Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Charles V inherited and then led the rising House of Habsburg, ruling a vast collection of European and American territories that became the first realm described as "the empire on which the sun never sets." Born in Flanders in 1500 to Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile, he was the heir of four grandparents: Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Mary of Burgundy on his father’s side, and the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon on his mother’s. After his father’s death in 1506, he inherited the Habsburg Netherlands. In 1516, he became King of Spain, ruling Castile and Aragon jointly with his mother, which brought him the Spanish colonies in the West Indies and the Spanish Main, as well as the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. Upon his paternal grandfather’s death in 1519, he inherited the Austrian hereditary lands and was elected Holy Roman Emperor, adopting the imperial name Charles V and styling himself as a new Charlemagne. He revitalised the medieval concept of universal monarchy, made forty journeys through his realms with no fixed capital, and spent a quarter of his reign travelling. His reign was dominated by wars against France, the Ottoman Empire, and the Protestant Reformation, financed by loans from German and Italian bankers and the silver flow from New Spain and Peru, which caused widespread inflation. He supported the Magellan expedition that achieved the first circumnavigation of the world. After decades of conflict, including the Diet of Worms, the sack of Rome, and the Schmalkaldic War, he ultimately conceded the Peace of Augsburg and abdicated in 1556, dividing his domains between his son Philip II of Spain and his brother Ferdinand. He retired to the Monastery of Yuste in Extremadura, where he died in 1558.