ABSTRACT
The complicated allegiances of political agents who crossed borders, and the range of backgrounds and social groups they came from, are evident in many of the lives of individuals throughout this volume. This opening section on court figures ‒ on the political lives of those who operated within multiple royal courts, and the knowledge and experience they brought to bear on defending or subverting competing state interests across borders ‒ has several aims. At a fundamental level, it illuminates the fluidity of ‘state’ itself as a term in the early modern period, which broadly referred to several institutions or ‘networks of agencies’ that exercised political power within and for the realm. 1 It draws attention also to the court as the visible centre of the state, providing both exemplars and exceptions to the debates and practices around transnational and transcultural movement, identity, and belonging that governed the lives of ordinary subjects.
