INTRODUCTION

This introduction is intended to set a context for the book that follows. The book, you should be warned, is about the outward manifestations of aristocracy, and not about such subjects as ‘feudalism’, aristocratic incomes and aristocratic power. The exterior trappings of aristocracy are a wide enough study, and have seen relatively little academic work. But I begin, at least, on an Olympian height, even if I will soon descend to metalwork, stone and wax; and scrabble about for the meaning of words. It is only right to begin by examining what we mean by ‘aristocracy’; dealing with (or at least reviewing) the problems of class, social friction and identity which form the background to the book’s thesis. Its thesis too has a history, and it is to be found in observations first framed (I believe) by Leopold Génicot in the 1960s, although implicit in earlier work on both sides of the Channel.