In medieval and early modern nobility, the life of a newborn began with a procedure that resembled an Egyptian embalming process: the so-called wrapping or pinning. Noble babies were tightly wrapped around their necks in metre-long linen bandages shortly after birth, so that their arms and legs would become rigid and immovable on the body. The doctors and midwives of the time firmly believed that the soft limbs of a child would grow crooked or deformed without this rigid corset. The completely immobile baby package was then propped against the wall for hours, placed in a cradle, or hung on hooks while midwives and maids went about their duties. Only after many months did the bandages be gradually loosened so that the noble child could finally learn to move at all – a potentially uncomfortable start to a privileged existence.

Noble prince children and princes enjoyed a sacred inviolability that regularly caused serious headaches for their tutors. According to the divine understanding of rulers, an ordinary citizen or magister could in no way physically discipline the offspring of a king, since any hand on the prince was considered treason. To nevertheless bring idle or rebellious successors to reason, the European royal courts invented the institution of the Whipping Boy, Of the rough-and-tumble boys. The prince was accompanied by an equal-aged noble companion with whom he learned and played day after day. If the prince did not do his Latin homework or behaved inappropriately at the table, the future king was not beaten, but his closest friend received the blows with the willow rod before his very eyes. The psychological guilt and the shame that another had to suffer for one’s own mistakes proved to be far more effective pedagogy than any direct blow to the princely trousers.

The concept of an uneventful, playful childhood simply did not exist in the nobility; noble children were strictly considered miniature versions of future dignitaries. As early as the age of four or five, boys and girls had to wear their parents’ clothes in the exact miniature format. Little girls were wrapped in hard-wearing fishbone corsets, wore floor-length velvet dresses with frills, and painstakingly learned to move with graceful steps without stumbling over their wraps. Princes were given handmade, functional prungharnishes made of genuine steel weighing many kilograms at the age of six, and had to practice for hours with real, blunt swords. Anyone who roamed the court or rolled in the mud like a peasant child not only ruined a fortune in silk and gold brocade but also violated the courtly dignity, which one had to demonstrate with an iron face from the first step onwards.

In aristocratic power politics, children were by far the most valuable currency on the marriage market, which is why engagements could not be started early enough. As soon as an aristocratic girl gave birth, the royal courts were already calculating which neighboring dynasty would best merge lands, alliances, or claims to the throne. Princess Margaret of Scotland and the French Dauphin Louis’s wedding took place when the bride was just eleven years old, and some contracts were already sealed while the betrotheds were still clinging to their mothers’ breasts. At the symbolic wedding at an early age, an adult envoy often entered the bed of the little girl with a bare leg, representing the groom, to legally bind the alliance before notaries. The children often didn’t know for years what the whole thing meant – until at the age of twelve or thirteen they were hurriedly sent off to a foreign country to rule alongside a completely unknown husband.

The idea of a harmonious family life with one’s biological parents was completely alien to most noble children. Until the age of seven, they grew up almost exclusively with paid servants, governesses, and court ladies; contact with their mother and father often consisted of formal greetings at the Sunday church service. However, once a noble boy reached the age of seven, the period of adjustment ended abruptly: he was separated from his family and sent to the court of a friendlier duke or count, where he served as a page. There, the young squire learned not only to ride and fencing, but also had to cut the meat for the lord at banquets, serve the wine, feed the hunting falcons, and clean the boots. This harsh school away from home was intended to toughen the children, break down personal vanity, and build a tightly knit diplomatic network among the noble houses that would last a lifetime.