ABSTRACT
During recent decades, historians' interest has increased in the border-crossing aspect of the marriages of members of Old Regime royal and noble families. Many factors are behind such a historiographical trend, including an interest in cultural transfers and their roles in Europe's cultural development. Marriages among members of royal or sovereign houses were only one part of a wider practice. Even the marriages of the Tudors, Valois, Stuarts, Habsburgs, Bourbons, and other dynasties, were not marriages just between two royal families. Many princes, high aristocrats, and sovereigns of independent but minor polities intermarried with these great dynasties. The marriages of the royal dynasties are only the visible tip of a wider phenomenon that deepened its roots in broader aristocratic groups. An analysis of the biographies of the members of the Order of the Golden Fleece is particularly telling. Families from the areas that today are Spain and France, nevertheless, also showed a notable cross-border character.
