Child kings and guardianship in north-western Europe, c.1050–c.1250

Child kingship was not an unusual problem for hereditary dynasties to face in the central Middle Ages (c.1050–c.1250), even if it was an infrequent occurrence. ² Yet modern historians often treat child kings in isolation, focusing on a period of minority only to understand the king’s later adult reign. ³ This chapter instead looks comparatively at the arrangements made when children under the age of fifteen succeeded to the thrones of Germany, France and England. Individuals who acted on a child king’s behalf until he came of age are usually called ‘regents’, but this terminology is anachronistic for the central Middle Ages. It was not until the later fourteenth century that the vocabulary of ‘regency’ and ‘regents’ emerged, and contemporaries did not commonly use these terms until much later. ⁴ Instead, in the earlier period on which this chapter focuses, a range of language appeared to express the many responsibilities of a child king’s guardian(s): administrative duties, governance and rule, nurturing and educating the young king, giving counsel and advice, and defending the kingdom. Contemporaries often described the men and women alongside boy kings in similar terms to aristocratic guardianship, and the legal vocabulary of wardship (ballo, cura, custodia, or tutela) regularly appeared in narrative sources and royal records to describe their charge of protecting a king’s physical body and governing his kingdom. Taking a comparative approach to guardianship allows us to assess and contrast the legitimacy of the provisions made for child kingship across several kingdoms.