Robert Bartlett is professor emeritus at the University of St Andrews. His books include The Making of Europe, which won the Wolfson Literary Prize for History in 1994, and Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? He has written and presented several BBC documentary series, including Inside the Medieval Mind and The Normans.
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Throughout medieval Europe, for hundreds of years, monarchy was the way that politics worked in most countries. This meant power was in the hands of a family—a dynasty; that politics was family politics; and political life was shaped by the births, ... SEE MORE