Gender history has alerted us to the fact that it is misleading to assume transhistorical features when it comes to issues such as childbearing, mother- and fatherhood, and gendered systems of labour division. Instead, all of these are culturally inflected and thus variable across time.
Gendered Practices of Rulership at the Court of Wuerttemberg, 1568-1634 explores the ways in which socially constructed differences between men and women supported the dynastic practice of power in the early modern duchy of Wuerttemberg. The book investigates three generations of the Wuerttemberg ducal family from the late sixteenth to the first half of the seventeenth century. In five chapters, five gendered practices are examined. They include the gendering of courtly space, of high ceremonial events, and of dynastic marriage and concubinage, as well as the gendering of kinship practices.
The history of the Wuerttemberg dynasty in this period, allows for the observation of a range of approaches to the practice of power. It is documented by rich archival sources - many of which are analysed here for the first time - and thus provides opportunities for comparison between different ruling couples. Duke Friedrich I rarely saw eye to eye with his wife Duchess Sibylla von Anhalt (r. 1593-1608), and he engaged in numerous extramarital affairs, even seeking to institutionalise concubinage. This couple's son Duke Johann Friedrich enjoyed a much more harmonious relationship with his wife Duchess Barbara Sophia von Brandenburg (r. 1608-1628), with the couple amicably sharing many tasks of rulership. The book, however, does not merely seek to show how individual men, women, and couples engaged in dynastic rulership through gendered relationships. Instead, it also seeks to identify the types of gendered work the dynastic system relied on in order to remain functional over a long period of time. To do so, examples of failed relationships are at least as useful as those of marriages built on common understanding. As a result of this methodological shift, aspects of life at court emerge that have previously escaped in-depth discussion; for instance, the emotionally cohesive effects of gendered court topography, as well as the crucial emotion work dynastic women were expected to perform in their marital relationships, and which had wide-reaching political consequences.
