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Providing a novel research methodology for students and scholars with an interest in dynasties, at all levels, this book explores the Spanish Habsburg dynasty that ruled the Spanish monarchy between c. 1515 and 1700.

Instead of focusing on the reigns of successive kings, the book focuses on the Habsburgs as a family group that was constructed in various ways: as a community of heirs, a genealogical narrative, a community of the dead and a ruling family group. These constructions reflect the fact that dynasties do not only exist in the present, as kings, queens or governors, but also in the past, in genealogies, and in the future, as a group of hypothetical heirs.

This book analyses how dynasties were 'made' by the people belonging to them. It uses a social institutionalist framework to analyse how family dynamics gave rise to practices and roles. The kings of Spain only had limited power to control the construction of their dynasty, since births and deaths, processes of dynastic centralisation, pressure from subjects, relatives' individual agency, rivalry among relatives and the institutionalisation of roles limited their power.

Including several genealogical tables to support students new to the Spanish Habsburgs, this book is essential reading for all students of early modern Europe and the history of monarchy.

History, geography, and auxiliary disciplines - Tijdens het voorspel van de Nederlandse Opstand (1559-1567) vond een fatale breuk plaats tussen landsheer Filips II en zijn drie belangrijkste vazallen Oranje, Egmont en Horn. Toch waren er in deze periode vele contacten tussen de drie heren en hovelingen van Filips die erop gericht waren hechte banden te smeden tussen 'Brussel' en 'Madrid.' Deze studie gaat over deze contacten. Wie zocht eigenlijk contact met wie? Welke doelstellingen hadden beide groepen? Waarom waren deze contacten onvoldoende om een goede relatie tussen vorst en vazallen in stand te houden? Door de briefwisseling van Oranje, Egmont en Horn en allerhande Spaanse tussenpersonen te onderzoeken, schetst de auteur een beeld van de houding van de heren ten opzicht van Filips' Spaans-Habsburgse monarchie en werpt zo een nieuw licht op het voorspel van de Nederlandse Opstand.

The Bahrāmī Safavids, a relatively unknown collateral branch of the Safavid dynasty, active in Iran from 1517 to 1593, played a crucial role in dynastic developments in Safavid Iran. This essay examines the dynastic developments of the Safavid rulers and their contemporaries to argue that they embarked on a process of dynastic centralization, presenting themselves increasingly as the only holder of dynastic power, at the expense of their male relatives. The persistence of the Bahrāmī branch illuminates how this process took shape in Iran and how dynastic developments among neighbouring Central Asian dynasties influenced the fate of the Safavid collaterals.

In state formation research, princely houses have been a blind spot. The development of states has been discussed from many perspectives, like interstate competition, internal social conflicts, fiscal-military developments, etc., but at the centre of most European states, there was a princely house. These ruling houses have been overlooked in studies about state formation. What's more, when discussing such dynasties, the vertical chronological perspective (grandfather-father-son) is all dominating, for instance in the focus on dynastic continuity, dynastic culture and representation, and the like. This collection of essays highlights the horizontal perspective (ruler, all children, siblings, cousins), in asking how the members of a princely family acted as a power network. The quest is to develop an understanding how this family network interplayed with other factors in the state formation process. This volume brings together existing knowledge of the topic with the aim of exchanging insights and furthering knowledge.