As potencialidades da função de Aia na Baixa Idade Média

Abstract

In this essay we study the position of ladies-in-waiting in the medieval royal courts of the kingdoms of Portugal and Castille during the fourteenth century, a context of intense circulation of noble men and ladies, acentuated as a consequence of the Hundred Years war and its influence in the Iberian Peninsula. Following the steps of a prosopograhic study, we attemp at establishing the potencialities for social and political ascension of the nobility in an analysis that ranges from their family origins to the end of their progression. The comparison of various models of ascension, and of the destinies achieved by individuals, reveals similarities in their profiles and permits that we determine the conditions that can grant them success or failure. The contribution of one such study shall be that, through prosopography, it attemps at undoing the historiographic generalizations that haunt the studies around the category of lady-in-waiting.