Charles V

Education

His father's sister, Margaret, was the mother figure in his life. She had a huge influence on Charles. A canny, learned, and artistic woman, with a court that included artists Bernard van Orley and Albrecht Dürer and master tapestry-maker Pieter van Aelst, she taught her nephew "above all that a court could be a salon." She saw to his education, securing as his tutor Adrian of Utrecht, a member of the Brethren of the Common Life, which advocated simplicity and promoted a cult of indigence and deprivation. Adrian later became Pope Adrian VI. The Brethren had many important members, including Thomas à Kempis. A third major influence on Charles during his early years was William de Croÿ, Sieur de Chièves, who became his "governor and grand chamberlain", giving Charles a chivalrous education. He was a tough taskmaster, and when questioned about it, he said, "Cousin, I am the defender and guardian of his youth. I do not want him to be incapable because he has not understood affairs nor been trained to work."

Marriage

On 21 December 1507, Charles was betrothed to 11-year-old Mary Tudor, Queen of France, the daughter of King Henry VII of England and younger sister to the future King Henry VIII of England, who was to take the throne in two years. The engagement was called off in 1513, on the advice of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Mary was instead married to King Louis XII of France in 1514.

After his ascension to the Spanish thrones of Castile and Aragon, negotiations for Charles's marriage began shortly after his arrival in Castile, with the Castilian nobles expressing their wishes for him to marry his first cousin Isabella of Portugal, the daughter of King Manuel I of Portugal and Charles's aunt Maria of Aragon. The nobles desired Charles's marriage to a princess of Castilian blood, and a marriage to Isabella would have secured an alliance between Castile and Portugal. The 18-year-old King was in no hurry to marry and ignored the nobles' advice, exploring other marriage options. Instead of marrying Isabella, he sent his sister Eleanor to marry Isabella's widowed father, King Manuel, in 1518.

In 1521, on the advice of his Flemish counsellors, especially William de Croÿ, Charles became engaged to his other first cousin, Mary, daughter of his aunt, Catherine of Aragon, and King Henry VIII, in order to secure an alliance with England. However, this engagement was very problematic because Mary was only six years old at the time, sixteen years Charles's junior, which meant that he would have to wait for her to be old enough to marry.

By 1525, Charles could not wait any longer to marry and have legitimate children as heirs. He had abandoned the idea of an English alliance, cancelled his engagement to Mary and decided to marry Isabella and form an alliance with Portugal. He wrote to Isabella's brother, King John III of Portugal, making a double marriage contract – Charles would marry Isabella and John would marry Charles's youngest sister, Catherine.

A marriage to Isabella was more beneficial for Charles, as she was closer to him in age, was fluent in Spanish and provided him with a very handsome dowry of 900,000 doblas de oro castellanas, which would help to solve the financial problems brought on by the Italian Wars. The marriage brought him the additional titles as "monarch of the Canaries [Canary Islands] and of the [Portuguese] Indies, the isles of mainland, and the Ocean Sea." Marrying Isabella would allow Charles to have her serve as regent in Spain whenever he left. Ultimately, this union would result in their son Philip having the strongest claim to the Portuguese throne when the House of Aviz died out in 1580, resulting in the Iberian Union.

On 10 March 1526, Charles and Isabella met at the Alcázar of Seville. The marriage was originally a political arrangement, but on their first meeting, the couple fell deeply in love: Isabella captivated the Emperor with her beauty and charm. They were married that very same night in a quiet ceremony in the Hall of Ambassadors, just after midnight. Following their wedding, Charles and Isabella spent a long and happy honeymoon at the Alhambra in Granada. Charles began the construction of the Palace of Charles V in 1527, wishing to establish a permanent residence befitting an emperor and empress in the Alhambra palaces. However, the palace was not completed during their lifetimes and remained roofless until the late 20th century.

Despite the Emperor's long absences due to political affairs abroad, the marriage was considered a happy one, as both partners were always devoted and faithful to each other. The Empress acted as regent of Spain during her husband's absence, and she proved herself to be a good politician and ruler, thoroughly impressing the Emperor with many of her political accomplishments and decisions.

The marriage lasted for 13 years until Isabella's death in 1539. The Empress contracted a fever during the third month of her seventh pregnancy, which resulted in antenatal complications that caused her to miscarry a stillborn son. Her health further deteriorated due to an infection, and she died two weeks later on 1 May 1539, aged 35. Charles was left so grief-stricken by his wife's death that for two months, he shut himself up in a monastery, where he prayed and mourned for her in solitude.

Charles never recovered from Isabella's death, dressing in black for the rest of his life to show his eternal mourning, and, unlike most kings of the time, he never remarried. In memory of his wife, the Emperor commissioned the painter Titian to paint several posthumous portraits of Isabella. The finished portraits included Titian's Portrait of Isabella of Portugal and La Gloria. Charles kept these paintings with him whenever he travelled, and they were among those that he brought with him after his retirement to the Monastery of Yuste in 1557.

In 1540, Charles paid tribute to Isabella's memory when he commissioned the Flemish composer Thomas Crecquillon to compose new music as a memorial to her. Crecquillon composed his Missa Mort m'a privé in memory of the Empress. It expresses the Emperor's grief and great wish for a heavenly reunion with his beloved wife.

During his lifetime, Charles V had several nonmarital liaisons, including some that produced children. One relationship was with his step-grandmother, Germaine de Foix, which may have produced a child, Isabella of Castile. After the death of his wife, Charles "seduced Barbara Blomberg, a teenager exactly the same age as his son Philip." He kept the relationship and the existence of this out-of-wedlock son secret, "no doubt because he felt ashamed of his affair with a teenager when he was forty-six." The child named Gerónimo later became known as John of Austria; the emperor made provisions for the child in a secret codicil to his will. As with his other out-of-wedlock children, the baby was taken from the mother. He met his son once. The relationship was not revealed to his legitimate children in his lifetime, but they became aware of the relationship after his death.

Issue

Charles and Isabella had seven legitimate children, but only three of them survived to adulthood. Charles also had natural children before he married and after he was widowed:

Due to Philip II being a grandson of Manuel I of Portugal through his mother, he was in the line of succession to the throne of Portugal, and claimed it after his uncle's death, Henry, the Cardinal-King, in 1580, establishing the personal union between Spain and Portugal.

Charles also had six children out of wedlock:

Infanta Isabella of Castile (20 August 1518 – 1537), perhaps daughter of Charles's maternal step-grandmother, Germaine of Foix, but strongly disputed by biographer Geoffrey Parker. Isabella died at the age of 19, never married, and had no issue.

Margaret of Austria (1522–1586), daughter of Johanna van der Gheynst, a servant of Charles I de Lalaing, Seigneur de Montigny, daughter of Gilles Johann van der Gheynst and wife Johanna van der Caye van Cocamby. Married firstly with Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence, and secondly with Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma.

Joanna of Austria (1522–1530), daughter of Catalina de Rebolledo (or de Xériga), a lady-in-waiting of Queen Joanna I of Castile or attached to the household of Henry of Nassau. She was brought up in an Augustinian convent in Madrigal de las Altas Torres.

Tadea of Austria (1523 – c. 1562), daughter of Orsolina della Penna. Married to Sinibaldo di Copeschi.

Cornelis de Hooghe (1541–1583), Dutch cartographer

John of Austria (1547–1578), victor of the Battle of Lepanto, son of Barbara Blomberg.

Titles and coat of arms

Charles V styled himself as Holy Roman Emperor after his election, according to a Papal dispensation conferred to the Habsburg family by Pope Julius II in 1508 and confirmed in 1519 to the prince-electors by the legates of Pope Leo X. Although Papal coronation was no longer necessary to confirm the Imperial title, Charles V was crowned in the city of Bologna by Pope Clement VII in the medieval fashion.

Charles V accumulated a large number of titles due to his vast inheritance of Burgundian, Spanish, and Austrian realms. Following the agreements known as the Pacts of Worms (21 April 1521) and Brussels (7 February 1522), he secretly gave the Austrian lands to his younger brother Ferdinand and elevated him to the status of archduke. Nevertheless, Charles also continued to style himself as archduke of Austria and maintained that Ferdinand acted as his vassal and vicar. There were restrictions on the governorship and regency of Ferdinand. For example, all of Ferdinand's letters to Charles V were signed "your obedient brother and servant". Nonetheless, the same agreements promised Ferdinand the designation as future emperor and the transfer of hereditary rights over Austria at the imperial succession.

Following the death of Louis II, King of Hungary and Bohemia, at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526, Charles V favoured the election of Ferdinand as king of Hungary (and Croatia) and Bohemia. Despite this, Charles also styled himself as king of Hungary and Bohemia and retained this titular use in official acts (such as his testament) as in the case of the Austrian lands. As a consequence, cartographers and historians have described those kingdoms both as realms of Charles V and as possessions of Ferdinand, not without confusion. Others, such as the Venetian envoys, reported that the states of Ferdinand were "all held in common with the Emperor".

Therefore, although he had agreed on the future division of the dynasty between Ferdinand and Philip II of Spain, during his own reign, Charles V conceived the existence of a single "House of Austria" of which he was the sole head. In the abdications of 1554–1556, Charles left his personal possessions to Philip II and the Imperial title to Ferdinand. The titles of king of Hungary, Croatia, etc., were also nominally left to the Spanish line (in particular to Carlos, Prince of Asturias and son of Philip II). However, Charles's Imperial abdication marked the beginning of Ferdinand's suo jure rule in Austria and his other lands: despite the claims of Philip and his descendants, Hungary and Bohemia were left under the nominal and substantial rule of Ferdinand and his successors. Formal disputes between the two lines over Hungary and Bohemia were to be solved with the Onate treaty of 1617.

As part of Andreas Palaiologos' will, he theoretically inherited the title of Eastern Roman Emperor from Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille, therefore cementing the claim of the Holy Roman Empire of inheriting the Roman legacy since the Fall of Constantinople. However, the Byzantine imperial title was never formally hereditary and rested on possession of that city, which led to imperial status being claimed by the Ottoman sultans.

Charles's full titulature went as follows:

Charles, by the grace of God, Emperor of the Romans, forever August, King in (of) Germany, King of Italy, King of all Spains, of Castile, Aragon, León, of Hungary, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Mallorca, Sevilla, Cordova, Murcia, Jaén, Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, King of both Hither and Ultra Sicily, of Sardinia, Corsica, King of Jerusalem, King of the Indies, of the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Neopatria, Württemberg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Asturia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Drenthe, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Oristano and Gociano, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molina, Salins, Tripoli and Mechelen.

Below is the coat of arms of Charles V according to the description: Arms of Charles added to those of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Two Sicilies and Granada present in the previous coat, those of Austria, ancient Burgundy, modern Burgundy, Brabant, Flanders and Tyrol. Charles I also incorporates the pillars of Hercules with the inscription "Plus Ultra", representing the overseas Spanish empire and surrounding coat with the collar of the Golden Fleece, as sovereign of the Order ringing the shield with the imperial crown and Acola double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire and behind it the Cross of Burgundy. From 1520, added to the corresponding quarter to Aragon and Sicily, one in which the arms of Jerusalem, Naples and Navarre are incorporated.