“The Spanish Habsburgs (1500-1700): The Men and the Women who Ruled the First Global Empire”
For two centuries, the Spanish Habsburgs ruled territories stretching across Europe, the Americas, and into Asia. At the heart of this vast monarchy was a family. Marriages redrew political boundaries, inheritance carried kingdoms across generations, and the birth—or death—of a child could alter the balance of European power.
This book tells the story of the women and men who built, governed, and defended that empire. From Charles V to Carlos II, it follows a dynasty whose authority depended on the work of relatives scattered across courts and countries. Queens, sisters, daughters, and aunts governed territories, negotiated alliances, mobilized resources, and sustained relationships across great distances. Their contributions were fundamental to the family’s exercise of power.
Drawing on archival research and new scholarship, Silvia Z. Mitchell brings women fully into the history of the Spanish Habsburgs and challenges the familiar portrait of a dynasty destined for decline. She explores how successive generations confronted war, rebellion, and uncertain successions, while cultivating the loyalty of their subjects through developing magnificent courts, commissioning royal portraits and palaces, and patronizing religious institutions.
The result is a history of family and power on a global scale: how intimate relationships shaped government, how art made authority visible, and how the ambitions and obligations of one ruling house helped transform the early modern world.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Infanta María Teresa (1638-1683), hacia 1652-1653. Copyright © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
“Marie Thérèse of Austria: Infante of Spain, Queen of France”
Written with Jonathan Spangler, this biography places Marie-Thérèse of Austria at the center of her own history. Born a Spanish infanta and married to Louis XIV, she connected two rival monarchies through family relationships, correspondence, and dynastic rights. The book explores her life between Spain and France and the political significance of a queen whose story has so often been overshadowed by her husband’s.