The Spanish Habsburgs and Dynastic Rule, 1500–1700 Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book analyses how dynasties were ‘made’ by the people belonging to it. 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 his power....