Introduction

Abstract

The queen’s court was modeled on the king’s court and, as Marcin Kromer wrote in the 16th century, the ruler “feeds, clothes and remunerates” of all his wife’s courtiers (Kromer, 1984, 147), due to its role to merely serve its mistress, it could not be similar to the king’s court in terms of its role in the state. It seems that due to this disparity, the actual role of the queen’s court in politics, culture or the economy was mostly determined by her personality and ambitions on top of her relationship with her spouse, which increased or decreased her chances of making her court, or more precisely, the people associated with it, an important political factor. It is not surprising, therefore, that the attention of researchers was attracted to those Polish queens who stood out for their activity and influence on the state, for example, such as Queen Bona Sforza, while those who rarely or never went beyond the role of a royal consort remained in a deep shadow. Although it should be noted at once that there was an obvious change when the queen’s spouse also became the queen mother – the need to secure the fate of her children, especially sons, generally motivated Polish queens and those immediately surrounding them, making their courts and the people associated with them active participants in public life (SucheniGrabowska, 2009, pp. 247–260). However, these issues did not receive separate attention.