Dries Raeymaekers, Ph.D. (University of Antwerp, 2009) is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at Radboud University Nijmegen. He has published on Habsburg dynastic politics, including a monograph on the Habsburg Court of Brussels in the early seventeenth century.Sebastiaan Derks is Head of the Department of Digital Data Management and Researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands. He has published a number of articles on the Farnese dynasty in sixteenth-century Europe.

• AcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsList of Illustrations & TablesIntroductionDries Raeymaekers and Sebastiaan DerksRepertoires of Access in Princely CourtsI. Articulating AccessFlorence BerlandAccess to the Prince’s Court in Late Medieval ParisNeil MurphyThe Court on the Move: Ceremonial Entries, Gift-Giving and Access to the Monarch in France, c.1440–c.1570Audrey TruschkeDeceptive Familiarity: European Perceptions of Access at the Mughal CourtII. Regulating AccessMichael TalbotAccessing the Shadow of God: Spatial and Performative Ceremonial at the Ottoman CourtMark HengererAccess at the Court of the Austrian Habsburg Dynasty (Mid-Sixteenth to Mid-Eighteenth Century): A Highway from Presence to Politics?III. Monopolizing AccessJonathan SpanglerHolders of the Keys: The Grand Chamberlain, the Grand Equerry and Monopolies of Access at the Early Modern French CourtRonald G. AschPatronage, Friendship and the Politics of Access: The Role of the Early Modern Favourite RevisitedFabian PerssonThe Struggle for Access: Participation and Distance During a Royal Swedish MinorityIV. Visualizing AccessChristina AntenhoferMeeting the Prince between the City and the Family: The Resignification of Castello San Giorgio in Mantua (Fourteenth – Sixteenth Centuries)Steven ThiryForging Dynasty: The Politics of Dynastic Affinity in Burgundian-Habsburg Birth and Baptism Ceremonial (1430–1505)BibliographyIndex