Frictions and Failures Leinen

The conference volume Frictions and Failures - Cultural Encounters in Crisis focuses on those dynastic marriages which ran into difficulties of various kinds and examines a wide range of cases in order to determine what caused these problems. Conflict situations could easily arise from the queen consort's presence at her new court. These conflicts might be religious (consorts were often of a different faith from that of their husband and new country) personal (rivalries with mistresses or favorites) diplomatic or political. The case studies elucidate what these frictions tell us a) about t he specific context in which they occurred and b) about the problems limitations and challenges of cultural transfer in general. The volume also considers (in a broader sense) whether success and failure are adequate and helpful terms in assessing the impact of the queen's consort. The geographical range of the territories discussed covers not only West and Central Europe but extends to Hungary Lithuania Muscovy and Russia. This is particularly valuable as it helps to take orthodox consorts into consideration as well as the elective monarchy of Poland in which the role of the consort is by definition different from that of a consort in a system of dynastic succession.