Lledo Ruiz Domingo

English This article analyzes the female household of Queen Violant de Bar as a political and relational structure central to late medieval Aragonese monarchy. Using a prosopographical approach, it reconstructs kinship networks, service trajectories, and marriage strategies involving nearly fifty documented ladies and maidens.

This paper examines Queen Violant of Bar’s exercise of relational power in 1387 by analysing her correspondence through Social Network Analysis. Combining close reading with computational modelling, it reconstructs the relational structures that shaped governance within the Crown of Aragon. The article shows how the queen’s letters created bridges between administrative, ecclesiastical, fiscal, and territorial actors, revealing patterns of mediation, negotia-tion, and political intervention.

This monographic issue examines the political networks through which royal women exercised power in late medieval Iberia (c. 1350–1500). Building on the historiographical advances of queenship studies and the new political history, the volume approaches power as a relational phenomenon, articulated through practices, agents, and mechanisms rather than as a static attribute of royal office.