FANARIOŢI ŞI BOIERI LA GRANIŢELE IMPERIILOR. DESPRE LOIALITATE ŞI SUPUŞENIE ÎN SECOLUL AL XVIII-LEA

The present study analyses the interconnection between office, social status, and loyalty through patronage relationships. The actors are the Wallachian and Moldavian boyars of the eighteenth century. The first part of the paper examines the social and political ascent of boyars to the highest offices in the princely council through the prisms of ethnicity, social status, and loyalty. The focus shifts afterwards on the manner in which social status was identified and fashioned in relation to the position of power held at a certain moment in South-Eastern European circles. Special emphasis is given to how the process of self-fashioning contributed to the underlining of social prestige, and to the propagation of a social representation designed to uphold the boyars’ pretensions to social advancement. The article ends with a case study intended to mirror the fluid identities and loyalties assumed by the Wallachian and Moldavian elites.