Book excerpt: The volume edited by the historian Aleksandra Skrzypietz presents seven queens from the early modern era in Europe. Seven contributions highlight the respective queen's role within the complex web of court and family arrangements. Individual agency as well as the social structures of the courtly world of intrigue and shifting coalitions determined whether a queen was able to retain her position of power or lost it. Often enough, they became the victims of their own kind, new and old, in these struggles for power. "Queens within Networks of Family and Court Connections" is ideal for students and scholars of royal history and early modern European history.