Offering a systematic analysis of texts produced at the courts of Burgundy and Austrian Habsburg over a period reaching from the 1470s until the early 1700s, this book traces the development of the idea of successful and competent political behaviour as seen through the eyes of court historians between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. The official chronicles and histories studied in this work not only reveal a growing influence of secular political thinking on the evolving model of political competence, but also present in detail the close relationship between the nascent state ideology and secular political theory.

More broadly, following the development of official history-writing, Models of Political Competence highlights the importance of historiography for the research on political thinking and its relevance for our understanding of the modern state in Europe and its origins.