Duty to the dynasty
By the sixteenth century Europe was controlled almost exclusively by rulers descended from a small caste of dynasties whose members married among them- selves.[592] Intermarriage within these dynasties helped to maintain their prestige.
In addition, the practice was believed to limit any local jealousy and violence that would have resulted from a king selecting his bride from among his subjects.[593] But the most important driver of choosing partners from within the caste was the perceived usefulness of marriage for building alliances and extending empires, with the Habsburgs in particular renowned for relying on Venus rather than Mars to expand their domains.[594]Under Eleanor’s grandfather, Maximilian (1459—1519), the Habsburgs deployed marriage strategies to expand north and west from their ancestral lands in central Europe: into Burgundy in 1477 when Maximilian wed Marie of Burgundy, and, after his election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1493, through the marriages in 1496 and 1497 of his and Marie’s two children to two children of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Marguerite was married to Juan, heir to the Spanish throne, and her older brother, Philip, to Juana, sometimes called La Loca. Juan died shortly after his marriage to Marguerite, and, with the demise of Queen Isabella in 1504 followed by the unexpected death of her heir, also named Isabella, Juana became Queen of Castile. Following Philip’s premature death in 1506, Juana and Philip’s eldest son Charles inherited the family’s Burgundian territories, and, although Juana lost rule of Castile to her father, Charles would claim his grandparents’ thrones and install himself in Spain when Ferdinand II died in 1516. Marriage brought the Habsburgs further territories when in 1506, Maximilian and Vladislaus II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, entered into a treaty whereby Maximilian married his grand-daughter Marie to Vladislaus’s son and heir Louis and his grandson Ferdinand to Vladislaus’s daughter Anna.
Louis acceded to the throne as a child in 1516 but died in 1526 fighting the Ottomans at the Battle of Mohacs. Ferdinand claimed his thrones, winning Bohemia easily, and, after a lengthy struggle, Hungary as well.Managing his family’s vast territories eventually took its toll on Charles, who, in addition to his other responsibilities, was elected Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V when Maximilian died in 1519. Charles V would abdicate in 1556. His brother Ferdinand had governed the Habsburg’s ancestral Austrian lands in central Europe since 1519; with Charles V’s abdication, Ferdinand received the office of Holy Roman Emperor while Charles V’s son Philip received the Spanish lands. But as long as he reigned, Charles V was aided not only by his male but his female relatives. The siblings’ aunt Marguerite of Austria, who raised Eleanor, Charles, Isabella, and Marie at her court in Malines (as I noted earlier, the youngest, Ferdinand and Catherine, grew up in Spain with their mother), served Charles V as regent for the Netherlands from 1507—1515 and from 1519 until her death in 1531, when Marie, widowed queen of Hungary, took up the baton. Studies of the siblings’ correspondence has shown how they shared in a sense of duty to their House and cultivated their family relationships. Tupu Yla-Anttila rightly notes that Marie’s “performance aimed at the smooth functioning of the regency” and that she “very consciously moulded herself into the role of Charles’s obedient companion” all the better to offer him advice.[595] Recent scholarship stresses that performance of “emotives” often produces as well as reflects affect, and Marie’s very diligence suggests a genuine commitment to the role. Isabella’s marriage to King Christian II of Denmark at the age of thirteen did not in the end work to the advantage of the Habsburgs: exiled along with her husband during a civil war, she wrote frequently to her sibling asking for aid. The young queen died at the age of 25.[596] But the letters of Catherine, who grew up far from Charles, demonstrate perhaps the most clearly how the siblings maintained and shaped their ties. Although the pair met only twice in their adult lives, Catherine represents herself in her correspondence as deeply devoted to her brother and eager to work on his behalf.[597] She begs the emperor for news of his health and sends him foods to try; she lacks the words to sufficiently express her appreciation that the king sent Don Miguel Velasco to see her while she was ill; she cannot tell him what she would do to serve him because she would do anything for her true father and lord; her only desire is to kiss His Majesty’s hand a thousand times for the love and the letters.[598] [599] In 1553, Catherine dispatched one of her own servants to live at the imperial court to tend to Charles and cook for him.11
As for Eleanor, her devotion to the House is most clearly visible in her acquiescence to brother’s marriage strategies and energetic mediation between her brother and the French king.
Charles twice married Eleanor for political reasons, and, in both cases, she assumed her role with loyalty and dedication, whatever her personal feelings may have been. Her compliance in the first case must have cost her dearly, for she seems to have been hoping to marry one of Charles’s closest advisors, Frederick, who, as son of Philip, Elector Palatine and Margarete of Bavaria-Landshut, would later himself be Count and Elector Palatine.[600] At the death of Ferdinand II of Aragon in January 1516, Charles began to plan a move to Spain to claim the throne,[601] and one way of guaranteeing the seamless continuation of rule in the Netherlands would have been to marry his sister to his advisor and leave them to govern.[602] But sadly for Eleanor and Frederick, Charles had just set off for Spain in May 1517 when he learned that Marie of Castile, second wife of King Manuel of Portugal, had died (Both Marie and Manuel’s first wife, Isabella, were sisters of Eleanor’s mother Juana, and therefore Eleanor’s aunts). Spain having become his most urgent interest, Charles was eager to maintain good relations with Portugal, prevent the French king from marrying one of his daughters to the newly single Manuel, and take advantage of new opportunities for expansion and profit from Portugal’s colonial adventures. Charles therefore negotiated for Eleanor to marry the twice-widowed Manuel, thirty years her senior. Although Manuel’s son and heir Joao would have been an age-appropriate match, the king was ready for an immediate marriage, and he had ready money.[603] Marguerite of Austria therefore again assumed governorship of the Netherlands,[604] while Eleanor departed Brussels, first for Spain and from there for Portugal. Referring to Eleanor’s “acceptance of a much older man,” Gschwend affirms that throughout her life, Eleanor “was selfless in advancing the emperor’s ‘honor and profit.’ ”[605]Manuel died only three years into the marriage. For this reason, it is impossible to know what sort of long-term role Eleanor might have played as queen of Portugal; the influential role of her sister Catherine as queen of Portugal’s Joao II suggests that Eleanor, too, might have enjoyed similar latitude had her reign been longer. Whatever the case, Eleanor’s next job on behalf of the Habsburgs, marriage to Franpois I of France, was long-lasting and the desired outcome obvious. In 1525, the French king and his army were defeated by imperial troops near the Italian city of Pavia, and the king transported as Charles V’s prisoner to Spain. The Treaty of Madrid, which led to the king’s return to France, stipulated a marriage between Franpois I and Eleanor. The king then made his way back to Paris, and his two sons were sent to Spain, to guarantee that he fulfill the terms of the treaty. Eleanor waited to be summoned to France.