The good, the bad and the Habsburg

I am currently working on a project about the Habsburg family. I was wondering who was the most efficient Habsburg ruler and the biggest failure.

I like Charlie V. He was a great administrator, a patron of science and the arts, and was an all-around swell guy. He had a hell of a time though because you had the splintering of the HRE hardcore what with the protestants coming into the spotlight which fractured it even further. He had a ton of shit to deal with and he dealt with it the best way he could.

Also I bet him and Luther would have had interesting conversations if they were at the diet at the same time.

>Most efficient
Hard to say but Charles V was bretty gud.

>Biggest failure
Charles II simply on the future of being born.

ironically Charles II could be considered best ruler
I'm thinking about how irrelevant Philip III was compared to the rest so he probably was shit, also Philip IV

Maria Theresa and Joseph II were both great rulers, really helped reform administration in a meaningful way.

Francis II was a lazy bum desu. Didn't want to do shit. Metternich is more famous for his foreign engagements, but he had a lot of good domestic ideas too. Probably was Francis II was too much of a pussy to tackle them. His son, Ferdinand, wasn't much better as he was retarded.

Austrian Habsburgs > "Spanish" Habsburgs

>Joseph II
>Good leader
>Completely fail to implement any emaningful reform
>France cockblocks all attempts at foreign policy

Had his heart in the right place but still

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they were very important in their legacy. the josephine spirit very much lived on as the bureacracy developed and its civil servants saw their job as looking after the public good with efficiency and reform

Charles V was good. But we often forget the man who basically set the basis for Habsburg power for the next generations.

While he had many failures, Maximilian I had great matchmaking skills which landed his grandsons on the thrones of Austria, Spain, Habsburg Netherlands, Bohemia and Hungary and a few others.

Philip II was the hardest worker

>His methods have become famous. All work was done on paper, on the basis of consultas (that is, memoranda, reports, and advice presented him by his ministers). In Madrid, or in the gloomy magnificence of his palace of El Escorial, which he built (1563-84) on the slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama, the King worked alone in his small office, giving his decisions or, as often, deferring them. Nothing is known of his order of work, but all his contemporaries agreed that his methods dangerously, and sometimes fatally, slowed down a system of government already notorious for its dilatoriness. Painstaking and conscientious, Philip's craving for ever more information hid an inability to distinguish between the important and the trivial and a temperamental unwillingness to make decisions.

>Hapsburg's were THIS CLOSE to also ruling England and making it Catholic again


I cry every time

baron just like her mother :^)

So up to now we have
Maximilian I the matchmaker
Philip II the hard worker
Charles V the traveler
Charles II the bewitched

The poor woman really tried too :(

Rudolf II the collector/the eccentric

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His father wasn't much better, but at least he had a killer stache

i know, she got so hysterical she convinced herself she was pregnant until a few months in everyone realized she wasn't...

i wonder what she had that she couldn't get pregnant

Maria Theresa was married with Francis I Stefen de Lorraine. And her sons was not really Habsbourg, it's just for the heritage. Joseph was a "de Lorraine", and Francis II "Habsbourg-Lorraine", the cadet house. Real Habsbourg died with Maria Theresa

Rudolf I was kind of interesting. Established the Habsburgs as a relevant dynasty in Europe.

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