Abstract
ABSTRACT Recent examination of visual displays and documentary accounts of Catherine of Braganza’s creation of her royal image reveals that consideration of the importance of civility in the representation of her queenship is overdue. Catherine cultivated and pushed the boundaries of culturally and socially prescribed norms of behaviour to display both service and strength. These include well-known ones like social gatherings, portraiture, and patronage of Italian music, and less well-known ones like her adoption of partially dressing and undressing in front of others and reorganisation of her household. Promoting a personal agency that combined civility, Catholic piety, and political pragmatism enabled Catherine to ensure recognition of Portugal’s nationhood, the primary purpose of the royal marriage. Yet it was her promotion of English Catholicism at court and among English recusants in the decade preceding the political and religious crises of the late 1670s and early 1680s that also challenged her strategies of civility and personal agency and required Catherine to examine if she could be both a royal consort and a royal politician.
Published Version
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