Surrounded by Ancestors : Depiction of Luxembourg and Plantagenet Genealogies in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

The ruling dynasties literally surrounded themselves with their ancestors (real ones, as well as imaginary ones), creating galleries of their predecessors or artifacts, such as scrolls with genealogical diagrams. A lineage represented in such a manner could then be presented not only to the royal family but also to their courtiers and foreign diplomats, reminding everyone of the position of the dynasty depicted in contemporary political struggles and in the history of Christianity. This argument is underlined by the fact that within the portrayal of the family, the prophecies of the end of the world and the approach of the Kingdom of Heaven were also included. The paper examines the way the members of two great European dynasties (the Luxembourg and Plantagenet) used pedigrees, the actual members they emphasised in them, and the imaginary characters they incorporated into their lineage. The two case studies consist of an ancestral gallery of the Luxembourgs in Karlštejn Castle and a pedigree scroll of Edward IV from the Plantagenet dynasty. This project evaluates the material from geographically distant areas and detects common features of pedigree construction strategies