Drawing together a wealth of unpublished material in a comparative framework, this volume recreates the life of the courtiers and servants of the imperial court in Vienna and the royal court in Paris-Versailles from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. It reveals how the royal households operated at the heart of the early modern state and offers original approaches to understanding statebuilding and the concept of "absolutism."

For thousands of years, societies have fallen under the reign of a single leader, ruling as chief, king, or emperor. In this fascinating global history of medieval and early modern dynastic power, Jeroen Duindam charts the rise and fall of dynasties, the rituals of rulership, and the contested presence of women on the throne. From European, African, Mughal, Ming-Qing and Safavid dynasties to the Ottoman Empire, Tokugawa Japan and Chos n Korea, he reveals the tension between the ideals of kingship and the lives of actual rulers, the rich variety of arrangements for succession, the households...