Early Marriage Negotiations
The Habsburg marriage negotiations revolving around the marriage of Queen Elizabeth I show the way marriage was often negotiated in royal families. The first phase began in 1559, with the initiative for a matrimonial alliance between England and Austria. However, the first phase was a failure. However, the people of England were relieved to the extent that they feared a foreign ruler coming into their country. The second phase of marriage negotiations came from England. Sir William Cecil was interested and began work on a marriage negotiation. While the first set of negotiations were uncertain this round gathered more support and Elizabeth was eventually in a position to marry that she could not get out of. Negotiations such as this are frequent in royal marriages. Many factors are an important part of negotiations such as the alliances that will be made, the religion, and the opinion of the royal family. Marriage was often based on political reasons, rather than love at this time.
Napoleon, as emperor, gave out kingdoms and female relatives with equal largesse to favored Marshals and general officers. Through most of recorded history state marriage were also common at lesser levels of nobility, and many a lesser marriage of state was consummated and bargained over during all of the Middle Ages and through the middle of the twentieth-century in western society, and the old forms still hold sway in many other cultural contexts today. One famous example of a marriage of state for lesser reasons was that of George II of Great Britain's parents. The Princess Sophia's dowry included properties assuring an income of 100,000 thalers annually, which lead to George Louis, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (the future George I of Great Britain), marrying his first cousin Sophia Dorothea of Celle—when both were pressed into the arrangement by his mother— and that German ducal dynastic move accidentally gave the couple the inside track on the Protestant throne of England.
Our own modern era has seen the terms meaning drift somewhat to include purely domestic marriages involving prominent figures, especially royalty in those societies still supporting that institution. So recent times have witnessed press spectacles as British royalty paid court and public relations officials maneuvered both behind the scenes and within the public eye in such marriages of state (in the newer Western sense) between the Princes Prince Charles and Andrew and the Lady Diana and Sarah amongst others.
Read more about this topic: Marriage Of State
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