Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter elaborates the broad conclusions found in the study of ritual and dynasty in Russian royal weddings. It argues that wedding rituals were about dynasties and succession, and only incidentally about foreign policy or diplomacy. The chapter also unveils that wedding rites revealed both the misogyny of the court and the agency of royal women in a political system that rested so vitally on marriage and kinship. Also, royal weddings very directly revealed the interplay between Christian and non-Christian culture. The chapter then describes Peter I's reforms as part of a much longer and larger process of adaptation, borrowing, and improvisation. Ultimately, the chapter asserts royal weddings as an essential ritual that must be studied alongside other court spectacles like coronations, birthdays, name days, funerals, processions, and diplomatic audiences. It addresses weddings through the lens of dynasty and succession, which has necessarily led us to many other vital questions along the way and produced a number of venturesome reconsiderations of matters long thought settled in the historiography.