Heirs and Spares
Conference

The Society for Court Studies is pleased to announce a two-day
conference on the theme of royal 'heirs and spares' in early modern
Europe, to be held in Oxford on 19-20 September 2013. The focus of the
conference will be on heirs to the throne or those who might have been
considered 'extras', security in case of the death of the heir. Too
often the focus of historical research has been on those in the primary
seat of power and authority, and rarely on those hovering in the wings,
waiting for their big entrance. In many cases, this cue never came, and
these heirs have been virtually written out of history, certainly in the
public consciousness. Sometimes these heirs and their siblings were in
the process of being prepared for rule, but in others their training was
oddly ignored. Some spent much of their time chaffing at the restraints
on their power—in court intrigues, or even open rebellion—while others
focused their energies elsewhere, in patronage of the arts, building
projects, or religious devotion. As historiographical emphasis of
courts and court cultures shifts away from solely monolithic
monarch-centred models towards a multi-polar system, this conference
aims to focus not on the sun but its satellites.

We invite proposals for papers of twenty minutes in length on a broad
spectrum of topics relating to royal heirs and second sons (or indeed
daughters) in the early modern period. The focus of the conference will
primarily be on the 16th to 18th centuries in France and Britain, but we
are open to proposals that stretch these parameters, chronologically or
geographically. We are also keen to stress interdisciplinarity, so
suggest papers focusing on aspects of the heirs' and spares' literary,
artistic, and musical representation and its public reception. Themes to
consider include the education of heirs or of younger royal children;
their households and finances; their position in court politics; the
manner in which they were perceived by the wider public (their 'image');
their role as patrons of the arts or military leaders; their place in
royal ceremonial (baptisms, weddings, funerals), or in royal
dynasticism, as marriage partners in international diplomacy, and so on.
Royal families in their widest sense will also be considered, thus
inclusive of illegitimate offspring.

The event will be held at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, with
keynote speakers tentatively including Glenn Richardson (on Henri II of
France as the 'spare' of Francis I), and Anne Somerset (on Princess Anne
of York, the future Queen Anne), among others.

Please submit paper proposals (300 words), for papers (to be given in
English), by June 1st to Dr Jonathan Spangler and Dr Catriona Murray at
heirsandspareshotmail.com. Further details will be posted one the
Society for Court Studies Website http://www.courtstudies.org/