Book excerpt: In a fresh examination of the French ceremonial entry, Neil Murphy considers the role these events played in the negotiation between urban elites and the Valois monarchy for rights and liberties. Moving away from the customary focus on the pageantry, this book focuses on how urban governments used these ceremonies to offer the ruler (or his representatives) petitions regarding their rights, liberties and customs. Drawing on extensive research, he shows that ceremonial entries lay at the heart of how the state functioned in later medieval and Renaissance France.