"The editor's introduction and sixteen papers offer a rich variety of approaches to the announced topic. [...] an impressive collection of serious work on a subject fully meriting our consideration. Editor and contributors have served us well". Joel T. Rosenthal, Sixteenth Century Journal, 2019. "As economic and administrative units “quite distinct from those of peasants, the gentry, and townspeople", royal and aristocratic households are critical to understanding politics in local, regional, international, intergenerational, and gendered contexts (Earenfight 3). The sixteen essays in the volume, ranging from the ninth to the mid-sixteenth century, deepen understandings of state-building processes and politics from a variety of perspectives: institutional, economic, cultural, gendered, and familial. The volume will be a valuable resource to political historians working on courts and gender.[...] It is an important contribution to new directions in the field of political history". Silvia Z. Mitchell, in Renaissance Quarterly, 73 (2), pp. 650-651.