The nationalization and mediatization of European monarchies in times of sorrow

European monarchies withstood the challenges of the French Revolution and the democratization of politics surprisingly well through a mixture of tradition and new techniques and ideas. ² This chapter explores how two long-term tendencies – nationalization and mediatization of royal lives and rituals – manifested themselves during the second half of the nineteenth century in the responses to the deaths and the organization of the funerals of Leopold I of Belgium (1865), Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy (1878) and German emperor Wilhelm I (1888).