Owing to the prevailing definition of ‘dynasty’ as a line of succession, historians have long neglected the fundamental tensions that underlie succession, and have undervalued both the active attempts of princes to control these tensions as well as their ability to anticipate the need to adjust to changing circumstances. Yet premodern dynasties were well equipped to anticipate and develop coping mechanisms for a wide range of future challenges regarding succession, religion, marital alliances and extinction. They did so by considering alternative scenarios for the future in house regulations. Using as an example the seventeenth-century house of Nassau in the Holy Roman Empire, this article argues that even though conflict remained endemic to dynastic power, future-orientated regulations constituted a basic consensus within princely families on how to deal with conflict, which both reflected and contributed to the associative political practices that held the Holy Roman Empire together.

中文翻译：

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神圣罗马帝国的王朝情景思考

由于普遍将“王朝”定义为继承顺序，历史学家长期以来一直忽视构成继承基础的基本紧张局势，并且低估了王子控制这些紧张局势的积极尝试以及他们预测需要调整的能力。变化的情况。然而，前现代王朝已经具备了很好的能力来预测和发展应对各种未来挑战的机制，这些挑战包括继承、宗教、婚姻联盟和灭绝。他们通过考虑未来内部法规的替代方案来做到这一点。本文以 17 世纪神圣罗马帝国的拿骚家族为例，认为尽管冲突仍然是王朝权力的特有现象，