What are we talking about when we talk about high medieval Latin Europe? That is the key question underpinning the first chapter. It draws attention to shared political structures and the common cultural framework within which men and women of the central Middle Ages engaged with the practice and the ideal of kingship. In sketches both the resources and means of governance at the disposal of rulers and ruled, and the intellectual toolkit available to them in thinking about the role and purpose of the king’s office. The chapter furthermore highlights what sets the period apart from the Carolingian era and the later Middle Ages, and explores how people viewed their part of the world as a coherent whole, related to but distinctive from the Islamic world and Byzantium.