Family Business: Dynastic Power in Central Europe in the Earlier Middle Ages

Abstract

This article aims at describing the norms and practices of dynastic power in Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary in the earlier Middle Ages. It focuses on the questions concerning the internal structure of the ruling house, the modes of wielding power, and the rules of succession to the throne. Discussing the various strategies used by the dynasties ruling the Central European polities to define their monarchical position and shape their identity, it presents changing patterns of dynastic rulership and put them against the wider background of processes of transformation of the concepts of dynastic power in the medieval West.