ABSTRACT

This conclusion chapter presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The importance of transnational families is highlighted by several articles: notably Jane Ohlmeyer's demonstration of the ways in which the Ormond's established a secure bridgehead in England while upholding their position in Ireland, Violet Soen's exploration of the Croÿs poised between northern France and the Southern Netherlands, and Liesbeth Geevers's account of the way in which the House of Orange gradually withdrew from the territory in southern France which provided the very name of the dynasty and instead focused on its German lands and increasingly on the Dutch Republic, where it was intermittently Stadholder. The central role which women played within these aristocratic dynasties is a further conclusion of more general importance to emerge. The final general theme to emerge in many ways the most important. 'Dynastic identity', as contributors repeatedly make very clear, was a constructed, manufactured commodity and not a neutral, positivistic category.