur of Brittany, the son of Richard’s now-deceased younger brother Geoffrey, and John, Richard and Geoffrey’s younger brother.
Arthur, who was just entering his teens at the time of his uncle’s death, was supported by the majority of the nobility of Brittany and Anjou. John, on the other hand, commanded the support of most of the more powerful aristocracy of Normandy and England. The direction in which inheritance practices were developing clearly favoured Arthur, the candidate from the senior or “stem” branch of the family. On the other hand, John had the more powerful and numerous aristocratic following, and his followers were far better placed to secure the throne of England, which was the family’s only royal title.
As a result of his greater aristocratic support, John was able to have himself crowned as King of England as well as inheriting the majority of the family’s subsidiary domains and titles. The unfortunate Arthur was then placed under house arrest, only to die soon afterward in mysterious circumstances. There exist numerous but thoroughly contradictory accounts from contemporary chroniclers of Arthur’s death, although most attribute John with at least some level of culpability for his nephew’s premature demise.
It is also worth examining a “hidden” fifth criterion for succession, seldom discussed in depth purely because it seemed so obvious and natural to contemporary commentators. This, of course, was gender. There was a degree of bias against allowing women to directly inherit royal titles and rule kingdoms in their own right, known in modern parlance as a queen regnant. In some places within Europe at this time, there seemed to be some perception that kingship or monarchy as an institution, with all its connotations, enhanced remit and prestige that elevated it above lesser aristocrats, was not especially compatible with women.
Something I neglected to mention in the succession dispute between Duke Arthur and Prince John was that Arthur had an elder full sister, Eleanor. According to the prevailing ideas about succession and legal conventions at the time of Richard I’s death, Eleanor should be behind her younger brother Arthur but above her uncle John in the order of succession. The political reality of the situation, however, was that while some Breton and Angevin aristocrats were willing to take a gamble on supporting Arthur, none were willing to transfer their support to Eleanor once her brother had been displaced and murdered. Instead, John, all too aware of the danger his niece’s arguably superior claim to the throne could pose, kept her imprisoned for the entirety of his reign.
Medieval queenship is a highly nuanced and tricky subject to talk about because despite a recurrent reluctance to allow a woman to reign in her own right, many medieval queens wielded an enormous amount of power in ways that were both conspicuous and direct. Once installed, queens could exercise a great deal of control over the mechanism of the royal administration and distribution of royal offices and resources, either in their own right or by acting as proxies to their husbands and relatives. Medieval queen consorts were usually selected for the advantageous political and dynastic ties they could bring to their husband and his family. Far from occupying a passive role as a mere conduit of alliances, queens, and other aristocratic women in similar situations, were participants in and mediators of these crucial political alliances. It should therefore be of little surprise that such queens had their own formidable networks of highly placed allies and associates both within and without the kingdom they helped to rule.
Aristocratic marriage practices during this period typically meant that, with the notable exception of dowries, which were often subject to intensive negotiations, the vast majority of a woman’s land and property became her husband’s at the time of marriage. Of course, it should be noted that developments in legal conventions over the course of the twelfth century introduced notable caveats into this process. By the mid-twelfth century, husbands who had come into the possession of property through their wives were increasingly expected to acknowledge their wife as the source of their ownership in charters and legal documents pertaining to the use of that property. This increasingly routine acknowledgment was accompanied by the explanation that the husband was managing the property in question on behalf of his wife and their joint heirs.
Such conventions tended to add a level of complexity to the prospect of women inheriting European thrones because it meant that their spouses, whoever they were, would become king. While the exact balance of power reached between royal spouses was heavily influenced by the alchemy of personal relationships and cultural and political circumstances of their courts, a king consort would undoubtedly wield enormous power and authority within the kingdom. Such dynastic minglings or transfers required far more than the accommodation of a new king.
These incoming royal spouses had their own families and allies, all eager to benefit from the political and financial advantages that came with proximity to the crown. The shift this influx of new royal relatives and favourites brought to the balance of power inevitably created winners and losers, as the newcomers vied with established courtiers for the finite rewards of government. The tumult and uncertainty created by such successions was the true reason why many medieval aristocrats, apprehensive and jealous of their own positions, were often reluctant to countenance the prospect of a woman inheriting the throne.
Empress Matilda, the nominated heir and only surviving child of Henry I of England, fell afoul of this dynamic. Matilda was married to Geoffrey ‘the Handsome,’ the heir to the county of Anjou. This connection invoked the ire and resentment of many of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy who considered the habitually aggressive Angevins as natural enemies. This situation was made much worse when Henry I died while Geoffrey and his father Fulk were at war with the English king. This reluctance to accept an existing rival as their new king encouraged many Anglo-Norman aristocrats to transfer their allegiance to Matilda’s cousin, Stephen, once he presented himself as an alternative candidate.
Of course, on the other hand, successions and the making of a new monarch were always accompanied by some upheaval as the new ruler attempted to establish their authority while the aristocracy and senior Churchmen had the opportunity to attempt to renegotiate the parameters of their relationship with the king. In a political culture in which rebellion was seen as an acknowledged, albeit extreme, form of protest by overlooked or discontented aristocrats, even succession by members of the same dynasty did not preclude a history of conflict or violence between royal heirs and their predecessors. Male heirs to the throne often had their own supporters and favorites who would have to jostle for position with the old guard of royal functionaries and proxies. As noted above, virtually every king’s wife came with an established retinue of supporters and family members who would need to be accommodated.
That is to say nothing of the disruption to the political status quo caused by the transfer of a kingdom or polity to a new ruling dynasty in the aftermath of conflict or dynastic misfortune. The succession of such new dynasties, who typically secured the throne through a combination of aristocratic support and military success, was often accompanied by a level of political disruption far in excess of that required to accommodate female heirs and their husbands. It is clear that early thirteenth-century European aristocrats, ever eager to protect their own interests, tended to eschew the idea of women inheriting rule of a polity or kingdom. However, it is just as clear that the accommodations and compromises that accompanied such successions differed from that of male heirs only by a matter of degrees, and there was no fundamental difference between the succession of a female or male heir.
If the aristocracy and senior Churchmen of any given polity judged that their collective interests would be best served by the succession of a female candidate to the throne rather than the tumult that would follow the transfer of power to a new dynasty entirely, then they would happily and publicly support the new queen. This meant, as a rough rule of thumb, that the kingdoms and independent polities happiest to acquiesce to the rule of a queen who held the throne through hereditary right usually had a history of difficult successions contested by powerful aristocratic factions or found themselves under threat from an external enemy. Both factors repeatedly played an important role in the succession of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had five ruling queens over the course of the kingdom’s nearly two hundred years of existence.
As we have touched upon, inheritance laws and legal practices became increasingly codified as the medieval period wore on. Aristocrats and other interested parties usually supported, or at least refrained from resisting, this trend because knowing with whom their families’ inheritable interests were most likely to end up allowed them to more effectively plan for the future and protect those assets. Despite this overall trend and the renewed ideological weight that the Renaissance and early modern period would heap upon the monarchy, for much of the medieval period, royal succession was effectively governed by conventions rather than laws. The seemingly variable importance placed upon the criteria for royal succession in different times and locations was the direct result of this distinction. Ultimately, a kingdom’s throne went to the candidate who was best able to take and hold it. Everything else, such as whether their support was predicated upon their membership of a certain dynasty or appointment by the previous king, was merely rationalization after the fact.
It has often been repeated that the medieval Kingdom of France was governed by or followed ‘Salic Law,’ a legal tradition in which women or even men who traced their dynastic claims through a woman were unable to inherit the throne. As a result of the kingdom’s adherence to this system, when Charles IV died in 1328, neither his sister Isabella nor her son Edward were eligible to inherit the throne. Instead, the kingdom passed to Charles’ eldest paternal cousin, Philip.
However, ‘Salic Law’ is an early modern construct that had no bearing or influence upon the reality of royal succession in medieval France. Until 1328, the Capetian family had a run of remarkable dynastic success and were always able to pass the crown to a close male relative such as a son or younger brother. The death of Charles IV marked the first time in which the throne could not be passed on to an immediately obvious male member of the stem family, many of whom had been crowned as co-rulers during their predecessor’s lifetime. Philip VI succeeded to the throne not because of an arcane and fictitious law code but because he was the candidate best positioned to win the support of the French monarchy, which he duly did. At the time of her brother’s death, Isabella was, alongside her political and romantic partner Roger Mortimer, engaged in a war for control of England, having already overthrown her husband, King Edward II.
Meanwhile, her son, the sixteen-year-old Edward III, was the foreign king of a rival country. In the face of the imposition of these disruptive and foreign influences, the French aristocracy rallied around one of their own, Philip. Isabella and Edward were, in the short term at least, far too overwhelmed by domestic affairs in England to even think about contesting the French succession. Meanwhile, later French monarchs simultaneously systematized and mythologized this ad hoc act of enlightened pragmatism as a way of legitimizing a powerful new vision of the French monarchy and its place within the Kingdom.
James Turner has recently completed his doctoral studies at Durham University before which he attended the University of Glasgow. Deeply afraid of numbers and distrustful of counting, his main research interests surround medieval aristocratic culture and identity. You can follow James on X/Twitter @HistorySchmstry
Click here to read more from James Turner
Top Image: Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms-5187 réserve, fol. 10r.
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