Ferdinand I of Habsburg

Rudolf I of Habsburg was the first member of his family to be elected King of the Romans, ruling the German kingdom from 1273 until 1291. Born into a comital family with scattered lands in the Aargau, Swabia and Alsace, he was chosen by the prince-electors partly because he seemed a modest, unthreatening figure after the long interregnum that followed the collapse of Hohenstaufen power. He proved otherwise. After defeating Ottokar II of Bohemia on the Marchfeld in 1278 he took possession of Austria and Styria and, in 1282, granted them to his sons, shifting the family's centre of gravity from the Swiss lands to the Danube. Married to Gertrude of Hohenberg, he was the father of Albert I and the ancestor of every later Habsburg ruler.

Albert I was the eldest son of Rudolf I of Habsburg and Gertrude of Hohenberg, and the second Habsburg to wear the German crown. He governed Austria and Styria as duke from 1282, imposing firm and often resented rule on the Austrian nobility, and was passed over for the kingship in 1292 in favour of Adolf of Nassau. He pressed his claim, was elected King of the Romans in 1298, and spent his reign consolidating royal rights, curbing the Rhineland princes and attempting, without success, to bring Bohemia into the family's grasp. Married to Elizabeth of Gorizia-Tyrol, he was the father of Frederick the Fair, Leopold I and Albert II, through whom the Austrian line continued.

Albert II, known as Albert the Wise, was a son of King Albert I and ruled the Habsburg hereditary lands as Duke of Austria and Styria from 1330. A careful and conciliatory ruler after decades of family conflict, he restored the dynasty's finances, issued a body of territorial law for Austria, and in 1335 secured Carinthia and Carniola for the Habsburgs, a decisive addition that anchored their power in the south-eastern Alps. He kept Austria largely out of the wars between the Empire and the papacy in his day. By his marriage to Joanna of Pfirt he had four sons who survived him, among them Rudolf IV, the founder of the University of Vienna, and Leopold III, from whom all later Habsburg emperors descend.

Leopold III was a younger son of Duke Albert II of Austria and Joanna of Pfirt, and the founder of the Leopoldian line of the Habsburgs. Under the Treaty of Neuberg in 1379 he divided the family lands with his elder brother Albert III, taking Inner Austria, that is Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, together with Tyrol and the family's older possessions in Swabia and Alsace. He pushed Habsburg influence westward into the Swiss and south German territories, acquiring Trieste in 1382 and giving the dynasty its first Adriatic port. His campaigns against the Swiss Confederation ended with the Habsburg defeat at Sempach in 1386. Married to Viridis Visconti of Milan, he was the father of Ernest the Iron.

Ernest, called Ernest the Iron, was a son of Duke Leopold III and Viridis Visconti, and ruled Inner Austria, the Styrian, Carinthian and Carniolan lands, from Graz. He was the last Habsburg to be enthroned in the old Carinthian ceremony at the Prince's Stone in 1414, and he was among the first of the family to use the title Archduke of Austria consistently, a rank the dynasty asserted to place itself above the ordinary princes of the Empire. He spent much of his rule defending the southern frontier and containing his brothers' rival claims. By his second wife, Cymburgis of Masovia, he was the father of Frederick III, the first Habsburg to hold the imperial title without interruption in the family thereafter.

Frederick III, son of Ernest the Iron and Cymburgis of Masovia, reigned as German king from 1440 and as Holy Roman Emperor from 1452, the longest tenure of any emperor and the last imperial coronation performed by a pope in Rome. Slow, patient and famously unhurried, he lost ground in Hungary and Bohemia during his lifetime but secured the imperial dignity permanently for his house and elevated Austria to an archduchy in law. He is remembered for the enigmatic device AEIOU that he inscribed on his buildings and possessions. His greatest achievement was diplomatic: the marriage he arranged in 1477 between his son Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy, which brought the Burgundian inheritance to the Habsburgs.

Philip II, son of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, ruled Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, Milan and the Spanish empire in the Americas and the Philippines from 1556, and added Portugal and its possessions in 1580, briefly uniting the whole Iberian peninsula under one crown. Working from the vast monastery-palace of El Escorial that he built outside Madrid, he governed through paper and councils in an age of Spanish cultural ascendancy. His reign saw the naval victory over the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571, the long revolt of the Dutch provinces, and the failure of the Armada sent against England in 1588. He married four times, and by his last wife, Anna of Austria, was the father of Philip III.

Philip IV ruled Spain from 1621 to 1665, through the years in which Spanish military power was broken and Spanish art reached its height. Guided for two decades by the Count-Duke of Olivares, he committed Spain to the Thirty Years' War, and the reign brought the loss of Portugal in 1640, revolt in Catalonia, recognition of Dutch independence at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and the surrender of border territories to France at the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. He was the most discerning royal patron of his century, employing Diego Velazquez as court painter for more than thirty years. Son of Philip III, he married first Elisabeth of France and then his niece Mariana of Austria, and was the father of Charles II.

Ferdinand III, son of Emperor Ferdinand II and Maria Anna of Bavaria, took command of the imperial armies in 1634 and won the battle of Nordlingen in the same year before succeeding his father as emperor in 1637. Less doctrinaire than his father and convinced that the Thirty Years' War could not be won, he opened negotiations that produced the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, accepting a settlement that confirmed the religious division of Germany and limited imperial authority over the princes, but preserved Habsburg rule in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. He was a trained composer whose works were performed at court. By Maria Anna of Spain he was the father of Leopold I and of Mariana of Austria, queen of Spain.

Charles II was the last Habsburg king of Spain, the only surviving son of Philip IV and Mariana of Austria. He succeeded at the age of three in 1665 under his mother's regency and reigned in his own name from 1675 until 1700, over an empire still vast in extent but weakened by decades of war with France, in which Spain lost Franche-Comte and further ground in the Netherlands. Government rested largely with ministers and with a court split into French and Austrian parties over who should inherit. He married Marie Louise of Orleans and then Maria Anna of Neuburg, and left no children; his will naming Philip of Anjou as heir brought on the War of the Spanish Succession and ended Habsburg rule in Spain.

Maria Theresa, daughter of Emperor Charles VI and Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, was the only woman to rule the Habsburg lands in her own right, succeeding in 1740 as Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia. Her accession was immediately challenged, and the War of the Austrian Succession cost her Silesia to Prussia, a loss she failed to recover in the Seven Years' War. She responded with a thorough overhaul of the monarchy: central administration, taxation, the army, the courts and compulsory primary schooling were all reorganised in her forty-year reign. Married to Francis I Stephen of Lorraine, she founded the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and was the mother of Joseph II, Leopold II and Marie Antoinette.