Royal Household Research Articles

The Types of Discrimination and Princess Diana’s Ways to Pursue Her Freedom in Spencer (2021)

This article elaborates the film "Spencer," characterized as "a fable from true tragedy" based on Princess Diana's story. The focus of the research is on how Princess Diana pursued her freedom. The methodology involves a direct viewing and interpretation of "Spencer," analyzing visual scenes and audio dialogues. Following Roland Barthes' semiotic approach, the researcher identifies denotative signs, transitions them into connotative markers, and ultimately explores the mythic stage. Specific scenes, such as Princess Diana encountering a sign urging silence and her secretive actions in the palace, are dissected to reveal layers of meaning. Through semiotic analysis, the article illustrates Princess Diana's attempts to break free from royal constraints. Each scene reflects the conflict between individual desires for freedom and the norms imposed by the royal institution. The study offers a nuanced understanding of Princess Diana's struggle within the royal family's rules and pressures. The analysis provides profound insights into how "Spencer" portrays Princess Diana's quest for personal freedom amidst the rigid regulations of the royal household, employing semiotics as a valuable approach to unravel the meanings embedded in visual and auditory elements of the film.

A doctor for the crown princess: child mortality and women’s political agency at the Danish court, 1784–1797

ABSTRACT This article examines the entwined dynamics of gender, material bodies, and court politics at the Danish, absolutist court during what has been termed the reform reign, 1784–1797. The reform reign was inaugurated by a 1784 bloodless coup d’état, in which the crown prince took power in the royal Privy Council. During the following years, his leading advisers faced opposition from other factions at court and within the royal family, and the crown prince and his wife faced reproductive challenges, as they lost several children shortly after birth. The article explores the attempts at seeking influence made by two wives of leading advisers to the royal crown prince, Frederik (6.). Producing a male heir was imperative to the crown prince couple’s claim to power in the absolutist reign, and the advisers’ political positions therefore also hinged on the couple’s reproduction. I discuss how the advisers’ wives, the two sisters Sybille Reventlow (1753-1827) and Charlotte Schimmelmann (1757-1816), attempted to solve these issues and advance their group’s position at court. The article identifies several strategies employed by the women to help the crown prince couple’s situation, but primarily aimed at the crown princess; firstly, conversations on childrearing; secondly, the discussion of adoption; while a third strategy included traveling to the spa at Bad Pyrmont, where the advisers’ wives would engage the spa’s famous doctor Heinrich Mathias Marcard as accoucheur to the crown princess. The women’s struggles to gain influence show how those women who were not members of the royal household tried to navigate the political world of a hereditary and personal monarchy, where personal relationships and parenting experiences were also a political matter.

Discover Use Linen Back Baby Carriers in Ancient Egypt

Egyptological Research of the hieroglyphics of Linen back baby carriers specifically used in ancient Egypt, there is a depiction from a tomb dating back to 1500 B.C. that shows women carrying children in what appears to be white fabric carriers on their backs. Objectives of This article present a thought-provoking perspective on a possible link between ancient Egyptian design and ergonomics. Remember that this is an ongoing field of research, and new discoveries or interpretations may challenge or refine the presented ideas. Always strive to critically evaluate sources and consider alternative perspectives when exploring historical topics. Egyptians were resourceful people and linen was one of their most common textiles. And It's highly they used linen for a variety of purposes, including carrying children. However, since most Egyptians were farmers and laborers, they used simpler methods for carrying their children, such as slings made from scraps of fabrics. The Pharaohs of Egypt innovate the science of ergonomics and the design of infant carriers the value of our pictures for the earliest history of art. Definitive proof of photos ancient Egypt, the explicit evidence does of back baby carriers being used in ancient Egypt, even within the royal household. Considering the cultural context, practical advantages, and potential adaptations for royalty, further research holds promise in unlocking this fascinating aspect of childcare in a bygone era. This article is intended for research informational purposes and should be depended of research professional ergonomics medical advice. And this research paper is a starting point and can be further expanded upon by including specific citations, additional research findings, and personalized discussions based on your specific interests and areas of focus.

Discover Use Linen Back Baby Carriers in Social Science of Ancient Egypt

Discover Use Linen Back Baby Carriers in Social Science of Ancient Egypt

The Portuguese Court’s Acquisition of Musical Scores from Italy in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries and the Fundo do Conde de Redondo

ABSTRACT The assembling of a library of musical scores of Italian music and libretti was an enterprise undertaken by the Portuguese court throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The library served a practical need, especially in the wake of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and expressed the court’s musical taste; as a result, it received significant investment. Information concerning the growth of the library can be found in previous work on the composer Niccolò Jommelli and his heirs, who were involved in sending scores of the composer’s music to Portugal in the 1760s and 1770s. Drawing attention to evidence in Portuguese royal household correspondence that has not been considered fully to date, as well as some of the scores today preserved in two Lisbon libraries, this article offers a wider examination of how music manuscripts came to Portugal from Italy between c.1770 and c.1820.

Adapting Whiteness Katherine of Aragon in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s All is True and Starz’s The Spanish Princess

The sources influencing Shakespeare’s representation of racialized queens continue to shape popular media representations of queenship. In this article, I argue that Juan Luis Vives’ Instruction of a Christian Woman influenced Shakespeare’s representation of Katherine of Aragon’s idealized whiteness in All is True (Henry VIII). Moreover, I show how Vives and Shakespeare in turn influence Starz’s 2019 The Spanish Princess. Firstly, I how Vives represents the domestic space of the royal household a form of racial enclosure intended to manage the paradoxical confluence of the queen’s biological reproductivity and the social circulation of her image. Katherine’s patronage of Vives demonstrates her agency in cultivating her cult of queenship through gendered and racially charged notions of kinship, conduct, and labor. These tropes elevate the racial purity of the queen through and at the expense of lower class and enslaved peoples whose work is often rendered invisible. I also argue that Vives and Shakespeare’s praise of Katherine’s exemplary kinship, conduct and labor function as compensatory mechanisms that serve to reify Katherine’s whiteness even as her marriage to Henry VIII is failing. While Starz’s The Spanish Princess recasts Katherine of Aragon’s story through the contemporary lens of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, it nevertheless borrows from Shakespeare and Vives’ construction of queenly whiteness at the expense of racial others.

Arts and Crafts Management Model of Baan Huai Ta Community, Utttaradit Province

Purpose: The objectives of the present research on the arts and crafts management model of Baan Huai Ta community, Uttaradit province were to analyze the community arts and crafts management model; develop the community arts and crafts management model; and evaluate the community arts and crafts management model of Baan Huai Ta, Uttaradit Province. Theoretical Framework: This study employs the concept of local wisdom and product development and design. Design/Methodology/Approach: The procedures involved building a network, acquiring knowledge, developing a community arts and crafts management model, developing community arts and crafts, evaluating the community arts and crafts management model. A qualitative research was employed consisting of observation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussion, and participatory action. Findings: The analysis of community arts and crafts management model suggested the area-based potential of Baan Huai Ta with arts and crafts abilities including weaving, wickerwork, and wood carving. Her Majesty Queen Sirikit had graciously supported people in the community to receive career development trainings in arts and crafts intended to offer extra jobs for generating more income. Their products were delivered for distribution to the Bureau of the Royal Household and the Arts and Crafts Promotion Foundation. Research Practical and Social Implication: Evaluation results of community arts and crafts works were as follow: increased value at a highest level; design concept at a highest level; selection of raw materials at a highest level; production process at a highest level; quality and beauty at a highest level; increased value added at a very high level; creating identity at a very high level; and generating value added at a very high level. The arts and crafts management model of Baan Huai Ta community, Uttaradit province comprised 4 components namely: analysis of community context; analysis of community management//network building; development of arts and crafts; and evaluation of arts and crafts management model. Originality/Value: The development of community arts and crafts management models focused on the designs with applied local wisdom to provide community products. The design concept is based on the link of science and knowledge in coordination with applied local materials to develop community products with an aim to bring about value added, self-reliance, as well as group forming. This had led to the development of products consisting of 12 pieces of fabric art and craft products, 2 pieces of carving art and craft products, and 8 pieces of wickerwork arts and crafts products, totaling 22 products.

A Chaucer Holograph

ABSTRACT The article argues that when Chaucer asked Richard II for leave to appoint a proxy to perform his duties at the London wool quay in 1385, he wrote the petition in his own hand. The evidence is the informal nature of the petition itself, which is short, simply worded, and carelessly written; its form (as a “chamberlain’s bill,” it offered the simplest bureaucratic option for a member of the royal household); and the facts that it is an original, not a bureaucratic copy, and once bore Chaucer’s personal seal; that its spelling of Chaucer’s name as “Geffray” may reflect a personal preference; and that Chaucer was allowed no clerical staff and was expected to keep records in his own hand. Chaucer’s contemporaries wrote more elaborate petitions than this one in their own hands, so the burden of proof lies with those who wish to claim that this petition is the work of a professional scribe.

Women Suppliers to Medieval Courts: Making Visible Ducal and Royal Power

AbstractThis article analyses under‐studied women suppliers to medieval courts, with a focus on Burgundian and French courts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through its archival research, it identifies over a hundred women involved in creating, supplying and repairing objects. Starting from the objects supplied, provisioned or repaired by women, the article seeks to understand women suppliers as significant actors in ducal and royal households through the way in which the objects they supplied became visible and meaningful expressions of ducal and royal power.

Travelling Across Cultures: Some Aspects of the Safavid Envoys’ Travels to Venice

The paper aims to explore the practical aspects of the Safavid envoys’ travels to Venice in the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth centuries. In particular, it will reconstruct the itineraries of the journeys of the Safavid delegates to Venice, analyse the challenges and difficulties of long-distance travel experienced by them and the impact of the Ottoman factor on both the Safavid and Venetian envoys’ travel planning and trajectories. The paper reveals that the first Safavid trade mission to Venice was sent in 1597 and not in 1600, as previously known in the historiography. We will shed light on the social status of the Safavid envoys and clarify the role and duties of the garak-yaraqs (purveyors) of the Safavid Royal Household among them. We will examine the impact of the overall character of the Safavid-Ottoman relations both on the size of the missions and the intensity of the diplomatic and trade contacts between the Republic of Venice and the Safavid Empire.

Introduction: The Iberian Queen’s Households: Dynamics, Social Strategies, and Royal Power

The study of royal households has undergone a remarkable development in recent years. Thanks to the appearance of works on their composition, family strategies, or specific people at the service of queens and infantas, it is possible to raise new analytical questions, or to focus on lesser-known stages, such as the queens’ youth. The company and service of officers, ladies-in-waiting, maidens, or servants contributed to the creation of a “circle of security” for the infanta and later for the queen, but also of a political instrument, and even of a cultural agent if necessary. The examination of the royal environment of Iberian queens and infantas allows us to understand exchanges in court codes and etiquette, or the demonstration of royal authority over a bordering territory. The comparative study of the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula reflects the ability of royal women when it comes to introducing changes in the composition of the household, as well as being key to understanding the motivations of the personnel at their service. Thus, the objectives of this monographic issue are vindication of queenly authority from the first demonstrations of her political capacity, and contextualization of the changes and decisions orchestrated within the queen’s household through some previously unknown cases in the Late Middle Ages and the early modern eras.

A eunuch at the threshold: mediating access and intimacy in the Mughal world

AbstractAcross the early modern Islamicate world, the phenomenon of eunuch slavery constitutes a significant aspect of courtly contexts and royal households. Although Mughal historiography has focused on the eunuch primarily in relation to the harem, this article analyses the function of such figures in regulating elite male space, in order to explore how these practices shaped both the representation of courtly life as well as the dynamics animating the Mughal court and the inner palace. As is shown in both textual and visual materials, enslaved, castrated men appear as figures both marking and mediating the perimeters of such spaces. In the process they played an important part in the spatial formation of access, intimacy, and hierarchical relations. However, their formative role in mediating elite social interactions at times entangled eunuchs in political conflict. The article concludes with an examination of a particularly dense archive of evidence from the reign of Aurangzeb dealing with royal princes. This material underlines the sometimes-precarious situation of eunuchs in moments of intrafamilial struggle, a fact which suggests the complicated reality of these kinds of intimate roles not only in Mughal princely households but wherever they took on such proximate positions.

Marriage, Political Alliance, and Imperial Polities in Early Ghaznavid History

This article considers how marriages were utilized in early Ghaznavid history to forge political alliances, establish relationships of power and to bind together different royal family households. Marriage was employed as a diplomatic tool to ease political tensions and to strengthen coalitions. The Ghaznavid ruler Maḥmūd (r. 388–421/998–1030) utilized marriage alliances with great success to consolidate and expand his territories. In 391/1001, he forged a coalition with the Karakhanids through a marriage to the daughter of Naṣr b. ʿAlī (d. 403/1012–3). In 406/1015–16, Maḥmūd married his own sister Ḥurra Kāljī to the Khwarazmshah al-Maʾmūn II (r. 399–407/1009–17). This paper attempts to answer unstudied questions concerning the role of marriage and the influence of female royal family members in the construction of imperial polities of the medieval period in Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan. It shows that the effective creation of strategic marriage alliances was a key factor in the success of the early Ghaznavid empire.

Parliamentary Dress

Parliamentary Dress

The Regulation of Private Spaces: The Codification of the Royal Chamber of the Spanish Monarchy in the Seventeenth 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.

Royal Sites as Core Element of Early Modern Monarchies: Social Integration in Seventeenth-Century Castile

A great deal of research has been published on royal sites, although up until now studies have focused primarily on their artistic heritage. This article brings a more holistic approach to the study of these sites in order to reconsider their role in the construction of European identities in the early modern period, drawing mainly from the field of court studies. This article examines the social role played by royal sites in terms of integrating the population of the Castilian kingdom from the reign of Philip IV (1621-1665) onwards. During his rule the bonds between the royal possessions and the central court were tightened more than ever before, and, as a result, the material resources of these royal sites were used to provide those servants with retirement deals, creating a system of social welfare for those directly or indirectly related to the royal households and royal sites, especially at the middle and lower levels of society.

The tapir in the room: Ancient Maya storage architecture

• Despite its crucial economic importance, storage remains a surprisingly rare topic in Maya archaeology. • Evidence for storage architecture among the modern, colonial era, and ancient Mayas can help build a middle-range theory for studying this topic. • Architectural, artifactual, and geoarchaeological data can help archaeologist recognize distinct types of above-ground storage architecture, such as kitchens, storerooms, storehouses, and warehouses. • Classic Maya royal courts relied on ancillary, centralized, and administrative storage facilities. • Storage is a necessary and productive angle for studying ancient Maya household and political economies. The storage of abundant foodstuffs or items is a central element of all economies, but strangely remains a rare topic in the field of ancient Maya anthropological archaeology. This paper aims to fill this lacuna by proposing a middle-range theory of ancient Maya storage architecture. This theoretical framework is built on extensive empirical data derived from ethnographical, ethnohistorical, and archaeological literatures. This middle-range model is then applied to the Later Classic (700–900 CE) regal palace of La Corona, Guatemala where five distinct, yet complementary storage contexts are identified on archaeological and geoarchaeological grounds. The storerooms, storehouses, and warehouse found in this royal household were used to store distinct foodstuffs, commodities, administrative tools, taxes and tribute, ceremonial paraphernalia, and prestige items. These complementary architectural contexts are arranged along a pragmatic operational chain, where they occupy ineluctable positions. In this paper, I show that placing storage at the center of ancient Maya economic inquiry – be it for household or political economies – is not only possible, but necessary and productive.

Female participation in Judean family religions

In this contribution it will be argued that females in ancient Judean families not only played economic, educational, reproductive, and sexual roles, but also took part in religious activities performed within the extended family; and that this neglected religious role of females must be taken into consideration when reflecting on the status of females within the male-dominated beit `ab (“house of the father” or extended family). The possible role played by females in ancient “family religion” will be investigated by engaging with the research related to Judean Pillar Figurines and the role of the queen mother in Judean royal households. Against this background, it will be argued that it is possible that ancient Judahite families had heterarchical qualities despite their dominant hierarchical and patriarchal character in view of the religious agency of women suggested by archaeological evidence.

Shaw the Fighter (Bernard Shaw and the Censors. Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen)

Shaw the Fighter (Bernard Shaw and the Censors. Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen)

Who Was Cecily Chaumpaigne?

ABSTRACT This article reviews the surviving evidence for the life of Cecily Chaumpaigne in light of the new discoveries relating to the litigation against her and Chaucer. Her father, William, had been a well-to-do merchant who was not simply a street baker but a dealer in corn. Her mother, Agnes, was aspirational and ambitious, and married after William’s death the wealthy saddler William Pickerel, who had been Edward III’s saddler. Cecily’s eldest brother, Robert, was a valet in the royal household at the same time as Chaucer was an esquire there. He also sought unsuccessfully to take over the saddlery business of his stepfather and mother, but quickly ran into financial difficulties. Much of our understanding of Chaumpaigne is defined by the surviving information about her family, but some facts are clear. She came from a well-to-do, perhaps even prosperous background. At the time of Staundon’s threatened prosecution, she was a mature woman in her early thirties and apparently still single.