Royal women did much more to wield power besides marrying the king and producing the heir. Subverting the dichotomies of public/private and formal/informal that gender public authority as male and informal authority as female, this book examines royal women as agents of influence. With an expansive chronological and geographic scope-from ancient to early modern and covering Egypt, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Asia Minor-these essays trace patterns of influence often disguised by narrower studies of government studies and officials. Contributors highlight the theme of dynastic loyalty by focusing on the roles and actions of individual royal women, examining patterns within dynasties, and considering what factors generated loyalty and disloyalty to a dynasty or individual ruler. Contributors show that whether serving as the font of dynastic authority or playing informal roles of child-bearer, patron, or religious promoter, royal women have been central to the issue of dynasticloyalty throughout the ancient, medieval, and modern eras.

1. Introduction.- 2. Kings' Daughters, Sisters, and Wives: Fonts and Conduits of Power and Legitimacy.- 3. From Family to Politics: Queen Apollonis as Agent of Dynastic/Political Loyalty.- 4. Queens and their Children: Dynastic Dis/loyalty in the Hellenistic Period.- 5. On the Alleged Treachery of Julia Domna and Septimius Severus' Failed Siege of Hatra.- 6. "In Protection of Our Own Interests We Rebel.".- 7. Prince Pedro: A Case of Dynastic Disloyalty in 15th century Portugal?.- 8. Dynastic Loyalty and the 'Queenships' of Mary Queen of Scots.- 9. Embodied Devotion: The Dynastic and Religious Loyalty of Renée de France (1510-1575).- 10. Visual Propaganda and Ritual at the Early Stuart Court in England.- 11. Dynastic Loyalty and Allegiances: Ottoman Resilience during the Global Seventeenth Century Crisis.- 12. For Empire or Dynasty? Empress Elisabeth Christine and the Brunswicks.- 13. French Historians' Loyalty and Disloyalty to French Monarchy between 1815 and 1848.