Royalty

Members of royal families lived exalted and privileged lives, yet this came at huge personal cost for many. For daughters, the likelihood of being married in your teens and sent to a foreign land to a husband you had never met, was high. For younger brothers, every step you took was watched with suspicion, and for monarchs, any slip could mean deposition and death.

It was hard to know who was really your friend, and who was just looking for a chance to advance his family by hoodwinking you. Some royal couples were lucky, and formed close personal relationships – Charles V and his Empress, Isabella of Portugal, for example. Others were not so lucky – James III and Margaret of Denmark and Francis I and Eleanor of Austria were miserable together.

Fertility was the bedrock of a royal consort's duty, and woe betide the wife who failed to bear sons. A gilded cage, indeed!