Were any royal lines killed off due to plague? Did any houses cut themselves off from the outside (as much as possible at the time)? Would domestic staff be barred from leaving the premises? Did anyone take advantage of the plague to force claims and take land by force? What kind of practices were used to protect families from the disease?
Was reading an article and realized I've never really heard about what happened among the aristocracy, just that millions died. Interested in anything of note among these lines.
I know of at least 1 case where the Black Death directly impacted the political viability of a dynasty. King Edward III of England's daughter Joan of Kent was en route to marry Peter of Castille, son of Alfonso XI of Castille and Maria of Portugal when she and her party were exposed to the plague outbreak in Bordeaux, France in 1348. Because the marriage never happened, the alliance with Castille was called off. Castille and England would be fighting before Edward III's death in 1377. Source: "The Plantagents: The Warrior Kings and Queens who Made England" by Dan Jones.
The nobility or great men of Norway, which struggled for the elective throne of the country, were eradicated by the plague. Not that all died, but the class as a whole more or less ceased to exist.
The plague hit Norway particularly hard, and death toll estimates range between 50 and 70%.
Norway, like Sweden, had a rather strong class of self-owning farmers and no serfdom. However, Norway also had a law called the alodement law, which meant that if you worked free-held land for three generations (later shortened to 30 years), it became yours. It had originally been created to ensure that people could own the land they had lived on for generations, but when the plague hit, a lot of land became deserted.
Thus, tenants of the nobility or great men could simply move to land that had been vacated due to the death of the owners and live there for 30 years and become self-owning farmers. Since there was plenty of land to go around after more than half the population had died, the great men and nobility lost all their tenants. They had no legal means and nto the economic resources to force a serfdom upon their tenants, and were forced to start farming their own land for their survival. Thus the Norwegian nobility reverted to self-owning farmers.
The crown of Norway became the object of struggle between Denmark and Sweden, with Denmark ending up on top.
While the plague did not directly kill the royal line of Norway, it did kill the ability of Norway to produce its own candiates for Kingship.
The royal families of the time had land and that is what made them royal. What they did was to go to their country estates and barricade themselves in to escape the epidemic. Because of this most royal lines remained intact and viable. The outcome wrecked the economy because those who tended the fields were dead. This was were the instability of the royals really came from. Those below them were less bountiful. They survived the plague but those who did the "real work" died off.
I had an emphasis on the dark ages for my BA.
Enguerrand VII of Coucy, a powerful French nobleman who was also the son-in-law of Edward III of England, died of the plague, as did many other nobles. It was not at all uncommon.
Barbara Tuchman's excellent book "A Distant Mirror" tells the story of the bubonic plague and the Hundred Years' War, with Coucy serving as its central character.