Parallel Lives: Aztec and European Elite Marriage Patterns in the Late Postclassic/Renaissance

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The European conquest of the Aztec Empire was eased by strong parallels in Aztec and European courtly behavior in their respective (and contemporaneous) chronological periods, the Late Postclassic (1430–1521) and Renaissance (various dates, 1300s to about 1600). Elite marital alliance patterns, the comparative status of royal women, and flexible definitions of royal legitimacy were factors affecting palace politics all over Europe as well as in Mexico. Cortes and other Spanish adventurers immediately recognized these similarities and could exploit vulnerable points of Aztec royal family loyalty. This study draws on Tenochca (aka Culhua Mexica) royal histories in comparison with those of the Tudors and Plantagenets of England, the Medicis of Italy, and the Trastámara house of Spain, whose Princess Catherine of Aragon married England’s Tudor King Henry VIII in 1509 and was still Queen of England at the time of the fall of the Aztec empire. By then Spain was ruled by her nephew Charles I (Holy Roman Emperor Charles V). The Spanish adventurers were status-seekers aware of how power was won or lost by Europe’s various royal houses. Customs of the rulers were as important to them as were their shifting military allegiances, forged through marital alliance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35624.0