Status

Abstract

One of the most deeply felt concerns of rulers in this age was to win status. Such a concern was not, of course, new. But in earlier centuries, in a period of dynastic competition, it was the status of the rulers themselves, and of their royal houses, which had been at stake. It was this which was disputed during the thirty-year rivalry between Charles V and Francis I, in the competitive display of Francis and Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in the long struggle between Angevins and Aragonese rulers in Italy. In the age we are concerned with, though personal standing was rarely forgotten, it was not the essential prize which was in dispute. The central concern was with the positions occupied by the states with which the rulers increasingly identified themselves. As Louis XIV put it: “The virtue of the good ruler is always aiming at … the greatness and the glory of his state”.¹ Frederick the Great equally, the self-declared “first servant” of his own state, wrote of his concern that Prussia might “cut a fine figure among the great powers of the world”.² Similar ambitions were shared by even the most insignificant rulers of the day. Even the minor rulers of Germany and Italy vied with each other to assert their rank and prestige within their own lesser world. All were equally concerned to establish the standing they (and therefore their states) enjoyed among their peers.³