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Chapter 10 - Entering Adolescence

Knighting, Seals and Royal Maturity

from Part III - Child Kingship: Guardianship and Royal Rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2022

Emily Joan Ward
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

Cultural, social and legal markers of elite maturity were shifting over the central Middle Ages, generating changes which affected how young people experienced late childhood and early adulthood. This chapter examines how some of these developments unfolded in relation to child kingship. It reinforces an argument which recurs throughout the book: that change over time was more substantial than cultural and political differences between kingdoms. First, the chapter examines the shifting significance of a boy king’s knighting. The acceptance of arms had been part of a child king’s rite of passage to young adulthood in the mid-eleventh century but, a century and a half later, knighting had instead become a crucial element in a royal child’s rite of passage to kingship. Then the chapter turns to consider the seals produced for and used by boy kings, emphasising the increasing diversity in seal forms and their creation from the thirteenth century. A crucial theme throughout the entire discussion is how kingship altered a child’s progression from boyhood to manhood, distinguishing a boy king’s experience of adolescence from other elite youths.

Type
Chapter
Information
Royal Childhood and Child Kingship
Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262
, pp. 249 - 274
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Entering Adolescence
  • Emily Joan Ward, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Royal Childhood and Child Kingship
  • Online publication: 04 August 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974516.011
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  • Entering Adolescence
  • Emily Joan Ward, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Royal Childhood and Child Kingship
  • Online publication: 04 August 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974516.011
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Entering Adolescence
  • Emily Joan Ward, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Royal Childhood and Child Kingship
  • Online publication: 04 August 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974516.011
Available formats
×