The royal court in every European state, including the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, played a representative role. The ceremonial functions at the Polish court, both private and public, connected the monarch with his subjects through a system of symbols, gestures and rituals. Private ceremonies included the christenings, birthdays and funerals of royal children and others concerning the royal family personally. In the case of private ceremonies, only a limited number of courtiers and those in the monarch’s or queen’s immediate entourage attended, although they were publicly known about. This chapter will analyse the private celebrations of the court of Louise Marie de Gonzague-Nevers (1611–1667), such as the births, baptisms and, unfortunately, deaths of royal children. These were private ceremonies and were marked by the smallest group of people, although their setting undoubtedly flowed far beyond the royal court, along with information about these events. Every detail, even the smallest, of these ceremonies was important, and a large role was also played by the godparents, who had to be chosen carefully, taking into account political considerations.

Any early modern ruler had to have devoted supporters. Most of them gathered around the king in order to obtain specific official and financial benefits, and sometimes they had similar political views to the monarch. However, this issue looked a bit different in relation to Vladislav IV Vasa, king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, who was considered by the nobility as a sympathetic and easy-going ruler (as opposed to his more secretive father, Sigismund III). Vladislav was a king who made friendships easily, and people close to him were very clearly at the centre of influence and thus political power. One of the main objectives of this article is to indicate when and how the magnates established private contacts with Vladislav as prince and how they developed once he became king. A separate issue discussed centres on categories related to the understanding of friendship as an element of privacy in the early modern period. Through an in-depth analysis of the letters and memoirs left by the elite of the Polish-Lithuanian state, case studies of private friendships emerge, including the King’s close relationships with Adam Kazanowski, Jan Stanislaw Sapieha, Gerard Denhoff, Aleksander Ludwik Radziwiłł, Krzysztof Radziwiłł and several others.

Countess Ludwika Maria Zamoyska-Poniatowska (1728–1804) and her only child, Urszula Wandalin Mniszech-Zamoyska (1750–1816) were prominent figures at the court of their brother and uncle Stanisław August Poniatowski (1732–98), the last king of Poland from 1764 to 1795. Their influence has been recognised in the past, yet their — informal — politics have started to attract the attention of scholars only recently, while their architectural endeavours have yet to be explored. This paper offers a case-study of the no longer extant Zamoyska palace in Warsaw, the renovation of which was managed by Urszula Mniszech, on behalf of her mother. A set of architectural drawings from the 1780s and a 1799 inventory of the residence form the main focus of study. The distribution and function of rooms, interior decoration and the façade provide clues to the way this residence was to shape the life of Ludwika Zamoyska in a time of political upheaval. The variations between seemingly executed and rejected architectural designs also raise questions that can contribute to a better understanding of the different meanings of privacy in the late eighteenth century.

This article analyses the wedding poems (epithalamia) from the Jagiellonian courts of Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II Augustus in order to understand what privacy was and how it was comprehended in the sixteenth century Polish Lithuanian-Commonwealth courts. Applying the terminological and the heuristic zone approach, this article deals with the idea that in early modern Central-Eastern Europe, privacy could have an ambiguous meaning. On the one hand, it could be grasped as family ties, especially in poems following the classical tradition where priv* words appear, and on the other hand, as the King’s personal property understood as an artifact commissioned or possessed by the ruler that formed part of his domestic belongings. The epithalamia also let us observe the wedding rituals and customs practiced by the Jagiellonians and prove their derivation from Western European court traditions.

Many noblemen from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth travelled across Europe in the eighteenth century. One of the obligatory places in their itinerary was Paris, especially Versailles — a symbol of court created by Louis XIV. During any stay in Versailles, the most important point on the agenda would be to see the court. There was no particular problem with attending the public audience, but travellers wanted to see the court up close. Depending on several factors (date of the source, age of the writer, purpose of the journey, degree of intimacy with the court, etc.), the accounts of the court of Versailles vary from descriptions of royal apartments and ceremonies (both secular and religious), through to detailed reports of political events, and accounts of private conversations with the royal family and the French elite during meals. This article presents different depictions of the private and public spheres at the court of Versailles observed by travellers from Poland and Lithuania and attempts to show the various perspectives on privacy at the court of Versailles.

In the early modern period, country house areas developed on the outskirts of resident towns throughout Europe. During summertime when the royal court withdrew from the capital to its summer palace, higher-ranking members of court would also retire to the suburbs. For members of the diplomatic corps or high nobility, keeping up with the politics and sociability of court life was crucial, even in the warmer months. The countryside was a recreational space, and the political function of the suburban villa was therefore different from that of the town. The suburban villa was characterised by a relative simplicity and intimacy in appearance, yet it was a highly political arena. Court members and royals were free from their urban duties, having retired to the privacy of the countryside, but this article argues that the political sociability of court life continued, adapting to a different setting. Indeed, the suburban villa was a space where relationships could be deepened, or vital political matters discussed on more private terms. Court members went on carriage rides, held pique-niques or even balls during these stays in the suburbs, often employing for political purposes the connection between privacy and sociability that was intrinsic to countryside existence. The article discusses the experiences and agency of men and women, and the dynamics of court and countryside on the outskirts of the Danish capital of Copenhagen in the late eighteenth century.

Since the first appearance of monarchies, the presence of the king determined a graded hierarchy of the surrounding space. At the same time, the position of the different courtiers in that ‘created’ space showed their rank in the palatial world and, therefore, in the whole of the court, determining the degree of access to the royal person. The admission to the Royal Household of the monarch, especially to the Royal Chamber, favoured this closeness to the ruler. This contribution aims to study the evolution of the shape of the palatine space that took place in the seventeenth-century Spanish Monarchy, especially the changes related to the Royal Chamber that regulated access to the most private spaces of the king. Indeed, in the daily practice of government during the reigns of Philip III and Philip IV, the validos, or minister-favourites like Lerma and Olivares, confirmed that the royal palaces were political spaces, and they strove to submit these spaces to their control. Within this context, the Instruction of 1637 and other subsequent regulatory documents focused on restricting the access to the royal apartments, with the Chamber at their heart, influencing the relation between private and public at court.

Hunting at the court of Elizabeth I of England was not a peripheral activity, nor was it a solely male pursuit. Hunting was an important social and cultural practice that was pivotal for communication, gathering information, social intercourse and politics. At the same time, hunting was an informal and ephemeral activity that was secluded and offered degrees of privacy. Yet the study of hunting as a contextually and culturally driven phenomenon that straddled the public/private divide, as an activity where elite women were active agents and skilled huntresses, and how these dimensions impacted early modern sociability, court culture, politics, and diplomacy remains underexplored. To begin addressing this gap, this article demonstrates how Elizabeth I not only regularly engaged in hunting, but also maintained a dedicated hunting staff and utilised hunting as a tool to facilitate private politics and shape courtly behaviour.

The aim of this article is to analyse the changes taking place in the marital policy of the nobility as followed by the court of Augustus II, king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania. The election of a member of the Saxon Wettin family to the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth radically changed the balance of power there. The representatives of new, but politically involved, circles started looking for career opportunities as state officials and the chance to join the royal court, both in Warsaw and in Dresden. The marital strategy of Polish magnates to ally with foreign families, notably those already associated with the court of Electoral Saxony in Dresden, was one of the methods of seeking advancement and influence. An analysis of the examples of careers developed at the royal court allows us to identify the mechanisms by which the King himself tried to build a loyal party in the Commonwealth using private, personal links to himself and to his family. The policy of intentional steering of marriage strategies, which has not been analysed so far, turned out to play a fundamental role in this goal. International marriages gave individuals and their families chances for preeminent advantages (as with transregional nobles all over Europe), but private links with the King were crucial for personal careers and were forged through marriage to members of his family, both legitimate and illegitimate.