“To Serve without Regard for Place”

Abstract

This chapter explores the choreography of Muscovite royal wedding rituals, focusing on the appointments to the honorific duties typically performed at them. It focuses on the three categories of guests: royal relatives, courtiers and servitors of various ranks, and the bride's kin — the new royal in-laws. The chapter then explores the place of royal in-laws at weddings, whose presence was essential yet potentially disruptive to the very peace and harmony at court that the wedding was to symbolize and assure. It argues that the wedding served as a ritualized introduction of the bride's family into the inner circle of the Kremlin in a way that was acceptable to everyone else already living there. Ultimately, the chapter charts the evolving history of the precedence system (mestnichestvo) at weddings, the system of assigning honors and tasks to courtiers by rank. Mingling so many guests with such different social ranks eventually prompted the creation of a wedding exemption to the system of precedence, to avoid disputes over appointments. How that exemption evolved tells us a lot about the relationship between tsars and courtiers, and about monarchical power in Muscovy generally.