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Abstract This study examines the gallery project in the Hall of Kings at the Alcazar of Segovia, constructed by Enrique IV of Castile around 1458-1466, from the point of view of an understanding of royal iconography and the composition of the inscriptions that accompanied them. To achieve this, our starting point will be the testimonies that reproduced the inscriptions of the original project: the Memorial que se sacó del Alcaçar de Segobia, de la sala de los Reyes (1588) (Report Copied from the Hall of Kings at the Alcazar of Segovia) by Juan Fernandez de Contreras, governor of the Alcazar, and De las estatuas antiguas (Of Ancient Statues) (1590) by Diego de Villalta. The work will enable us to highlight the close contact that the gallery had with the combination of chronicles, the complementary role that text and image had in the concept of the project and its role in communicating a set of historical images which stressed the link between the Castilian monarchy and the Visigothic kings. Para ello, partiremos de los testimonios escritos que reproducen las cartelas del primitivo proyecto: el Memorial que se sacó del Alcaçar de Segobia, de la sala de los Reyes (1588)7, realizado por Juan Fernández de Contreras († 1608), alcaide del alcázar, quien se encargó de remitir una copia de las inscripciones a la catedral de Santiago de Compostela por carta fechada el 17 de julio de 1588s, en el marco del acopio de materiales que la Iglesia de Santiago realizó con el fin de defender el cobro del Voto de Santiago, dentro del conocido como Pleito grande; y el tratado De las estatuas antiguas (1590) del cronista y anticuario Diego de Villalta, conservado en sendas copias manuscritas en la British Library (Londres)9 y en la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano (Madrid)10. La serie estaría así diseñada probablemente para ser vista desde el acceso a la sala de Reyes a través de la sala de las Pinas y del actual patio del Reloj, que ofrecía una perspectiva que, en ambos casos, dejaría la efigie de Enrique IV a la derecha del espectador, posición que gozaba de una especial preeminencia en el período medieval19.

No monarchy fell to revolution in the Arab Spring. What accounts for this monarchical exceptionalism? Analysts have argued that royal autocracies are inherently more resilient than authoritarian republics due to their cultural foundations and institutional structure. By contrast, this paper leverages comparative analysis to offer a different explanation emphasizing deliberate regime strategies made in circumstances of geographic fortuity. The mobilization of cross-cutting coalitions, hydrocarbon wealth, and foreign patronage account for the resilience of monarchical dictatorships in the Middle East. Without these factors, kingships are just as vulnerable to overthrow as any other autocracy—something that history indicates, given the long list of deposed monarchies in the region over the past half-century.

How can the Biblical God be the Lord and King who, being typically unseen and even self-veiled at times, authoritatively leads people for divine purposes? This article’s main thesis is that the answer is in divine moral leading via human moral experience of God (of a kind to be clarified). The Hebrew Bible speaks of God as ‘king,’ including for a time prior to the Jewish human monarchy. Ancient Judaism, as Martin Buber has observed, acknowledged direct and indirect forms of divine rule and thus of theocracy. This article explores the importance of divine rule as divine direct , particularly in moral matters, without reliance on indirect theocracy supervised by humans. It thus considers a role for God as Über-King superior to any human king, maintaining a direct moral theocracy without a need for indirect theocracy. The divine goal, in this perspective, is a universal commonwealth in righteousness, while allowing for variation in political structure. The article identifies the importance in the Hebrew Bible of letting God be God as an Über-King who, although self-veiled at times, leads willing people directly and thereby rules over them uncoercively. It also clarifies a purpose for divine self-veiling neglected by Buber and many others, and it offers a morally sensitive test for unveiled authenticity in divine moral leading.

Modern historians have repeatedly cast Sri Lanka’s historical female monarchs as ‘queens’, without critically reflecting on the conceptual limits and nuances of that term. Through a close examination of sources from the early second millennium, and their reception by scholars from the colonial period onwards, I demonstrate that Sri Lanka’s female monarchs—particularly Līlāvatī of Poḷonnaruva (r. 1197–1200, 1209, and 1210)—engaged in a more creative and subversive performance of gender than modern ‘queenship’ allows. In particular, I argue, a discourse of kingship’s inherent masculinity, advanced in literary and didactic texts written primarily by male monastics, was too-willingly accepted by colonial-period scholars. Closer attention to the material evidence of Līlāvatī’s reign, however, challenges this discourse and further suggests a politics of gender beyond the binary.

The paper proposes a solution to the problem with Odysseus’ kingship in the Odyssey by maintaining that Odysseus is not officially considered dead. Consequently, Telemachus cannot inherit the position of king and Penelope must leave Odysseus’ household before remarrying. After discussing the modern concept of legal death and previous interpretations of the Ithacan situation, the paper focusses on Athena's speech at 1.275–92. A close reading demonstrates that erecting a cenotaph to Odysseus would be tantamount to a modern declaration of death in absentia, since it will render Penelope a widow and Telemachus the head of the household. This legal convention chimes with the Homeric depiction of Hades.

Abstract This essay traces relations between Sneglu-Halli, an Icelandic poet, and King Haraldr \"harðráði\" Sigurðarson of Norway as realized in episodes of Sneglu-Halla þáttr dealing with the patronage, composition, performance, and reception of poetry, and their consequences for both king and poet, reciprocity and rulership. The king commands extemporaneous verse composition but is tolerant of scurrilous comments on his person if witty and well-crafted. The necessarily quick-thinking poet must often versify in a reactive mode but succeeds in bringing not only personal agency but criticism of royal rule to the fore. The short narrative also explores the concept of tvíræði or ambivalence in verse, where the insulting runs parallel to the innocuous.

This article explores the practice of the sport of tiger hunting among the Wodeyars, the maharajas of Mysore, through an examination of art, archival records, state gazetteers, and a tour diary of Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV. It argues that the Wodeyars only adopted the sport as an expression of kingship in the late nineteenth century, under British influence. This, I posit, was part of their larger attempt to align their kingship to more popular Indian modes, specifically the Rajputs. By reading accounts of the sport in Krishnaraja Wodeyar’s tour diary, along with examining the Wodeyars’ attempts at forging kinship relations with the Rajputs, the article demonstrates how the sport became crucial to the Wodeyars’ assertion of a Rajput identity and to attempts to obtain a higher position in the princely hierarchy of the colonial period. The recognition that the success of tiger hunts was significant to Rajput kingship and identity, along with rising concern over the diminishing tiger population, led the Wodeyars to enclose forests, establish private hunting preserves and a shikar department, and classify tiger as game in an attempt to improve the sport and make it exclusive.

Tuṭṭanabšum, daughter of Naram-Suen, was one of the most powerful women of the Akkadian dynasty. The princess was installed as the high priestess of Enlil at Nippur; she held one of the highest cultic positions for the head of the Sumerian pantheon, in a city whose temple served as the religious capital of Sumer. Now, an administrative tablet from the Iraq Museum shows that Tuṭṭanabšum, like her father, was also elevated to the realm of the divine. Never before has there been evidence that a member of the Akkadian royal family other than the king was given divine status. The tablet demonstrates that the divinity adopted by Naram-Suen after his victory in the Great Rebellion applied not only to the king, but to other members of the royal family. Tuṭṭanabšum, therefore, was not only a member of the royal house and one of the highest cultic officials in the empire, but was also elevated to the divine realm.

This study examines the origins and symbolic meanings of the iconography of Vaiśravaṇa, which gained prominence in East Asia during the 200 years after the 8th century, through the lens of royal imagery as both a devotee and protector. As Vaiśravaṇa’s iconography spread along the Silk Road, it integrated diverse cultural traditions from the ancient Near East and the Indo-Iranian world, with Gandhāra and Khotan as central hubs. The iconography evolved into a distinctive form, featuring a cylindrical crown adorned with bird motifs, shoulder flames, a cross belt, a Stūpa, a spear, and celestial maidens. Previous studies often limited its origin to either Gandhāra or Khotan; however, this research highlights contributions from both regions, emphasizing their roles in shaping iconography. By focusing on Gandhāra and the Kushan Empire, this study explores how these elements reflect the diversity of regional cultures, political ideals, and religious values. It contextualizes these developments within historical and cultural exchanges between regions, offering a broader understanding of Vaiśravaṇa’s formation. The findings reveal that Vaiśravaṇa’s iconography reflects cultural exchange and symbolizes the sacred earthly ruler. This perspective highlights how regional diversity and intercultural interactions shaped its development, enriching the study of Buddhist iconography.

From the Neo-Babylonian period to Hellenistic times, the kings ruling over Babylonia employed many ways to disseminate their ideology to the people living under their rule. This article explores how objects – garments, accessories, and other regalia – were used as a corporeal language to express the nature of the king’s powers. These royal attributes are mentioned in royal inscriptions and in certain rituals, while some of them can be seen in iconographic representations of the Babylonian kings found on stelas or sculpted reliefs. Through these textual and iconographic sources, it is possible to observe what messages royal dress conveyed in terms of the origin of power, the identity of the royal person, and the discourse towards the governed people. Although the clothes of kings are the best documented, there is also information on the clothes of queens. For queens too, apparel expressed their status and power. The messages conveyed by royal dress evolved when the rulers were of local origin (Babylonian) and when they were foreign (Persian and Greek), but royal apparel itself remained an important medium for the expression of royal ideology.