Jan Rüdiger, All the King’s Women: Polygyny and Politics in Europe, 900–1250, trans. Tim Barnwell. The Northern World, 88 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020; orig. 2015), xi, 452 pp.

Abstract

It’s a little odd to review a book six years after it had appeared in the original printing (German) and now in its English translation. We can assume that Jan Rüdiger’s massive, dense study on early medieval polygyny has already received sufficient accolades and comments which motivated the publisher Brill to get his work out in print in an English translation. But this monograph has not yet been reviewed in Mediaevistik, so I believe that it deserves at least some critical feedback. This book is the result of Rüdiger’s research for his “Habilitation,” which had appeared in 2015 under the title Der König und seine Frauen: Polygynie und politische Kultur in Europa (9.–13. Jahrhundert) with Walter de Gruyter.