Ferdinand III 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.

Maximilian I, the only surviving son of Emperor Frederick III and Eleanor of Portugal, transformed the Habsburgs from an Alpine dynasty into the leading power of Europe. His marriage in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, heiress of Charles the Bold, brought him the wealthy Low Countries and Franche-Comte, which he defended against France for the rest of his life. German king from 1486 and emperor from 1508, he reformed imperial administration and the army, and was a lavish patron of art and printing. Above all he was a matchmaker: the marriages he arranged for his son Philip the Handsome and his grandchildren with the ruling houses of Spain, Bohemia and Hungary delivered Spain and central Europe to his descendants.

Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy, ruled the Burgundian Netherlands from 1482 and became the first Habsburg king in Spain. His marriage in 1496 to Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, was intended only as an anti-French alliance, but the deaths of Joanna's brother and elder sister made her heiress of Castile, and in 1506 Philip was proclaimed king alongside her as Philip I. His Spanish reign lasted a matter of months before his death at Burgos in the same year, at the age of twenty-eight. Through his sons Charles V and Ferdinand I, he stands at the point where the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg lines both begin.

Charles V, eldest son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile, ruled the largest collection of territories any European sovereign had yet held: the Burgundian Netherlands from 1506, Spain with Naples, Sicily and the American possessions from 1516 as Charles I, the Austrian hereditary lands from 1519, and the Holy Roman Empire from his election in the same year. His reign was defined by wars with France over Italy, by the Ottoman advance on Vienna and the Mediterranean, and by the Protestant Reformation, which he confronted at the Diet of Worms in 1521 and failed to reverse. Exhausted, he abdicated between 1555 and 1556, dividing his inheritance between his son Philip II and his brother Ferdinand I, and retired to the monastery of Yuste.

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.