Panāh-I Din Daran: The Story of the Forgotten Mughal Capital, Dīnpanāh
نہ تھا شہر دہلی یہ تھا چمن کہو کس طرح کا تھا یاں امنن” “جو خطاب تھا وہ مٹا دیا فقط اب تو اجڑا دیار ہے “Delhi was never just a city; it was...
Category: Blog
Magical Entanglements: Producing and Consuming Magic at Late Medieval English and French Courts
“Thus the knight held this prophecy [of King Arthur] to be true, and attached thereunto great faith and credit; for such is the nature of them [the English] in their country that they very...
Royal Fertility Fears in Thirteenth-Century England
Scholars have long acknowledged the importance of producing an heir and securing the succession for medieval kings and queens. More recently, there has been interest in how royals who struggled to have children negotiated...
Organising the société des princes: The Management of Titles in Eighteenth-Century German Chancelleries
In 1734, the central chancellery of Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, informed its sovereign about the number of official letters which he had sent during his first full year as a ruling prince –...
‘He was a man, and you are not’: Court and the identity of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, 1741-1762
Comparatively little has been written about the reign of Elizaveta Petrovna, Empress of Russia from 1741-1761. Daughter of Peter the Great and the woman who brought Catherine the Great to Russia, Elizaveta or Elizabeth’s...
Mary II at her Toilette
If an image of Queen Mary II comes to mind, it is not usually one of her at a dressing table. This post explores an unusual ceramic object depicting Mary in this way, manufactured...
‘King James Did What?! With Who?!’: Anne Murray, the mistress of James VI
In recent years, James VI & I has featured heavily in the uncovering and celebrating of hidden histories. A cursory Google search finds him referred to as homosexual, bisexual, and a ‘queer king’. The...
Christian II of Anhalt: An obsessive diarist and courtier manqué during the Thirty Years War
Among the self-testimonies of the first half of the 17th century, the diary (written mostly in German, but also in French and occasionally in Italian) which Prince Christian II of Anhalt (born 1599 in...
A Sonnet for a Former Princess
Between 1538 and 1543, the Tudor literary courtier Henry Parker, Lord Morley (about 1486-1556), presented the future queen Mary I with a New Year’s gift that included ‘an Italion ryme called soneto’ in English.[i]...
William Davison: A Re-Introduction
For early modern historians, the cast of the Elizabethan polity may seem all too familiar. However, one privy councillor is much less recognisable. As a diplomat and principal secretary, William Davison participated in events...