Philip II of Spain

Philip II (1527-1598), sometimes called Philip the Prudent, was King of Spain from 1556, King of Portugal from 1580 and King of Naples and Sicily from 1554, and through his marriage to Mary I he was also King of England and Ireland from 1554 to 1558. The son of Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, he inherited his father's Spanish Empire in 1556 and took the Portuguese throne in 1580 after a dynastic crisis, joining the two crowns in the Iberian Union.

Under him Spain reached the height of its power, entered its Golden Age and held territory on every continent then known to Europeans; the conquests of the Inca Empire and of the Philippines, named after him, were completed in his reign, and he finished the palace of El Escorial in 1584. A devout Catholic, he saw himself as Catholic Europe's defender against the Ottoman Empire and the Protestant Reformation, and Spain shared in victories over the Ottomans at Oran, Malta and Lepanto. In 1588 he sent an armada to invade England.