Marriage of state

Last updated August 23, 2024

A marriage of state is a diplomatic marriage or union between two members of different nation-states or internally, between two power blocs, usually in authoritarian societies and is a practice which dates back to ancient times, as far back as early Grecian cultures in western society, and of similar antiquity in other civilizations. The fable of Helen of Troy may be the best known classical tale reporting an incidence of surrendering a female member of a ruling line to gain peace or shore up alliances of state between nation-states headed by small oligarchies or acknowledged royalty.^{[ citation needed ]}

Europe

While the contemporary Western ideal sees marriage as a unique bond between two people who are in love, families in which heredity is central to power or inheritance (such as royal families) often see marriage in a different light. There are often political or other non-romantic functions that must be served, and the relative wealth and power of the potential spouses are considered. Marriage for political, economic, or diplomatic reasons was the pattern for centuries among European rulers.^[1]

Careful selection of a spouse was important to maintain the royal status of a family: depending on the law of the land in question, if a prince or king was to marry a commoner who had no royal blood, even if the first-born was acknowledged as a son of a sovereign, he might not be able to claim any of the royal status of his father.^[1]

Traditionally, many factors were important in the arranging of royal marriages. One such factor was the size of the tracts of land that the other royal family governed or controlled.^[1] Another, related factor was the stability of the control exerted over that territory: when there is territorial instability in a royal family, other royals will be less inclined to marry into that family.^[1] Another factor was political alliance: marriage was an important way to bind together royal families and "their countries during peace and war" and could justify many important political decisions.^[1]

Importance of religion

Religion has always been closely tied to political affairs and continues to be today in many countries. Religious considerations were often important in marriages among royal families, particularly in lands where there was an established or official religion. When a royal family was prepared to negotiate or arrange the marriage of one of its children, it was extremely important to have a prospective spouse who followed the same religion or, at the very least, that the spouse be willing to convert before the wedding. In non-Catholic royal families, there were few things worse than marrying a person who was a Catholic.^[1] Some countries barred from accession to the throne any person who married a Catholic, as in the British Act of Settlement 1701. When a Protestant prince converted to Catholicism, he risked being disowned by his family,^[1] and often being barred from the throne himself. Some of these laws are still in force, centuries after the conclusion of Europe's Wars of Religion.

Roman Catholic countries had similar laws and strictures. France, for example, effectively barred non-Catholics from the throne. Even if the law did not strictly prohibit marrying non-Catholic royalty, political situations and popular sentiment were frequently sufficient to dissuade princes from so doing.

Rulers' marriages

Elizabeth I

Contrary to what some historians have said about her elusiveness when in marriage negotiations with suitors or their representatives, Queen Elizabeth I was known to be straightforward in her various courtships.^[2] In 1565, when in the midst of the Habsburg matrimonial project, Elizabeth promptly dismissed the rival French suit of their fourteen-year-old king, stating she would have to be ten years younger to consider it.^[2] Furthermore, in addition to concerns about religion, financial arrangements, and security, Elizabeth also maintained that she could not marry anyone whom she had not seen in person, perhaps as a result of her father's own displeasure and divorce of Anne of Cleves.^[3] The emphasis on religion, national security, and securing the line of succession in all of Elizabeth's marriage negotiations demonstrate the emphasis placed on the political importance of marriages of state during this period. Although some of her contemporaries hoped she would find solace in marriage, procreation was still considered the primary purpose of royal marriage.

In March 1565, Elizabeth told her Spanish ambassador, Diego Guzmán de Silva:

If I could appoint such a successor to the Crown as would please me and the country, I would not marry, as it is a thing for which I have never had any inclination. My subjects, however press me so that I cannot help myself or take the other course, which is a very difficult one. There is a strong idea in the world that a woman cannot live unless she is married, or at all events that is she refrains from marriage she does so for some bad reason....But what can we do?^[4]

Thus, Elizabeth appeared to personally believe that a woman should reasonably be able to remain single. However, she continued to engage in marriage negotiations for decades because of the expectations of her role as monarch. Although she herself had little inclination to marry, she understood the limitations of her power and therefore seriously considered marriage on numerous occasion at the behest of councillors.

The Habsburg marriage negotiations revolving around the marriage of Queen Elizabeth I to Archduke Charles show the way marriage was often negotiated in royal families. The first phase began in 1559, with the initiative for a matrimonial alliance between England and Austria.^[5] However, the first phase was a failure and, the people of England were relieved to the extent that they feared a foreign ruler coming into their country.^[5] Negotiations were re-opened with some difficulty in 1563 by the English.^[2] This was in part due to Charles' search for a wife elsewhere, the lack of permanent diplomatic links between Austria and England, and because of Emperor Ferdinand's distrust of Elizabeth for her refusal of his son's suit in 1559. However, Sir William Cecil was interested in the match and began work on a marriage negotiation.^[5] While the first set of negotiations were uncertain, the second round of negotiations gathered stronger support in England for the suit and went on for several years.

Both sides hoped to gain from a marital alliance. In England, the negotiations were a key element to Elizabeth's foreign policy and intended to protect the country's commercial interests and political security against the French-Scottish alliance.^[2] Austria also hoped to gain in similar ways from a political alliance and possibly bring Catholicism back to England. However, English support was partly due to the fact that the English had been deliberately misled to believe that Charles would be willing to convert to Protestantism and in the end, the archduke's Catholicism and refusal to come to England before finalizing a betrothal proved too difficult to overcome and the suit dissolved. These negotiations, nevertheless, illustrate how support and opposition ebbed and flowed over the course of time, and how issues like religion, which seemed to be resolvable at the outset, could ultimately doom an otherwise promising proposal.

Napoleon

Napoleon, as emperor, gave out kingdoms and female relatives with equal largesse to favored Marshals and general officers.

United Kingdom

Through most of recorded history state marriages were also common at lesser levels of rulers, and many a lesser marriage of state was consummated and bargained over during all of the Middle Ages and through the middle of the twentieth-century in western society, and the old forms still hold sway in many other cultural contexts today. One famous example of a marriage of state for lesser reasons was that of George II of Great Britain's parents. The Princess Sophia's dowry included properties assuring an income of 100,000 thalers annually, which led to George Louis, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (the future George I of Great Britain), marrying his first cousin Sophia Dorothea of Celle —when both were pressed into the arrangement by his mother— and that German ducal dynastic move accidentally gave the couple the inside track on the Protestant thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland (and later, those of the United Kingdom and Ireland).

Related Research Articles

The Act of Settlement is an act of the Parliament of England that settled the succession to the English and Irish crowns to only Protestants, which passed in 1701. More specifically, anyone who became a Roman Catholic, or who married one, became disqualified to inherit the throne. This had the effect of deposing the remaining descendants of Charles I, other than his Protestant granddaughter Anne, as the next Protestant in line to the throne was Sophia of Hanover. Born into the House of Wittelsbach, she was a granddaughter of James VI and I from his most junior surviving line, with the crowns descending only to her non-Catholic heirs. Sophia died less than two months before Queen Anne, and Sophia's son succeeded to the throne as King George I, starting the Hanoverian dynasty in Britain.

Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last monarch of the House of Tudor.

Mary I, also known as Mary Tudor, and as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain and the Habsburg dominions as the wife of King Philip II from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, King Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions.

The House of Tudor was an English and Welsh dynasty that held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a Welsh noble family, and Catherine of Valois. The Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and the Lordship of Ireland for 118 years with five monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the Scottish House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, descended through his mother from the House of Beaufort, a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power and started the Tudor period in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the main House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.

Philip II, sometimes known in Spain as Philip the Prudent, was King of Spain from 1556, King of Portugal from 1580, and King of Naples and Sicily from 1554 until his death in 1598. He was also jure uxoris King of England and Ireland from his marriage to Queen Mary I in 1554 until her death in 1558. He was also Duke of Milan from 1540. From 1555, he was Lord of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands.

Henry IV, also known by the epithets Good King Henry or Henry the Great, was King of Navarre from 1572 and King of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first monarch of France from the House of Bourbon, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. He pragmatically balanced the interests of the Catholic and Protestant parties in France as well as among the European states. He was assassinated in 1610 by a Catholic zealot, and was succeeded by his son Louis XIII.

Henry II was King of France from 1547 until his death in 1559. The second son of Francis I and Duchess Claude of Brittany, he became Dauphin of France upon the death of his elder brother Francis in 1536.

Henry III was King of France from 1574 until his assassination in 1589, as well as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.

Princess Irene of the Netherlands is the second child of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and Prince Bernhard.

Isabella of Austria, also known as Elizabeth, was born an Archduchess of Austria and Infanta of Castile from the House of Habsburg, and subsequently became Queen of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, under the Kalmar Union, as the wife of King Christian II. She was the daughter of King Philip I and Queen Joanna of Castile and the sister of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. She ruled Denmark as regent in 1520.

Isabella Clara Eugenia, sometimes referred to as Clara Isabella Eugenia, was sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, which comprised the Low Countries and the north of modern France with her husband, Archduke Albert VII of Austria.

Catherine Jagiellon was a Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth princess and Queen of Sweden from 1569 as the wife of King John III. Catherine had significant influence over state affairs during the reign of her spouse. She negotiated with the pope to introduce Counter-Reformation in Sweden. She was the mother of Sigismund, King of Poland (1587-1632) and Sweden (1592-1599).

Succession to the British throne is determined by descent, sex, legitimacy, and religion. Under common law, the Crown is inherited by a sovereign's children or by a childless sovereign's nearest collateral line. The Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701 restrict succession to the throne to the legitimate Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are in "communion with the Church of England". Spouses of Catholics were disqualified from 1689 until the law was amended in 2015. Protestant descendants of those excluded for being Roman Catholics are eligible.

Elisabeth of France or Isabella of Bourbon was Queen of Spain from 1621 to her death and Queen of Portugal from 1621 to 1640, as the first spouse of King Philip IV & III. She served as regent of Spain during the Catalan Revolt in 1640–42 and 1643–44.

Isabella Jagiellon was the queen consort of Hungary. She was the oldest child of Sigismund I the Old, King of Poland, and his Italian wife Bona Sforza.

Christina of Denmark was a Danish princess, the younger surviving daughter of King Christian II of Denmark and Norway and Isabella of Austria. By her two marriages, she became Duchess of Milan, then Duchess of Lorraine. She served as the regent of Lorraine from 1545 to 1552 during the minority of her son. She was also a claimant to the thrones of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in 1561–1590 and was sovereign Lady of Tortona in 1578–1584.

Maria Josepha of Austria was the queen of Poland and electress of Saxony by marriage to Augustus III. From 1711 to 1717, she was heir presumptive to the Habsburg monarchy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Doran</span> British historian

Susan Michelle Doran FRHistS is a British historian whose primary studies surround the reign of Elizabeth I, in particular the theme of marriage and succession. She has published and edited sixteen books, notably Elizabeth I and Religion, 1558-1603, Monarchy and Matrimony and Queen Elizabeth I, the last part of the British Library's Historic Lives series.

Charles II Francis of Austria was an Archduke of Austria and a ruler of Inner Austria from 1564. He was a member of the House of Habsburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis</span> Peace treaty that ended the Italian Wars

The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in April 1559 ended the Italian Wars (1494–1559). It consisted of two separate treaties, one between England and France on 2 April, and another between France and Spain on 3 April. Although he was not a signatory, both were approved by Emperor Ferdinand I, since many of the territorial exchanges concerned states within the Holy Roman Empire.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Fleming, Patricia H. (June 1973). "The Politics of Marriage Among Non-Catholic European Royalty". Current Anthropology . 14 (3): 231–249. doi:10.1086/201323. S2CID 144634148.
1 2 3 4 Doran, Susan (1996). Monarchy & Matrimony: The courtships of Elizabeth I. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-11969-3.
↑ Warnicke, Retha (2010). "Why Elizabeth I Never Married". History Review (67): 15–20.
↑ Levin, Carole (2013). The Heart and Stomach of a King (2 ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-8122-2240-1.
1 2 3 Doran, Susan (October 1989). "Religion and Politics at the Court of Elizabeth I: The Habsburg Marriage Negotiations of 1559-1567". The English Historical Review . 104 (413): 908–926. doi:10.1093/ehr/CIV.413.908.

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[fleming-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Fleming, Patricia H. (June 1973). "The Politics of Marriage Among Non-Catholic European Royalty". Current Anthropology . 14 (3): 231–249. doi:10.1086/201323. S2CID 144634148.

[doran_mm-2] 1 2 3 4 Doran, Susan (1996). Monarchy & Matrimony: The courtships of Elizabeth I. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-11969-3.

[3] Warnicke, Retha (2010). "Why Elizabeth I Never Married". History Review (67): 15–20.

[4] Levin, Carole (2013). The Heart and Stomach of a King (2 ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-8122-2240-1.

[doran-5] 1 2 3 Doran, Susan (October 1989). "Religion and Politics at the Court of Elizabeth I: The Habsburg Marriage Negotiations of 1559-1567". The English Historical Review . 104 (413): 908–926. doi:10.1093/ehr/CIV.413.908.

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