Chapter 8 - Adapting and Collaborating

Summary

This chapter considers the close relationship between child rulership and innovative political and administrative adaptation between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Cases of child kingship prompted adaptations to some of the tools of governance, but the boy king’s presence and active contribution were often still crucial. The chapter turns first to the documentary evidence and the diversity of administrative experimentation before focusing on the enduring significance of children’s participation in rule. The third and final section examines practical adjustments to and contemporary representations of counsel, a fundamental instrument of royal rule which could be even more crucial when a boy was king. Overall, the chapter presents an alternative narrative of child rulership which stresses aspects of innovation, adaptation and co-operation. Considering shifts in documentary culture, royal government and consilium by the thirteenth century also reveals the extent to which many of the practical solutions adopted during a period of child kingship differed much more profoundly across time than they did geographically.