In the name of a distant king: representing royal authority in the county of C astile, c .900–1038

This article explores the representation of royal power in the tenth‐century county of C astile by contrasting the low degrees of effective royal agency within the county with a dominant charter‐writing tradition that coupled king and count in the synchronisms of the dating clauses. The components of the C astilian charter corpus are broken down and compared to other areas in northern I beria, in order to suggest that, rather than a mere regional charter‐writing tradition, this practice reflects a widespread political culture that sought to legitimize the counts' unitary leadership of C astile by reference to a prestigious yet distant royal figure.