In the early modern Europe, Queens did not come fully formed.

A series of rights, rituals and ceremonies transformed a hesitant bride into a fully

fledged monarch.

And beneath all these contracts and customs were real, live women.

Their emotions running high as they left behind their birth families and embarked on an

exciting and terrifying journey into a foreign land to marry a stranger.

The royal families of Europe were intricately interconnected.

Queens to be travelled and married across the continent.

And so it makes sense to study how one became a queen by looking comparatively at different

European countries.

Today I'm joined by Dr. Katazina Kosia, lecturer at Northumbria University and the author

of Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe to think about two closely connected dynasties,

the Valois of France and the Agilonians of Poland.

The latter so often excluded from pan-European studies.

But along the way we'll also encounter Italian, Spanish and Portuguese brides.

Becoming a queen in Early Modern Europe was a tough business.

And Dr. Kosia is going to show us how it was done.

Katazina, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to not just the tutors and to talk about

this idea of becoming a queen in Early Modern Europe.

Your book of the same name is very interesting because it insists that we need to consider

Poland when we're thinking about Europe.

And it points out how many studies today that say that their studies of Europe as a whole,

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