Elena Woodacre is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Winchester, UK, and a specialist in queenship and royal studies. Elena is the founder of the Royal Studies Network and the 'Kings & Queens' conferences and editor of the Royal Studies Journal, the Gender and Power in the Premodern World and the Queens of England series.

Lucinda H.S. Dean is a Lecturer at the Centre for History at the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, and a specialist in late medieval and early modern ritual and ceremony of the Scottish monarchy. She has published widely in this area and co-edited a volume on Medieval and Early Modern Representations of Authority in Scotland and the British Isles (2016).

Chris Jones is an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His work focuses upon medieval France and political thought. Among his publications is the monograph Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and Its Rulers in Late Medieval France (2007). He is Director of the Canterbury Roll Project and President of the Australian & New Zealand Association for Medieval & Early Modern Studies Inc. (ANZAMEMS).

Russell E. Martin is Professor of History at Westminster College, USA. He is widely published and the author of A Bride for the Tsar: Bride-Shows and Marriage Politics in Early Modern Russia. He is Editor-in-Chief of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, President of the Early Slavic Studies Association and a member of the Chancellery of the Head of the Russian Imperial House of Romanoff (Moscow).

Zita Eva Rohr is a political historian of the late medieval and early modern periods and has published widely in the field of gendered political and diplomatic history, including her monograph Yolande of Aragon (1381-1442): Family and Power (2016). She is an Honorary Fellow at Macquarie University, Australia, in the Department of Modern History, Politics, and International Relations and Honorary Lecturer, The School of Humanities and Languages, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Australia.

Understanding the mechanisms of monarchy; PART I Models and concepts of rulership; Introduction; The 'wise king' topos in context: royal literacy and political theology in medieval western Europe (c.1000-1200); The biblical King Solomon in representations of western European medieval royalty; Regal power and the royal family in a thirteenth-century Iberian legislative programme; Personal union, composite monarchy and 'multiple rule'; Dynastic succession in an elective monarchy: the Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire; Dei gratia and the 'divine right of kings': divine legitimization or human humility?; A case study of pre-modern Islamic monarchy: the Almohad caliphate of the Maghreb and al-Andalus in the 12th-13th centuries; Contemporary kingship in Muslim Arab societies in comparative context; PART II Ritual and representation; Introduction; Faith, power and charity: personal religion and kingship in medieval England; The nation as a ritual community: royal nation-building in imperial Japan and post-war Thailand; The nationalization and mediatization of European monarchies in times of sorrow: royal deaths and funerals in the second half of the nineteenth century; A useless ceremony of some use: a comparative study of attitudes to coronations in Norway and Sweden in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Negotiating with the neighbours: kingship and diplomacy in Munhumutapa; Early modern monarchy and foreign travel; Kingship and masculinity in Renaissance Portugal (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries); Royal representations through the father and warrior figures in early modern Europe; Chasing St Louis: the English monarchy's pursuit of sainthood; Raising royal bodies: Stuart authority and the monumental image; In pursuit of social allies: royal residences and political legitimacy in post-Revolutionary Europe, 1804-30; Clothing royal bodies: changing attitudes to royal dress and appearance from the Middle Ages to modernity; PART III Dynasty and succession; Introduction; Anticipatory association of the heir in early modern Russia: primogeniture and succession in Russia's ruling dynasties; From a Salic Law to the Salic Law: the creation and re-creation of the royal succession system of France; A family affair: cultural anxiety, political debate and the nature of monarchy in seventeenth-century France and Britain; What's in a name? Dynasty, succession and England's queens regnant (1553-2016); Female pharaohs in ancient Egypt; Neither heir nor spare: childless queens and the practice of monarchy in pre-modern Europe; Harem politics: royal women and succession crises in the ancient Near East (c.1400-300 bce); Child kings and guardianship in north-western Europe, c.1050-c.1250; Creating chiefs and queen mothers in Ghana: obstacles and opportunities; Deposition of monarchs in northern kingdoms, 1300-1700; PART IV; Exercising authority and exerting influence; Introduction; Male consorts and royal authority in the Crusader States; Kings and nobles on the fringes of Christendom: a comparative perspective on monarchy and aristocracy in the European Middle Ages; For better or for worse: royal marital sexuality as political critique in late medieval Europe; The Tudor monarchy of counsel and the growth of reason of state; Ruling emotions: affective and emotional strategies of power and authority among early modern European monarchies; From galanterie to scandal: the sexuality of the king from Louis XIV to Louis XVI; Queen Min, foreign policy and the role of female leadership in late nineteenth-century Korea; Index