Royal Childhood and Child Kingship: Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262 by Emily Joan Ward (review)

Reviewed by: Royal Childhood and Child Kingship: Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262 by Emily Joan Ward Abigail S. Armstrong Royal Childhood and Child Kingship: Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262. By Emily Joan Ward. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xxvi + 333 pp. Hardcover 120, paperback, 32. 99, e-book 32. 99. Despite the highly congested field of monarchy studies, Emily Joan Ward has found a gap that has been somewhat underappreciated within Anglophone scholarship: child rulership. Ward's ambitious study, which turns her attention to European boy kings in the central Middle Ages, neatly builds upon and complements Thilo Offergeld's examination of child kings in the early medieval period: Reges Pueri: das Königtum Minderjähriger im frühen Mittelalter (2001). Seeking to move beyond solitary and nationalistic studies that can often result in claims of abnormality or exceptionalism, Ward similarly explores her subject matter comparatively by examining six main case studies whereby a boy succeeded to the throne. The kingdoms mostly correspond to Western Europe: England, Scotland, France, and Germany, although wider European examples are also integrated as applicable. Not only does Ward compare boy kingship geographically, she also assesses child rulership diachronically, charting how perceptions and actualities of child rulership changed greatly over the course of a little over two hundred years (c. 1050–1262). As a result, Ward persuasively End Page 327 counters the assumptions that childhood was incompatible with the exercise of royal authority or that child kingship equated to a period of instability. Focusing on how child rulership was both experienced and perceived, Ward draws on a range of historiographical fields including political, social, and intellectual history, in combination with anthropology and childhood studies. Based on in-depth analysis of royal documents, but also chronicle sources, literature, legal texts, and letters, Ward relates how children were prepared for and integrated within rulership from a young age. Such an approach results in her convincingly demonstrating that a child ruler was not considered the worst case scenario—boy kings were an accepted and accommodated element of medieval monarchical rule. Where this book really shines is in Ward's exemplary close reading of royal documents, particularly charters. The preference for these documents over other genres that are more traditionally consulted for such purposes—such as didactic literature or mirrors for princes—is somewhat surprising. Yet her reading of this material demonstrates how new insights can be gleaned for child rulership when these well-known records are approached asking new questions. A close reading of the vocabulary, formulas, and terminology utilized in these records underscores how rulership was not rigidly defined but instead flexible, meeting changing needs and requirements, including the succession to the throne by a child. Nevertheless, such in-depth scrutiny of the source material is at times restrictive. Besides analyzing the minutiae of the language or the interconnections between representation and reality, the discussion could sometimes benefit from taking a step back to appreciate the bigger picture. Likewise, while drawing on different disciplines, including childhood studies and anthropology, it seems somewhat amiss that Ward has not provided more background to make her findings more accessible to those not as well versed in the case studies as herself. Rather, the contextualization chapters provided (in Part 1) concentrate on the concepts, precedents, and biblical models of child rulership. This part is a little disconnected from those that follow, which are much more cohesive; structured chronologically, they address the time before (Part 2) and after (Part 3) each boy became king. Ward's greatest contribution is to help broaden our understanding of medieval rulership. Her main conclusion, that children were valued members of and active participants within ruling families, provides a crucial contribution to ongoing research into medieval royal rulership. In the field of queenship and monarchy studies, there is increasing recourse to plural or corporate rulership, emphasizing the important role of a range of family members in securing the End Page 328 dynasty's retention of power, not just the king, as outlined in Theresa Earenfight's work, for instance. This is a point Ward herself makes when stressing the key support provided by the boy. . .