In this volume, Christian Raffensperger complements his previous works on east European royal politics in the medieval period. Having ably reconstructed the interrelatedness of the major ruling families in previous publications, he turns in this book to the question of how individuals mobilized kinship ties to achieve their political goals.

This book focuses on three royal families: the Volodimerovichi based in Rus΄, the Arpads based in Hungary, and the Mieszkowice based in Poland. All three families intermarried multiple times through multiple generations while also engaging in marital unions with royalty in central Europe, Scandinavia, the Balkans, Byzantium, and the European steppe. As a result, they were kin by blood and marriage in multiple ways, yet they repeatedly engaged in conflict among themselves. As Raffensperger demonstrates, familial ties did not forestall conflicts; even closely-related individuals could challenge each other, including on the battlefield. Indeed, as he observes, some of the bitterest rivalries were between half-brothers, who recruited supporters from among the same pool of relatives—what he calls the “kinship web” (8). They formed what Raffensperger terms “situational kinship networks” (9)—temporary cooperative arrangements intended to assist in achieving specific, short-term goals. When that goal was either achieved or proved unattainable for the time being, the alliance dissolved, allowing participants to seek other partnerships with other kin, including individuals who had been on the opposing side previously. Through a series of case studies, mostly from Rus΄ but with key examples from Poland and Hungary, Raffensperger traces the formation and dissolution of specific situational kinship networks in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He points out how even lesser royals who had little basis for claims to the highest positions could make themselves into key players in their attempts to better their own status or obtain wealthier property holdings. Once again, as in his earlier publications, he demonstrates that rivalries and alliances transcended the national and religious distinctions that became so crucial in later periods. Situational networks typically included members who were suzerains over people of different ethnicities and different formal religious affiliations.

In addition to proposing this novel explanation for the continuing strife in eastern Europe in the medieval period, Raffensperger presents an important corrective to the image of devastating internecine warfare. He argues that most military engagements were not particularly bloody. Instead of annihilation, the goal was to force rivals to concede, which could often be accomplished without actually engaging in battle. Most of the time, royals did not seek the death of enemy kin. They were often content to let their hostile kinspeople flee to take refuge with other relatives, and to allow them to continue politicking. In Raffensperger's view, this period was marked not by excessive violence and lasting blood feuds, but rather by largely successful efforts to resolve conflicts with minimal death and destruction. When royals sought to make peace, they drew upon both the theory and reality of familial bonds to justify reconciling with one-time enemies.

Raffensperger's argument comes through clearly in this book, and it is amply substantiated by the evidence he presents. However, readers who are not already immersed in the royal politics of medieval eastern Europe are likely to find the case studies difficult to follow. Although Raffensperger provides fifteen genealogical charts, the sheer number of individual players with similar names and multiple familial connections complicates keeping them straight. Readers who are determined to understand the details in this book might be advised to read it in conjunction with Raffensperger's previous book, Ties of Kinship: Genealogy and Dynastic Marriage in Kyivan Rus΄ (2016) with its fulsome genealogical charts and biographies of individual figures.

Raffensperger's knowledge of the tangled familial relationships of medieval east European royals is unmatched. His familiarity with all the figures and their positions within the kinship web allows him to infer their goals and trace their interactions. The difficulty in crafting this history should not be underestimated: the primary sources yield only spotty information and the secondary sources frequently present incompatible reconstructions of events and interpretations of them. While specialists may contest this or that detail, overall Raffensperger has created both an interpretation and a reconstruction of events that must inform all future work on the topic.