Philip the Handsome
Philip the Handsome was Duke of Burgundy at four, King of Castile for three months at twenty-eight, and dead before he could be anything else; the marriage his father had arranged for him made his son the ruler of half of Europe. He was born at Bruges in 1478, the son of Maximilian of Habsburg and Mary of Burgundy, and when Mary died in a riding accident in 1482 he inherited the Burgundian Netherlands with his father as regent and the Flemish towns in revolt against the regency. He was declared of age in 1494 and governed the Low Countries as a Burgundian prince, French-speaking, extravagant, surrounded by the Flemish nobles his father-in-law would later resent. In 1496 Maximilian married him to Juana, the second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, as one half of a double match against France; the deaths of her brother, her elder sister and her sister's son between 1497 and 1500 made Juana the heir to Castile and Aragon. That made Philip the husband of an heiress who was, by then, in love with him to the point of illness while he was not with her. Isabella died in November 1504 leaving Castile to Juana with Ferdinand as governor if she would not or could not rule, and Philip went to Spain to claim it for himself. He landed at Corunna in April 1506 with German troops, the Castilian nobles who wanted Ferdinand out came to him. At Villafáfila in June Ferdinand gave up the government and went to Aragon, and the two men agreed between them that Juana was unfit. The Cortes at Valladolid swore him king in July. In September at Burgos, after a game of pelota and a drink of cold water, he took a fever and died in six days; poisoning was said at once and typhoid is the usual reading. Juana would not let the coffin be buried and travelled with it for months, which is the image of her that lasted, and Ferdinand came back to govern. The son, Charles, was six, in Mechelen, and became King of Spain in 1516 and emperor in 1519.
- Lived: 1478 CE – 1506 CE
- Nationality: Burgundian
- Roles: king, duke, monarch
