Later eighteenth-century Europe has recently been viewed through a royal lens. The publication of a series of major political biographies has renewed the study of monarchy during the generation before 1789 and has made clear that, far from being an overture to the French Revolution, these decades must be considered on their own terms. These terms were overwhelmingly monarchical. It was pre-eminently the age of Frederick the Great, Joseph II and Catherine the Great, and in retrospect can be seen to have been the final decades when the institution of monarchy itself was secure and unchallenged. Kings and queens did not become extinct after 1789, but crowns were worn less confidently after the upheavals of the French Revolution and especially the execution of Louis XVI. It had been very different during the eighteenth century when political authority throughout much of Europe was exercised by sovereigns of various kinds, most of whom were in practice and usually in theory hereditary rulers: in Russia, emperors and empresses, elsewhere kings and queens, dukes, and princes of all kinds. These men and women were closely involved in the government of their territories. They participated in the councils which fashioned foreign and domestic policies and even had a limited role in their implementation. One common theme in the recent stream of monarchical biographies has been the personal involvement of these figures in all the dimensions of ruling, even at a period when bureaucratic administrations were supposedly beginning to emerge in some continental states.