Marriage Diplomacy

Abstract

Marriage alliances were a common feature of the premodern diplomatic landscape. Dynasties used them for multiple purposes: to ensure successions, to obtain properties, to expand their political influence, to heighten their international prestige, to balance against a common threat or bandwagon with a burgeoning power, and to make peace with a former enemy. Although marriage alliances sometimes worked well, they were subject to accidents of death, infertility, erotic caprice, shifts in the regional balance of power, and canonical strong‐arming by powerful ecclesiastics. Dynasties continued to intermarry through the twentieth century, but the political significance of their marriages waned as power passed from monarchs to parliaments and elected ministers of state.