Wim Blockmans investigates the exercise of power in European society through detailed analysis of three broad fields: politics, economics, and culture. The more these three areas overlap, he argues, the more absolute is the power. Thus, the movement of populations, the relationship of religions to secular powers, the arts of cities, courts, and villages all fall under his scrutiny.

For most of this millennium visual representations have been rulers' and governments' key tools of persuasion. Here, more than 350 illustrations - paintings, engravings, reliquaries, frescoes, illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, genealogical charts, maps, coins, even chess pieces - brilliantly illuminate Blockmans's thesis.

Works by artists as diverse as Giorgio Vasari, Rembrandt, Albrecht Durer, El Greco, Edvard Munch, and Paul Gauguin depicting subjects as varied as religious allegories, portraits of the Medici family, with trials in sixteenth-century Germany, religious extremism in Northern Ireland, Stalinist architecture, naval battles, and more converge to present a complete picture of European power structures and struggles over the last thousand years.