History UsefulNotes / CharlesV

Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being a stark contrast to UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs' less magniloquent ways. The Spaniards also laughed at Charles' massive mandibular prognathism, a signature Habsburg trait which reportedly impeded Charles from even resting his mouth closed (he also liked to eat alone because the whole process could be a bit of a mess). In fact, at first he was unpopular enough that literal revolts exploded against him when he started handpicking Germans from his entourage to take the job of Spanish governors, having to be drowned by the force of weapons. However, they eventually warmed up to him, especially thanks to how quickly he learned Spanish and accepted their customs. They came to see him as a larger-than-life leader, often referred as "our [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Caesar]]" and "the Emperor King", and it would be in this royal name that conquistadors like UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and UsefulNotes/FranciscoPizarro came to expand the bounds of the known world, while kings and military men alike started their careers in the many wars he waged. This ability to adapt to his environment was not casual -- Charles became ''very'' good at it, speaking fluently not less than five languages, which led to his famous quote "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse".

Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558), from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]], was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Castile, Aragon and León, Archduke of Austria and Duke of the Netherlands, among other titles. You might sometimes find him called Charles I of [[UsefulNotes/TheKingdomOfSpain Spain]] and V of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, given that those were his two main fields and he inherited them in that order.[[note]]The amount of titles he held was actually much larger, as he had titles for individual areas in the Low Countries (most of current Belgium and the Netherlands) as well as some titles of places he claimed but where he did not actually rule.[[/note]] He stands out in history by a variety of facts, chiefs of them being probably him being the last Holy Roman Emperor crowned by the Pope and the first ruler in whose kingdom "the sun never set", called that way due to it controlling distant portions of Europe, Africa and the Americas.

Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558), from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]], was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Castile, Aragon and León, Archduke of Austria and Duke of the Netherlands, among other titles. You might sometimes find him called Charles I of [[UsefulNotes/TheKingdomOfSpain Spain]] and V of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, given that those were his two main fields and he inherited them in that order.[[note]]The amount of titles he held was actually much larger, as he had titles for individual areas in the Low Countries (most of current Belgium and the Netherlands) as well as some titles of places he claimed but where he did not actually rule.[[/note]] He stands out in history by a variety of facts, chiefs of them being probably him being the last Holy Roman Emperor crowned by the Pope and the first ruler in whose kingdom the sun never set, called that way due to it covering distant portions of Europe, Africa and the Americas.

Named after his great-grandfather [[UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy Charles I the Bold, Duke of Burgundy]], Charles was born in a toilet in Ghent, in the Habsburg Netherlands, but this lowly beginning shouldn't give the wrong idea about him. Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and America. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Empire from his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria, for her part, was regent for him in the Netherlands, and later helped him to be elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin Isabella of Portugal, who served as his regent in Spain.

Charles was in all senses a new breed of king. He could be considered the nexus between the medieval monarchs of the line of UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}}, eager to personally lead their armies with sword and lance, and the new global rulers of the Age of Exploration, obliged to delegate his will on their many subjects around the world. The amount of territories Charles had accumulated, almost ridiculous in their variety and remoteness, were undoubtedly a strength, as they made him capable to conjure up currents of manpower, money and exotic resources that often shocked the whole of Christendom, but were also a nuisance compared to compact, continuous countries like France and England, as he constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different sensibilities and policies, to the point he described himself his reign as a really long voyage. Although this system [[AwesomeButImpractical ultimately proved unsustainable enough]] for Charles to divide his empire between his son and brother, the fact that he managed to hold it together and even expand it at some points has led historians to consider him a quite extraordinary monarch even with all of his troubles and failures.

Part of this almost Messianic inspiration came from the quick expansion of his empire in the Indies, which was taken as a sign of God's acquiescence to his divine mission. Charles sincerely welcomed the Mesoamerican and Peruvian natives into his grand plans (them and their gold and silver, obviously) and continued the Catholic Monarchs' policies of a fair treatment of the indigenous whenever it could be enforced. Influenced by his adviser Francisco de Vitoria from the UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca and by the outspoken activist Creator/BartolomeDeLasCasas, he did the historical oddity of ordering all conquests to stop until they could decide whether they were actually acting justly, resulting in the Valladolid Debate, which went to cement further imperial policies with the natives as free vassals with their own range of motion. This also had the less pleasurable consequence to stimulate the Atlantic slave trade in order to replace native labor in America, resorting to his Portuguese pals and their trade monopoly with the African kingdom of Kongo, although Charles had nothing personal against darker skins -- a surprisingly high number of his conquistadors were blacks and mulattos too.

However, even with all those assets, this dream could ultimately not get through the wall of concrete called reality. The atomization of power in Europe made it very difficult to get the lasting agreement of many rulers in ''anything'', especially given that many of them weren't directly threatened by the Ottomans or simply did not want to yield any power to a superior order even at the cost of their own safety. With the emergence of UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation, the Vatican States' shifting interests, and the refusal of King Francis I of France to ever accept Charles' crowning, the emperor king spent most of his career fighting other Christians and the Pope himself, forced to make more and more concessions and burning away tons of money and manpower, until finally [[KnowWhenToFoldEm accepting his life project of defeating the Turks would never come to fruition]]. He abandoned his pretensions at the end of his reign, contenting himself with the idea of having still won most of the literal battles he fought - a notion that should have warned his Habsburg successors that beating people up can only lead you so far in international politics.

Named after his great-grandfather [[UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy Charles I the Bold, Duke of Burgundy]], Charles was born in a toilet in Ghent, in the Habsburg Netherlands, but this lowly beginning shouldn't give the wrong idea about him. Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and America. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Empire from his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria, for her part, was regent for him in the Netherlands, and later helped him to be elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin Isabella of Portugal, who served as his regent in Spain. Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being a stark contrast to UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs' less magniloquent ways. The Spaniards also laughed at Charles' massive mandibular prognathism, a signature Habsburg trait which reportedly impeded Charles from resting his mouth closed. However, they eventually warmed up to him, coming to see him as a larger-than-life leader, often referred as "our [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Caesar]]" and "the Emperor King", and it would be in this royal name that conquistadors like UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and UsefulNotes/FranciscoPizarro came to expand the bounds of the known world, while kings and military men alike started their careers in the many wars he waged.

Charles was in all senses a new breed of king. He could be considered the nexus between the medieval monarchs of the line of UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}}, eager to personally lead their armies with sword and lance, and the new global rulers of the Age of Exploration, obliged to delegate his will on their many subjects around the world. The amount of territories Charles had accumulated, almost ridiculous in their variety and remoteness, were undoubtedly a strength, as they made him capable to conjure up currents of manpower, money and exotic resources that often shocked the whole of Christendom, but were also a nuisance compared to compact, continuous countries like France and England, as he constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities, to the point he described himself his reign as a really long voyage. Although this system [[AwesomeButImpractical ultimately proved unsustainable enough]] for Charles to divide his empire between his son and brother, the fact that he managed to hold it together and even expand it at some points has led historians to consider him a quite extraordinary monarch even with all of his troubles and failures.

His main trait, for good or bad, was his sheer idealism. Having acquired at once the established prestige of the Holy Roman Empire and the rapidly rising power of the Kingdom of Spain, he found himself on a throne from where resurrecting the old medieval concept of the universal monarchy seemed actually sort of doable. Under the phrase ''pax cristiani, infideles bellum'' ("peace for the Christians, war for the infidels"), Charles dreamed with leading a [[TheAlliance unified, Catholic Europe]] against the Muslim [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Ottoman Empire]], hoping to recover North Africa and Eastern Europe from the clutches of Islam before reaching some day the gates of Constantinople, restoring something like the UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire of old. On several occasions he came somewhat close to achieving the unity required, as he already ruled directly almost half of Europe, including Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and most of Italy, and had more or less reliable allies in England, Portugal and Hungary.

However, this dream could ultimately not get through the wall of concrete called reality. The atomization of power in Europe made it very difficult to get the agreement of many rulers in ''anything'', especially given that many of them weren't directly threatened by the Ottomans or simply did not want to cede any power to a superior order even at the cost of their own safety. With the emergence of UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation and the refusal of King Francis I of France to ever accept Charles' coronation, the emperor king spent most of his career fighting other Christians, forced to make more and more concessions and burning away tons of money and manpower, until finally [[KnowWhenToFoldEm accepting his life project of defeating the Turks would never come to fruition]]. He abandoned his pretensions at the end of his reign, contenting himself with the idea of having still won most of the literal battles he fought - a notion that should have warned his Habsburg successors that beating people up can only lead you so far in international politics.

Despite this comparatively unusual ability to know when to just give up, it cannot be denied that war and warfare occupied a big role in Charles' life. He was essentially a PromotedFanboy when he became the King of Spain, as he admired the peninsular armies and their feats against the Moors and the French. He was pen pals with UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba, later hired UsefulNotes/DiegoGarciaDeParedes as the head of his royal guard, and in a particularly fanboyish instance, during a homage to the fallen general Antonio de Leyva, he showed up to the event dressed like a regular soldier of the ''tercios'' and had himself introduced as "Charles of Ghent" to properly play his part. Less amicable was his relationship to Pedro Navarro, another Spanish war hero that ended up working for the French to get out of prison, which Charles considered the [[ItsPersonal height of dishonor]]. Navarro actually begged him to be let back into Spanish service several times, but Charles would only have him as either a prisoner or an enemy, and it's rumored he ultimately had Navarro murdered in his cell (although this is very unlikely).

The wars against Francis had strong symbolic undertones, not limited to the Valois' frustrated aspirations to the Imperial throne, but also because it saw a clash of between the "old" France and the "new" multi-empire of Charles. France was seen as a holdout of medieval knightly culture, enforced by its time-tested traditional armies of heavy cavalry and heroic aristocrats, and up to the previous century it had been basically the default battle powerhouse of Europe. Charles, meanwhile, was the successor of UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs, who had recently unified the land of Spain and unexpectedly defeated the mighty France during the Italian Wars thanks to its pioneering of professional, pike-and-shot early modern warfare, in which the Holy Roman Empire had also had a hand. With his elite Italian-Spanish ''tercios'' and German ''landsknechte'', Charles ultimately wrecked France and sank it in a state of crisis for a century, a result that, even if it satisfied nobody and left an Europe divided and ravaged, also proved that both war and politics had already definitely advanced past the medieval era. Ironically, at several points Francis and Charles challenged each other to an [[TrialByCombat old-fashioned duel to decide the entire war]], but disagreements about the terms impeded it, which might only prove further the point.[[note]]Historians believe those challenges to have been just a promotional stunt, albeit it would not have been odd for the brash Charles to be seriously willing to do it. Had they actually fought, nobody knows what would have happened - the two kings had plenty of battlefield experience, but Francis was much taller and possibly healthier than Charles, while Charles was slightly younger and the most martially minded of the two.[[/note]]

Charles, who had personally led a military disembark in Algiers, did some innovation himself by founding in 1537 the first official marine infantry, the ''Compañías Viejas del Mar de Nápoles'', which remain the oldest continuously active marine unit in history as the modern Spanish Marine Infantry. He was also briefly interested in a project of man-powered paddle-wheelers built by engineer UsefulNotes/BlascoDeGaray that might have been a naval StoryBreakerPower at the time, although he forgot all about it when he was ill-advised that it would be too costly. His court inventor, Gianello della Torre, also reportedly designed flying machines and rudimentary machine-guns in the vein of those conceived by UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinci (who providentially worked for his rival Francis I), although without receiving as much attention by either Charles or history. Charles had also an interest in the occult and UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}}, a passion that he passed to his son Philip and his nephew Rudolph II, who you might have heard about in relation to the legend of the {{Golem}}.

Near the end of his life, burnt out by his exhausting lifestyle and his chronic bad health, Charles abdicated and retired to a monastery in Extremadura, land of conquistadors, with the spiritual goal of just chilling out. He had realized that his many territories were too much for a single king to manage, so he divided his will in the most appropriate way: his son [[UsefulNotes/PhilipII Philip]], a proud ethnic Iberian, received the kingdom of Spain and its related lands, while his brother Ferdinand, who had lived all of his life in Central Europe and was popular among Protestants and Catholics alike, was fitter to inherit the Holy Roman Empire. He did give Philip a small part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries (likely out of pride of his own Burgundian roots), which would turn out to be a huge mistake given their vast cultural differences, eventually causing the disastrous [[UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar Eighty Years War]], but this would only show many years after his death. His double reign as Holy Roman Emperor-King of Spain was never reunited in a single person again, although his successors at both would continue working together until the end of the Spanish Habsburg branch.

Making a balance of Charles as a king proves difficult. As both the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles was seen by many of his subjects as the harbinger of an universalist vision that many contemplated gloriously. However, just as much as Spain was expanding at the time thanks to its conquests in America, so did its international conflicts as a consequence of Charles' obsession with achieving a unified Catholic Europe. He accidentally kickstarted the trend, perpetuated by his Iberian successors with various levels of zealousness and misfortune, of treating the blossoming Spanish Empire as the benefactor, enforcer and workhorse of the Counter-Reformation, investing all of its riches and armies in the (failed) attempt to stamp out the Protestant heresy in whichever corner of Europe they could reach it - essentially, the beginning of a more than a century-long bane for every Spanish citizen of any race or condition. Speaking of the overseas territories, Charles was seen there as a distant, mercurial monarch, who initiated the first gestures to protect and develop the indigenous communities by advice of the UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, but who did not really care that much about it - he was simply focused with Europe, the battlefield of a dream he fought to his last days for.

* Makes a brief appearance in the fanfic ''Fanfic/{{Handmaid}}'', when he meets Henry VIII to discuss the possibility of marriage between the future UsefulNotes/PhilipII and Henry and Anne Boleyn's daughter Cecily. (Since in this fic Anne is serving as Henry and Katherine's handmaid, a union recognized as valid by the Catholic Church, there are no hangups about Cecily's legitimacy-though some look askance at Anne's commoner ancestry.)

!!Tropes associated with Charles V as portrayed in fiction:

* BilingualBonus: Averted often in media. Despite him having been able to speak several languages[[note]]Dutch, French, Spanish, and German[[/note]], the actors portraying him just speak the language of the country were the production was made. This happens even in ''the Tudors'', even though he did not speak English.
* HistoricalBeautyUpdate: In ''Carlos, Rey Emperador'' in particular. And the aforementioned Carlos V bar wrapper. The long chin is shown and acknowledged in ''the Tudors''.
* UrbanLegends: He is the subject of many early versions of this in the Low Countries, often showing his generosity or wisdom.

His main trait, for good or bad, was his sheer idealism. After acquiring at once the established prestige of the Holy Roman Empire and the rapidly rising power of Spain, he found himself on a throne from where resurrecting the old medieval concept of the universal monarchy seemed actually sort of doable. Under the phrase ''pax cristiani, infideles bellum'' ("peace for the Christians, war for the infidels"), Charles dreamed with leading a [[TheAlliance unified, Catholic Europe]] against the Muslim [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Ottoman Empire]], hoping to recover North Africa and Eastern Europe from the clutches of Islam before reaching some day the gates of Constantinople, restoring UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire of old.

On several occasions he came somewhat close to achieving the unity required, but his dream could ultimately not get through the wall of concrete called reality. With the emergence of UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation and the refusal of King Francis I of France to collaborate, the emperor king spent most of his career fighting other Christians, forced to make more and more concessions and burning away tons of money and manpower, until finally [[KnowWhenToFoldEm accepting his life project would never come to fruition]]. He abandoned his pretensions at the end of his reign, contenting himself with the idea of having still won most of the literal battles he fought - a notion that should have warned his Habsburg successors that beating people up can only lead you so far in international politics.

As said above, his big enemy turned out to be France. King Francis I from the House of Valois was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with UsefulNotes/HenryVIII of England as a distant darkhorse candidate), and with Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples (as well as America, whose loads of Aztec gold had caused much resentment in Europe towards Spain's monopoly of the rich new lands), the clash was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, possibly the peak of the UsefulNotes/ItalianWars, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position with a treaty that effectively ended French ambitions in Italy and regained parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, though not the Duchy itself. However, Charles failed to press on his advantage and, naively believing the proud Francis would uphold a treaty erected over military humiliation, and in a move that famously dismayed Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli enough to call Charles an idiot, he freed the King of France and took the two eldest sons of Francis as hostages instead. Surely enough, either with sons or without them, Francis repealed the truce and the Italian Wars came again in full force, and this time France outraged Christendom by allying to the Ottoman Empire of all kingdoms, making it, aside from a personal affair, a truly complicated affair.

The wars against Francis had strong symbolic undertones, not limited to the Valois' frustrated aspirations to the Imperial throne, but also because it saw a clash of between the "old" France and the "new" multi-empire of Charles. France was seen as a holdout of medieval knightly culture, enforced by its time-tested traditional armies of heavy cavalry and heroic aristocrats, and up to the previous century it had been basically the default battle powerhouse of Europe. Charles, meanwhile, was the successor of the Catholic Monarchs, who had recently unified the land of Spain and unexpectedly defeated the mighty France during the Italian Wars thanks to its pioneering of professional, pike-and-shot early modern warfare, in which the Holy Roman Empire had also had a hand. With his elite Italian-Spanish ''tercios'' and German ''landsknechte'', Charles ultimately wrecked France and sank it in a state of crisis for a century, a result that, even if it satisfied nobody and left an Europe divided and ravaged, also proved that both war and politics had already definitely advanced past the medieval era. Ironically, at several points Francis and Charles challenged each other to an [[TrialByCombat old-fashioned duel to decide the entire war]], but disagreements about the terms impeded it, which might only prove further the point.[[note]]Historians believe those challenges to have been just a promotional stunt, albeit it would not have been odd for the brash Charles to be seriously willing to do it. Had they actually fought, nobody knows what would have happened - the two kings had plenty of battlefield experience, but Francis was much taller and possibly healthier than Charles, while Charles was slightly younger and the most martially minded of the two.[[/note]]

Apart from the threat of France, another important issue was the rise of UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation during Charles' reign. The Holy Roman Empire was actually a very tenuous conglomerate of principalities, bishoprics and city-states where the emperor's grip was sometimes a matter of negotiation, and the perspective of detaching from the admittedly corrupt Catholic church and obtaining more independence was an offer many imperial princes could not resist. However, Charles always remained an unwavering Roman Catholic, as the emperor's legitimacy had traditionally come from Rome, and he did all he could to stamp out the new heresy, not infrequently prosecuting people and going to war over it. He won a few spectacular battles against Protestant unions, but the religious fires in Germany and the Low Countries rose much quicker than he could put them out, and he was eventually forced to abandon his ideal of uniformity, granting every prince the right to install the denomination he wished. Even if forced by circumstances, this concession was [[FairForItsDay shockingly progressive for the time and place]], as it would take several more centuries for both Catholics and Protestants to stop massacring each other and fighting to the last man to expel each other from their lands.

* HistoricalBeautyUpdate: In ''Carlos, Rey Emperador'' in particular. The long chin is shown and acknowledged in ''the Tudors''.

His main trait, for good or bad, was his sheer idealism. After acquiring at once the established prestige of the Holy Roman Empire and the rapidly rising power of Spain, he found himself on a throne from where resurrecting the old medieval concept of the universal monarchy seemed actually sort of doable. Under the phrase ''pax cristiani, infideles bellum'' ("peace for the Christians, war for the infidels"), Charles dreamed with leading a [[TheAlliance unified, Catholic Europe]] against the Muslim [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Ottoman Empire]], hoping to recover North Africa and Eastern Europe from the clutches of Islam before reaching some day the gates of Constantinople, and in several occasions he came somewhat close to achieving the unity required. However, his dream could ultimately not get through the wall of concrete called reality, and with the emergence of UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation and the refusal of King Francis I of France to collaborate, the emperor king spent most of his career fighting other Christians, forced to make more and more concessions and burning away tons of money and manpower, until finally [[KnowWhenToFoldEm accepting his life project would never come to fruition]]. He abandoned his pretensions at the end of his reign, contenting himself with the idea of having still won most of the literal battles he fought - a notion that should have warned his Habsburg successors that beating people up can only lead you so far in international politics.

Named after his great-grandfather UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy, Charles was born in a toilet in Ghent, in the Habsburg Netherlands, but this lowly beginning shouldn't give the wrong idea about him. Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and America. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Empire from his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria, for her part, was regent for him in the Netherlands, and later helped him to be elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin Isabella of Portugal, who served as his regent in Spain. Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being a stark contrast to UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs' less magniloquent ways. The Spaniards also laughed at Charles' massive mandibular prognathism, a signature Habsburg trait which reportedly impeded Charles from resting his mouth closed. However, they eventually warmed up to him, coming to see him as a larger-than-life leader, often referred as "our [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Caesar]]" and "the Emperor King", and it would be in this royal name that conquistadors like UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and UsefulNotes/FranciscoPizarro came to expand the bounds of the known world, while kings and military men alike started their careers in the many wars he waged.

Named after his great-grandfather UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy, Charles was born in a toilet in Ghent, in the Habsburg Netherlands, but this lowly beginning shouldn't give the wrong idea about him. Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and America. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Empire from his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria, for her part, was regent for him in the Netherlands, and later helped him ro be elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin Isabella of Portugal, who served as his regent in Spain. Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being a stark contrast to UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs' less magniloquent ways. The Spaniards also laughed at Charles' massive mandibular prognathism, a signature Habsburg trait which reportedly impeded Charles from resting his mouth closed. However, they eventually warmed up to him, coming to see him as a larger-than-life leader, often referred as "our [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Caesar]]" and "the Emperor King", and it would be in this royal name that conquistadors like UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and UsefulNotes/FranciscoPizarro came to expand the bounds of the known world, while kings and military men alike started their careers in the many wars he waged.

Named after his great-grandfather UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy, Charles was born in a toilet of Ghent, in the Habsburg Netherlands, but this lowly beginning shouldn't give the wrong idea about him. Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and America. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Empire from his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria, for her part, was regent for him in the Netherlands, and later helped him ro be elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin Isabella of Portugal, who served as his regent in Spain. Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being a stark contrast to UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs' less magniloquent ways. The Spaniards also laughed at Charles' massive mandibular prognathism, a signature Habsburg trait which reportedly impeded Charles from resting his mouth closed. However, they eventually warmed up to him, coming to see him as a larger-than-life leader, often referred as "our [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Caesar]]" and "the Emperor King", and it would be in this royal name that conquistadors like UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and UsefulNotes/FranciscoPizarro came to expand the bounds of the known world, while kings and military men alike started their careers in the many wars he waged.

Charles was in all senses a new breed of king. He could be considered the nexus between the medieval monarchs of the line of UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}}, eager to personally lead their armies with sword and lance, and the new global rulers of the Age of Exploration, obliged to delegate his will on their many subjects around the world. The amount of territories Charles had accumulated, almost ridiculous in their variety and remoteness, were undoubtedly a strength, as they made him capable to conjure up currents of manpower, money and exotic resources that often shocked the entire Christendom, but were also a nuisance compared to compact, continuous countries like France and England, as he constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities, to the point he described himself his reign as a really long voyage. Although this system [[AwesomeButImpractical ultimately proved unsustainable enough]] for Charles to divide his empire between his son and brother, the fact that he managed to hold it together and even expand it at some points has led historians to consider him a quite extraordinary monarch even with all of his troubles and failures.

His main trait, for good or bad, was his sheer idealism. After acquiring at once the established prestige of the Holy Roman Empire and the rapidly rising power of Spain, he found himself on a throne from where resurrecting the old medieval concept of the universal monarchy seemed actually sort of doable. Under the phrase ''pax cristiani, infideles bellum'' ("peace for the Christians, war for the infidels"), Charles dreamed with leading an [[TheAlliance unified, Catholic Europe]] against the Muslim [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Ottoman Empire]], hoping to recover North Africa and Eastern Europe from the clutches of Islam before reaching some day the gates of Constantinople, and in several occasions he came somewhat close to achieving the unity required. However, his dream could ultimately not get through the wall of concrete called reality, and with the emergence of UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation and the refusal of King Francis I of France to collaborate, the emperor king spent most of his career fighting other Christians, forced to make more and more concessions and burning away tons of money and manpower, until finally [[KnowWhenToFoldEm accepting his life project would never come to fruition]]. He abandoned his pretensions at the end of his reign, contenting himself with the idea of having still won most of the literal battles he fought - a notion that should have warned his Habsburg successors that beating people up can only lead you so far in international politics.

Despite this comparatively unusual ability to know when to just give up, it cannot be denied that war and warfare occupied a big role in Charles' life. He was essentially a PromotedFanboy when he ascended to King of Spain, as he admired the peninsular armies and their feats against the Moors and the French. He was pen pals with UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba, later hired UsefulNotes/DiegoGarciaDeParedes as the head of his royal guard, and in a particularly fanboyish instance, during a homage to the fallen general Antonio de Leyva, he showed up to the event dressed like a regular soldier of the ''tercios'' and had himself introduced as "Charles of Ghent" to properly play his part. Less amicable was his relationship to Pedro Navarro, another Spanish war hero that ended up working for the French to get out of prison, which Charles considered the [[ItsPersonal height of dishonor]]. Navarro actually begged him to be let back into Spanish service several times, but Charles would only have him as either a prisoner or an enemy, and it's rumored he ultimately had Navarro murdered in his cell (although this is very unlikely).

As said above, his big enemy turned out to be France. King Francis I from the House of Valois was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with UsefulNotes/HenryVIII of England as a distant darkhorse candidate), and with Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples (as well as America, whose loads of Aztec gold had caused much resentment in Europe towards Spain's monopoly of the rich new lands), the clash was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, possibly the peak of the UsefulNotes/ItalianWars, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position with a treaty that effectively ended French ambitions in Italy and regained parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, though not the Duchy itself. However, Charles failed to press on his advantage and, naively believing the proud Francis would uphold a treaty erected over military humiliation, and in a move that famously dismayed Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli enough to call Charles an idiot, he freed the King of France while bringing only his two sons from France as hostages. Surely enough, either with sons or without them, Francis repealed the truce and the Italian Wars came again in full force, and this time France outraged Christendom by allying to the Ottoman Empire of all kingdoms, making it, aside from a personal affair, a truly complicated affair.

The wars against Francis had strong symbolic undertones, not limited to the Valois' frustrated aspirations to the Holy Roman throne, but also because it saw a clash of between the "old" France and the "new" multi-empire of Charles. France was seen as a holdout of medieval knightly culture, enforced by its time-tested traditional armies of heavy cavalry and heroic aristocrats, and up to the previous century it had been basically the default battle powerhouse of Europe. Charles, meanwhile, was the successor of the Catholic Monarchs, who had recently unified the land of Spain and unexpectedly defeated the mighty France during the Italian Wars thanks to its pioneering of professional, pike-and-shot early modern warfare, in which the Holy Roman Empire had also had a hand. With his elite Italian-Spanish ''tercios'' and German ''landsknechte'', Charles ultimately wrecked France and sank it in a state of crisis for a century, a result that, even if it satisfied nobody and left an Europe divided and ravaged, also proved that both war and politics had already definitely advanced past the medieval era. Ironically, at several points Francis and Charles challenged each other to an [[TrialByCombat old-fashioned duel to decide the entire war]], but disagreements about the terms impeded it, which might only prove further the point.[[note]]Historians believe those challenges to have been just a promotional stunt, albeit it would not have been odd for the brash Charles to be seriously willing to do it. Had they actually fought, nobody knows what would have happened - the two kings had plenty of battlefield experience, but Francis was much taller and possibly healthier than Charles, while Charles was slightly younger and the most martially minded of the two.[[/note]]

Apart from the threat of France, another important issue was the rise of UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation during Charles' reign. The Holy Roman Empire was actually a very tenuous conglomerate of lordships where the emperor's grip was sometimes a matter of negotiation, and the perspective of detaching from the admittedly corrupt Catholic church and obtaining more independence was an offer many imperial princes could not resist. However, Charles always remained an unwavering Roman Catholic, as the emperor's legitimacy had traditionally come from Rome, and he did all he could to stamp out the new heresy, not infrequently prosecuting people and going to war over it. He won a few spectacular battles against Protestant unions, but the religious fires in Germany and the Low Countries rose much quicker than he could put them out, and he was eventually forced to abandon his ideal of uniformity, granting every prince the right to install the denomination he wished. Even if forced by circumstances, this concession was [[FairForItsDay shockingly progressive for the time and place]], as it would take several more centuries for both Catholics and Protestants to stop massacring each other and fighting to the last man to expel each other from their lands.

Near the end of his life, burnt out by his exhausting lifestyle and his chronic bad health, Charles abdicated and retired to a monastery in Extremadura, land of conquistadors, with the spiritual goal of just chilling out. He had realized that his many territories were too much for a single king to manage, so he divided his will in the most appropriate way: his son [[UsefulNotes/PhilipII Philip]], a proud ethnic Iberian, received the kingdom of Spain and its related lands, while his brother Ferdinand, who had lived all of his life in Central Europe and was popular among Protestants and Catholics alike, was fitter to inherit the Holy Roman Empire. He did give Philip a small part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries, which would turn out to be a huge mistake given their vast cultural differences, eventually causing the disastrous [[UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar Eighty Years War]], but this would only show many years after his death. His double reign as Holy Roman Emperor-King of Spain was never reunited in a single person again, although his successors at both would continue working together until the end of the Spanish Habsburg branch.

Making a balance of Charles as a king proves difficult. As both the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles was seen by many of his subjects as the harbinger of an universalist vision that many contemplated gloriously. However, just as much as Spain was expanding at the time thanks to its conquests in America, so did its international conflicts as a consequence of Charles' obsession with achieving an unified Catholic Europe. He accidentally kickstarted the trend, perpetuated by his Iberian successors with various levels of zealousness and misfortune, of treating the blossoming Spanish Empire as the benefactor, enforcer and workhorse of the Counter-Reformation, investing all of its riches and armies in the (failed) attempt to stamp out the Protestant heresy in whichever corner of Europe they could reach it - essentially, the beginning of a more than a century-long bane for every Spanish citizen of any race or condition. Speaking of the overseas territories, Charles was seen there as a distant, mercurial monarch, who initiated the first gestures to protect and develop the indigenous communities by advice of the UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, but who did not really care that much about it - he was simply focused with Europe, the battlefield of a dream he fought to his last days for.

Named after his great-grandfather UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy, Charles was born in a toilet of Ghent, in the Habsburg Netherlands, but this lowly beginning shouldn't give the wrong idea about him. Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and America. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Empire, who was his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI at his birth. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria, for her part, was regent for him in the Netherlands. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin Isabella of Portugal, who served as his regent in Spain. Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being a stark contrast to UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs' less magniloquent ways. The Spaniards also laughed at Charles' massive mandibular prognathism, a signature Habsburg trait which reportedly impeded Charles from resting his mouth closed. However, they eventually warmed up to him, coming to see him as a larger-than-life leader, often referred as "our [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Caesar]]" and "the Emperor King", and it would be in this royal name that conquistadors like UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and UsefulNotes/FranciscoPizarro came to expand the bounds of the known world, while kings and military men alike started their careers in the many wars he waged.

Charles was in all senses a new breed of king. He could be considered the nexus between the medieval monarchs of the line of UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}}, eager to personally lead their armies with sword and lance, and the new global rulers of the Age of Exploration, obliged to delegate his will on their many subjects around the world. The amount of territories Charles had accumulated, almost ridiculous in their variety and remoteness, were undoubtedly a strength, as they made him capable to conjure up currents of manpower, money and exotic resources that often shocked the entirety Christendom, but also a nuisance compared to compact, continuous countries like France and England, as he constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities, to the point he described himself his reign as a really long voyage. Although this system [[AwesomeButImpractical ultimately proved unsustainable enough]] for Charles to divide his empire between his son and brother, the fact that he managed to hold it together and even expand it at some points has led historians to consider him a quite extraordinary monarch even with all of his troubles and failures.

His main trait, for good or bad, was his sheer idealism. After acquiring at once the established prestige of the Holy Roman Empire and the rapidly rising power of Spain, he found himself in a throne from where resurrecting the old medieval concept of the universal monarchy seemed actually sort of doable. Under the phrase ''pax cristiani, infideles bellum'' ("peace for the Christians, war for the infidels"), Charles dreamed with leading an [[TheAlliance unified, Catholic Europe]] against the Muslim [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Ottoman Empire]], hoping to recover North Africa and Eastern Europe from the clutches of Islam before reaching some day the gates of Constantinople, and in several occasions he came somewhat close to achieving the unity required. However, his dream could ultimately not get through the wall of concrete called reality, and with the emergence of UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation and the refusal of King Francis I of France to collaborate, the emperor king spent most of his career fighting other Christians, forced to make more and more concessions and burning away tons of money and manpower, until finally [[KnowWhenToFoldEm accepting his life project would never come to fruition]]. He abandoned his pretensions at the end of his reign, contenting himself with the idea of having still won most of the literal battles he fought - a notion that should have warned his Habsburg successors that beating people up can only lead you so far in international politics.

Despite this unusual ability to know when to just give up, it cannot be denied that war and warfare occupied a big role in Charles' life. He was essentially a PromotedFanboy when he ascended to King of Spain, as he was an admirer of the peninsular armies and their feats against the Moors and the French. He was pen pals with UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba, later hired UsefulNotes/DiegoGarciaDeParedes as the head of his royal guard, and in a particularly fanboyish instance, during a homage to the fallen general Antonio de Leyva, he showed up to the event dressed like a regular soldier of the ''tercios'' and had himself introduced as "Charles of Ghent" to properly play his part. Less amicable was his relationship to Pedro Navarro, another Spanish war hero that ended up working for the French to get out of prison, which Charles considered the [[ItsPersonal height of dishonor]]. Navarro actually begged him to be let back into Spanish service several times, but Charles would only have him as either a prisoner or an enemy, and it's rumored he ultimately had Navarro murdered in his cell (although this is very unlikely).

As said above, his big enemy turned out to be France. King Francis I from the House of Valois was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with UsefulNotes/HenryVIII of England as a distant darkhorse candidate), and with Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples (as well as America, whose loads of Aztec gold had caused much resentment in Europe towards Spain's monopoly of the rich new lands), the clash was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, possibly the peak of the UsefulNotes/ItalianWars, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position with a treaty that effectively ended French ambitions in Italy and regained parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, though not the Duchy itself. With the help of his aunt Margaret and a lot of money, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. However, Charles failed to press on his advantage and, naively believing Francis would uphold a treaty erected over military humiliation, and in a move that famously dismayed Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli enough to call Charles an idiot, he freed the King of France while bringing only his two sons from France as hostages. Surely enough, either with sons or without them, Francis repealed the truce and the Italian Wars came again in full force, and this time France outraged Christendom by allying to the Ottoman Empire of all kingdoms, making it, aside from a personal affair, a truly complicated affair.

The wars against Francis had strong symbolic undertones, not limited to the Valois' frustrated aspirations to the Holy Roman throne, but also because it saw a clash of between the "old" France and the "new" multi-empire of Charles. France was seen as a holdout of medieval knightly culture, enforced by its time-tested traditional armies of heavycavalry and heroic aristocrats, and up to the previous century it had been basically the default battle powerhouse of Europe. Charles, meanwhile, was the successor of the Catholic Monarchs, who had recently unified the land of Spain and unexpectedly defeated the mighty France during the Italian Wars thanks to its pioneering of professional, pike-and-shot early modern warfare, in which the Holy Roman Empire had also had a hand. With his elite Italian-Spanish ''tercios'' and German ''landsknechte'', Charles ultimately wrecked France and sank it in a state of crisis for a century, a result that, even if it satisfied nobody and left an Europe divided and ravaged, also proved that both war and politics had already definitely advanced past the medieval era. Ironically, at several points Francis and Charles challenged each other to an [[TrialByCombat old-fashioned duel to decide the entire war]], but disagreements about the terms impeded it, which might only prove further the point.[[note]]Historians believe those challenges to have been just a promotional stunt, albeit it would not have been odd for the brash Charles to be seriously willing to do it. Had they actually fought, nobody knows what would have happened - the two had plenty of battlefield experience, but Francis was much taller and possibly healthier than Charles, while Charles was slightly younger and the most martially minded of the two.[[/note]]

Charles, who had personally led a military disembark in Algiers, did some innovation himself by founding in 1537 the first official marine infantry, the ''Compañías Viejas del Mar de Nápoles'', which remain the oldest continuously active marine unit in history as the modern Spanish Marine Infantry. He was also briefly interested in a project of man-powered paddle-wheelers built by engineer UsefulNotes/BlascoDeGaray that might have been a naval StoryBreakerPower at the time, although he forgot all about it when he was ill-advised that it would be too costly. His court inventor, Gianello della Torre, also reportedly designed flying machines and rudimentary machine-guns in the vein of those conceived by UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinci, although without receiving as much attention by either Charles or history. Charles had also an interest in the occult and UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}}, a passion that he passed to his son Philip and his nephew Rudolph II, who you might have heard related to the legend of the {{Golem}}.

Apart from the threat of France, another important issue was the rise of Protestantism during Charles' reign. The Holy Roman Empire was actually a very tenuous conglomerate of lordships where the emperor's grip was sometimes a matter of negotiation, and the perspective of detaching from the admittedly corrupt Catholic church and obtaining more independence was an offer many imperial princes could not resist. However, Charles always remained an unwavering Roman Catholic, as the emperor's legitimacy had traditionally come from Rome, and he did all he could to stamp out the new heresy, not infrequently prosecuting people and going to war over it. He won a few spectacular battles against Protestant unions, but the religious fires in Germany and the Low Countries rose much quicker than he could put them out, and he was eventually forced to abandon his ideal of uniformity, granting every prince the right to install the denomination he wished. Even if forced by circumstances, this concession was [[FairForItsDay shockingly progressive for the time and place]], as it would take several more centuries for both Catholics and Protestants to stop massacring each other and fighting to the last man to expel each other from their lands.

Charles was in all senses a new breed of king. He could be considered the nexus between the medieval monarchs of the line of UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}}, eager to personally lead their armies with sword and lance, and the new global rulers of the Age of Exploration, obliged to delegate his will on their many subjects around the world. The amount of territories Charles had accumulated, almost ridiculous in their variety and remoteness, were undoubtedly a strength, as they made him capable to conjure up currents of manpower, money and exotic resources that often shocked the entirety Christendom, but also a nuisance compared to compact, continuous countries like France and England, as he constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities, to the point he described himself his reign as a really long voyage. Although this system ultimately proved unsustainable enough for Charles to divide his empire between his son and brother, the fact that he managed to hold it together and even expand it at some points has led historians to consider him a quite extraordinary monarch even with all of his troubles and failures.

His main trait, for good or bad, was his sheer idealism. After acquiring at once the established prestige of the Holy Roman Empire and the rapidly rising power of Spain, he found himself in a throne from where resurrecting the old medieval concept of the universal monarchy seemed actually sort of doable. Charles dreamed with leading an unified, Catholic Europe against the Muslim [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Ottoman Empire]], hoping to recover North Africa and Eastern Europe from the clutches of Islam before reaching some day the gates of Constantinople, and in several occasions he came close to achieving the unity required. However, his dream could ultimately not get through the wall of concrete called reality, and with the emergence of the Protestant Reformation and the refusal of King Francis I of France to collaborate, the emperor king spent most of his career fighting other Christians, forced to make more and more concessions and burning away tons of money and manpower, until finally accepting his project would never come to fruition. He abandoned his pretensions at the end of his reign, contenting himself with the idea of having still won most of the literal battles he fought - a notion that should have warned his Habsburg successors that beating people up can only lead you so far in international politics.

Despite this unusual ability to know when to give up, it cannot be denied that war occupied a big role in Charles' life. He was essentially a PromotedFanboy when he ascended to King of Spain, as he was an admirer of the peninsular armies and their feats against the Moors and the French. He was pen pals with UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba, later hired UsefulNotes/DiegoGarciaDeParedes as the head of his royal guard, and in a particularly fanboyish instance, during a homage to the fallen general Antonio de Leyva, he showed up to the event dressed like a regular soldier of the ''tercios'' and had himself introduced as "Charles of Ghent" to properly play his part. Less amicable was his relationship to Pedro Navarro, another Spanish war hero that ended up working for the French to get out of prison, which Charles considered the height of dishonor. Navarro actually begged him to be let back several times, but Charles would only have him as either a prisoner or an enemy, and it's rumored he ultimately had Navarro murdered in his cell. Aside from war and its fortunes, Charles had also an interest in the occult and UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}}, a passion which he passed to his son Philip and his nephew Rudolph II, who you might have heard related to the legend of the {{Golem}}.

As said above, his big enemy turned out to be France. King Francis I from the House of Valois was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with UsefulNotes/HenryVIII of England as a distant darkhorse candidate), and with Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples (as well as America, whose loads of Aztec gold had caused much resentment in Europe towards Spain's monopoly of the rich new lands), the clash was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, possibly the peak of the UsefulNotes/ItalianWars, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position with a treaty that effectively ended French ambitions in Italy and regained parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, though not the Duchy itself. With the help of his aunt Margaret and a lot of money, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. However, Charles failed to press on his advantage and, naively believing Francis would uphold a treaty erected over his military humiliation, he freed him, in a move that famously dismayed Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli enough to call Charles an idiot. Surely enough, Francis repealed the truce and the Italian Wars came again in full force, and this time France outraged Christendom by allying to the Ottoman Empire of all kingdoms, making it, aside from a personal affair, a truly complicated affair.

The wars against Francis had strong symbolic undertones, not limited to the Valois' frustrated aspirations to the Holy Roman throne, but also because it saw a clash of between the "old" France and the "new" multi-empire of Charles. France was seen as a holdout of medieval knightly culture, enforced by its time-tested traditional armies of heavycavalry and heroic aristocrats, and up to the previous century it had been basically the default battle powerhouse of Europe. Charles, meanwhile, was the successor of the Catholic Monarchs, who had recently unified the land of Spain and unexpectedly defeated the mighty France during the Italian Wars thanks to its pioneering of professional, pike-and-shot early modern warfare, in which the Holy Roman Empire had also had a hand. With his elite Italian-Spanish ''tercios'' and German ''landsknechte'', Charles ultimately wrecked France and sank it in a state of crisis for a century, a result that, even if it satisfied nobody and left an Europe divided and ravaged, also proved that both war and politics had already definitely advanced past the medieval era. Ironically, at one point Charles himself had challenged Francis to an old-fashioned duel in order to finish the entire war, but Francis had rejected it, which might only prove further the point.

Near the end of his life, burnt out by his exhausting lifestyle and his chronic bad health, Charles abdicated and retired to a bucolic monastery in Extremadura, land of conquistadors, with the spiritual goal of just chilling out. He had realized that his many territories were too much for a single king to manage, so he divided his will in the most appropriate way: his son [[UsefulNotes/PhilipII Philip]], a proud ethnic Iberian, received the kingdom of Spain and its related lands, while his brother Ferdinand, who had lived all of his life in Central Europe and was popular among Protestants and Catholics alike, was fit to inherit the Holy Roman Empire. He did give Philip a small part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries, which would turn out to be a huge mistake given their vast cultural differences, eventually causing the disastrous [[UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar Eighty Years War]], but this would only show many years after his death. His double reign as Holy Roman Emperor-King of Spain was never reunited in a single person again, although his successors at both would continue working together until the end of the Spanish Habsburg branch.

Named after his great-grandfather UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy, Charles was born in the Habsburg Netherlands to quite a generation. Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and America. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Empire, who was his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI at his birth. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria, for her part, was regent for him in the Netherlands. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin Isabella of Portugal, who served as his regent in Spain. Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being a stark contrast to UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs and their less magniloquent ways, but they eventually warmed up to him, coming to see him as a larger-than-life figure, often referred as "our [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Caesar]]" and "the Emperor King". It would be in this royal name that conquistadors like UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and UsefulNotes/FranciscoPizarro came to expand the bounds of the known world, while kings and military men alike started their careers in the many wars he waged.

His main trait, for good or bad, was his sheer idealism. After acquiring at once the established prestige of the Holy Roman Empire and the rapidly rising power of Spain, he found himself in a throne from where resurrecting the old medieval concept of the universal monarchy seemed actually sort of doable. Charles dreamed with leading an unified, Catholic Europe against the [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Ottoman Empire]], hoping to recover North Africa and Eastern Europe from the clutches of Islam before reaching some day the gates of Constantinople, and in several occasions he came close to achieving the unity required. However, his dream could ultimately not get through the wall of concrete called reality, and with the emergence of the Protestant Reformation and the refusal of King Francis I of France to collaborate, the emperor king spent most of his career fighting other Christians, forced to make more and more concessions and burning away tons of money and manpower, until finally accepting his project would never come to fruition. He abandoned his pretensions at the end of his reign, contenting himself with the idea of having still won most of the literal battles he fought - a notion that should have warned his Habsburg successors that beating people up can only lead you so far in international politics.

As said above, his big enemy turned out to be France. King Francis I from the House of Valois was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with UsefulNotes/HenryVIII of England as a distant darkhorse candidate), and with Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples (as well as America, whose loads of Aztec gold had caused much resentment towards Spain's control of the rich new lands), the clash was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, possibly the peak of the UsefulNotes/ItalianWars, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position with a treaty that effectively ended French ambitions in Italy and regained parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, though not the Duchy itself. With the help of his aunt Margaret and a lot of money, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. However, Charles failed to press on his advantage and, naively believing Francis would uphold a treaty erected over his military humiliation, he freed him, in a move that famously dismayed Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli enough to call Charles an idiot. Surely enough, Francis repealed the truce and the Italian Wars came again in full force, and this time France outraged Christendom by allying to the Ottoman Empire of all kingdoms, making it, aside from a personal affair, a truly complicated affair.

The wars against Francis had strong symbolic undertones, not limited to the Valois' frustrated aspirations to the Holy Roman throne, but also because it saw a clash of between the "old knight" Francis and the "new knight" Charles. France was seen as a holdout of medieval knightly culture, enforced by its time-tested traditional armies of heavy cavalry and heroic aristocrats, and up to the previous century it had been basically the default battle powerhouse of Europe. Charles, meanwhile, was the successor of the Catholic Monarchs, who had recently unified the land of Spain and unexpectedly defeated the mighty France during the Italian Wars thanks to its pioneering of professional, pike-and-shot early modern warfare. With his elite Italian-Spanish armies and German mercenaries, Charles ultimately wrecked France and sank it in a state of crisis for a century, a result that, even if it satisfied nobody and left an Europe divided and ravaged, also proved that both war and politics had already definitely advanced past the medieval era. Ironically, at one point Charles himself had challenged Francis to an old-fashioned duel in order to finish the entire war, but Francis had rejected it, which might only prove further the point.

Charles was in all senses a new breed of king. He could be considered the nexus between the medieval monarchs of the line of UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}}, eager to personally lead their armies with sword and lance, and the new global rulers of the Age of Exploration, obligued to delegate his will on their many subjects around the world. The amount of territories Charles had accumulated, almost ridiculous in their variety and remoteness, were undoubtedly a strength, as they made him capable to conjure up currents of manpower, money and exotic resources that often shocked the entire Christendom, but also a nuisance compared to compact, continuous countries like France and England, as he constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities, to the point he described himself his reign as a really long voyage. Although this system ultimately proved unsustainable enough for Charles to divide his empire between his two sons, the fact that he managed to hold it together and even expand it at some points has led historians to consider him a quite extraordinaire monarch even with all of his troubles and failures.

As said above, his big enemy turned out to be France. King Francis I from the House of Valois was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with UsefulNotes/HenryVIII of England as a distant darkhorse candidate), and with Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples (as well as America, whose loads of Aztec gold had caused much resentment towards Spain's control of the rich new lands), the clash was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, possibly the peak of the UsefulNotes/ItalianWars, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position with a treaty that effectively ended French ambitions in Italy and regained parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, though not the Duchy itself. With the help of his aunt Margaret and a lot of money, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor as well. However, Charles failed to press on his advantage and, naively believing Francis would uphold a treaty erected over his military humiliation, he freed him, in a move that famously dismayed Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli enough to call Charles an idiot. Surely enough, Francis repealed the truce and the Italian Wars came again in full force, and this time France outraged Christiandom by allying to the Ottoman Empire of all kingdoms, making it, aside from a personal affair, a truly complicated affair.

Near the end of his life, burnt out by his exhausting lifestyle and his chronic bad health, Charles abdicated and retired to a bucolic monastery in Extremadura, land of conquistadors, with the spiritual goal of just chilling out. He had realized that his many territores were too much for a single king to manage, so he divided his will in the most appropriate way: his son [[UsefulNotes/PhilipII Philip]], a proud ethnic Iberian, received the kingdom of Spain and its related lands, while his own brother Ferdinand, who had lived all of his life in Central Europe and was popular among Protestants and Catholics alike, was fit to inherit the Holy Roman Empire. He did give Philip a small part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries, which would turn out to be a huge mistake given their vast cultural differences, eventually causing the disastrous [[UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar Eighty Years War]], but this would only show many years after his death. His double reign as Holy Roman Emperor-King of Spain was never reunited in a single person again, although his successors at both would contine working together until the end of the Spanish Habsburg branch.

Making a balance of Charles as a king proves difficult. As both the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles was seen by many of his subjects as the harbinger of an universalist vision that many contemplated gloriously. However, just as much as Spain was expanding at the time thanks to its conquests in America, so did its international conflicts as a consequence of Charles' obssession with achieving an unified Catholic Europe. He accidentally kickstarted the trend, perpetuated by his Iberian successors with various levels of zealousness and misfortune, of treating the blossoming Spanish Empire as the benefactor, enforcer and workhorse of the Counter-Reformation, investing all of its riches and armies in the (failed) attempt to stamp out the Protestant heresy in whichever corner of Europe they could reach it - essentially, the beginning of a more than a century-long bane for every Spanish citizen of any race or condition. Speaking of the overseas territories, Charles was seen there as a distant, mercurial monarch, who initiated the first gestures to protect and develop the indigenous communities by advice of the UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, but who did not really care that much about it - he was simply focused with Europe, the battlefield of a dream he fought to his last days for.

* He is also the namesake of Nestle's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_V_(chocolate_bar) Carlos V]] "[[LiteCreme chocolate-style bar]]",[[note]]It includes milk powder and a substantial portion of fats other than cocoa butter, so its texture is more crumbly/shattery than "standard" chocolate. That said, most Mexican kids prefer to microwave it and lick the molten paste from the wrapper, negating these considerations.[[/note]] one of Mexico's most popular chocolate confections. A stylized image of the King-Emperor (looking like a telenovela star and attired in an incongrously medieval set of robes and crown rather than his actual Renaissance wear) appears on the wrapper, along with the slogan ''El Rey de los Chocolates'' ("The King of Chocolates").

Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor; King of Castile, Aragon and León; Archduke of Austria; and Duke of the Netherlands, among other titles[[note]]The amount of titles he held was actually much larger, as he had titles for individual areas in the Low Countries (most of current Belgium and the Netherlands) as well as some titles of places he claimed but where he did not actually rule.[[/note]]. He hails from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]] and was named after his great-grandfather UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy.

Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI at his birth. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria was regent for him in the Netherlands. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin Isabella of Portugal, who served as his regent in Spain. Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being quite of a contrast with UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs and their less magniloquent ways, but they eventually warmed up to him.

The big enemy for his family was France. Francis I was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with UsefulNotes/HenryVIII as a distant darkhorse candidate), and with Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples, the clash was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, possibly the peak of the UsefulNotes/ItalianWars, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position. The resulting treaty not only effectively ended French ambitions in Italy, but was also successful in regaining parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, but not the Duchy itself. With the help of his aunt Margaret and a lot of money, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor as well.

Apart from the threat of France, another important issue was the rise of Protestantism during Charles' reign. He always remained an unwavering Roman Catholic. In different parts of his lands, there were different rules and not infrequently, people were prosecuted. This did little to stop the spread of various forms of Protestantism in the Empire and the Low Countries.

Making a balance of Charles as a king proves difficult. As both the Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, Charles was seen by his subjects as a larger-than-life figure, often referred as "our Caesar", the harbinger of an universalistic dream that many contemplated gloriously. However, just as much as Spain was expanding at the time thanks to its conquests in America, so did its international conflicts as a consequence of Charles' obssession with achieving an unified Catholic Europe by any means necessary. He kickstarted the trend, perpetuated by his succesors with various levels of zealousness and misfortune, of treating the blossoming Spanish Empire as the benefactor, enforcer and workhorse of the Counter-Reformation, investing all of its riches and armies in the (failed) attempt to stamp out the Protestant heresy in whichever distant corner of Europe they could find and reach it - essentially, the beginning of a more than a century-long bane for every Spanish citizen of any race or condition. Speaking of the overseas territories, Charles was seen there as a distant, mercurial monarch, who initiated the first gestures to protect and develop the indigenous communities by advice of the UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, but who did not really care that much about it - he was simply focused with Europe, the battlefield of a dream he fought to the last days of his life for yet he never manage to realize.

The amount of territories Charles had accumulated were a strength, but also a nuisance, as he constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities, to the point he described himself his reign as a really long voyage. Near the end of his exhausting life, he abdicated, being succeeded by his son, UsefulNotes/PhilipII, in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, and his brother, Ferdinand I, in Austria and the Empire. His double job as Holy Roman Emperor-King of Spain was divided into two and never reunited again, although his successors at both would contine working together until the end of the Spanish Habsburg branch.

* As a baby in movie Mad Love (2001)

Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI at his birth. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria was regent for him in the Netherlands. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin [[TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask Isabella of Portugal]], who served as his regent in Spain. Charles was initially seen as an outsider by his Spanish subjects, worsened by his foreign royal customs being quite of a contrast with UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs and their less magniloquent ways, but they eventually warmed up to him.

Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI at his birth. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria was regent for him in the Netherlands. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin [[TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask Isabella of Portugal]], who served as his regent in Spain.

The big enemy for his family was France. Francis I was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with UsefulNotes/HenryVIII as a distant darkhorse candidate). With Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples, this was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position. The resulting treaty not only effectively ended French ambitions in Italy, but was also successful in regaining parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, but not the Duchy itself. With the help of his aunt Margaret and a lot of money, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor as well.

Making a balance of Charles as a king proves difficult. As both the Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, Charles was seen by his subjects as a larger-than-life figure, often referred as "our Caesar", the harbinger of an universalistic dream that many contemplated gloriously. However, just as much as Spain was expanding at the time thanks to its conquests in America, so did its international conflicts as a consequence of Charles' obssession with achieving an unified Catholic Europe by any means necessary. He kickstarted the trend, perpetuated by his succesors with various levels of zealousness and misfortune, of treating the blossoming Spanish Empire as the benefactor, enforcer and workhorse of the Counter-Reformation, investing all of its riches and armies in the (failed) attempt to stamp out the Protestant heresy in whichever distant corner of Europe they could find and reach it - essentially, the beginning of a 80-year-long bane for every Spanish citizen of any race or condition. Speaking of the overseas territories, Charles was seen there as a distant, mercurial monarch, who initiated the first gestures to protect and develop the indigenous communities by advice of the UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, but who did not really care that much about them - he was simply focused with Europe, the battlefield of a dream he fought to the last days of his life for yet he never manage to realize.

The amount of territories Charles had accumulated were a strength, but also a weakness. He constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities. Near the end of his exhausting life, he abdicated, being succeeded by his son, UsefulNotes/PhilipII, in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, and his brother, Ferdinand I, in Austria and the Empire.

The amount of territories Charles had accumulated were a strength, but also a weakness. He constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities. Near the end of his exhausting life, he abdicated, being succeeded by UsefulNotes/PhilipII.

The amount of territories Charles had accumulated were a strength, but also a weakness. He constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities. Near the end of his exhausting life, he abdicated.

* Appears in Jean Plaidy's ''Daughters of Spain'', the last book in a trilogy about Isabella of Castile.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kaarle_v.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[WebAnimation/OverSimplified Mommy says it's a strong chin for a strong boy!]]]]

!!Tropes associated with Charles V:

* AChildShallLeadThem: He was still a child when his father died in 1506, and [[MadWomanInTheAttic his mother was declared insane and incarcerated in Spain]]. His grandfather Maximilian was still alive, but Charles did inherit the possessions that had come to him through his grandmother Mary. His aunt Margaret acted as his regent in the Netherlands, while his grandfather Ferdinand was still king of Aragon and regent in Castile. As Charles came of age and his grandfathers passed away, he laid claim to more and more territories.
* AnnoyingYoungerSibling / BigBrotherBully: Played With. Sometimes clashed with his younger brother Ferdinand, but nothing to the extent of a total break down in relations. Averted with his sisters, with whom he got on well most of the time.
* BabiesMakeEverythingBetter: Subverted. Depending on the politics of the moment, he was betrothed to several princesses. In the end, he decided himself to marry the Portuguese Isabella. One of the reasons he married her and not UsefulNotes/MaryTudor of England, to whom he had been betrothed, was that Isabella was of child-bearing age and he needed heirs. Averted later when Isabella, whom he had grown to love, died after giving birth to their fourth child.

* BlueBlood: It is difficult to find anyone in history with such close connections to various royal and noble houses. The only grandparent to never be a monarch of a country was Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, and even she descended from the French and Portuguese royal houses.
* TheChainsOfCommanding: Probably why he abdicated his various thrones and retired to a monastery in 1555. Trying to govern his disparate and diverse territories, which stretched, if not for the existence of France, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the borders of Hungary (which his brother had ruled since 1526) and from Sicily to the Netherlands became very taxing on his health and treasury. Put on top of this the beginning of the colonization of the New World and the Protestant revolution, it is no wonder he chose to divide his territories between his brother (Austria and the Imperial title) and his son Philip II (Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy from Charles... and Portugal from the late Isabella), rather than leave such a headache to a single heir.
* ChristianityIsCatholic: Averted from his early adulthood. He was the first ruler to really have to deal with the rise of Protestantism in the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire.
* CultureClash: Bound to happen when one rules over so many different territories.
** In Spain, many were reluctant to accept him, as he was seen as a foreigner there because he grew up in the Low Countries. A revolt against his rule in Castile was intended to put his mother back in power, but was not successful. Things would grow better as he grew fond of Spain and would later even go in retirement there.
** Later worked against his son Philip II in the Low Countries, when he was compared to his father. Charles was often strict, but understood the limits to his power and the culture there in ways Philip, who had grown up in Spain, never understood.
* DecadentCourt: Averted. His court was not noted for being frivolous. Possibly a side effect of it having to move where he needed to be at a given moment.
* DysfunctionalFamily: Played With. His parents had a very dysfunctional marriage, and his mother was locked away by his grandfather Ferdinand and Charles left her there as her claim to the throne of Castile was bigger than his. Apart from this, Charles' relationship with his aunt and his siblings was often loving and less dysfunctional than that of many other powerful families throughout the ages.
* TheEmperor: Upon his election as Holy Roman Emperor, never mind the already extensive territories of the Castillian Crown in the New World - Cortes would conquer the Aztecs during Charles' reign. In fact, Charles was probably the most powerful monarch in Europe between the ages of UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}} and UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Both Charles and Francis I of France are angling for an alliance with England and meet with Henry VIII in ''the Tudors''. Charles is portrayed as friendly, but more practical and sober than the more flashy Francis I.
* FamousAncestor: A lot, from many corners in Europe. All his grandparents played major parts in European politics.
* HeroicBastard: More like the father a few important figures in his son Philip's politics. They were born from mistresses before and after his marriage.

* IJustWantToBeNormal: By the end of his life, he spends most of his days fishing or seeing his sisters.
* KingBobTheNth: Depending on which territory we are talking about, he can be numbered as either - I (in Spain and Austria), II (in Burgundy and most of the Low Countries), III (in the Guelders, Luxembourg and Flanders), IV (in Naples) and finally V (as Holy Roman Emperor). Consequently, much of the English-speaking world uses the Imperial numbering of V.
* KissingCousins: He started a tradition of very close family members marrying each other. His wife was his first cousin. Their son Philip married 4 times, of which only one wife was not closely related to him. His fourth wife was the daughter of his niece and even her father was one of his first cousins. The Habsburg chin, already visible on portraits of Charles, would grow to grotesque proportions as his descendants kept marrying each other.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Averted. His parents and several of his forebears are known by their nicknames first. People in the Netherlands would recognize Joanna the Mad and Philip the Handsome before they would know them by their more formal names. Particularly, the ancestors of his paternal grandmother Mary of Burgundy 'the Rich' are filled with people with nicknames like 'the Bold' or 'the Fearless'. It is quite surprising that Charles is simply known as Charles V.
* ParentalSubstitute: He grew in his aunt Margaret's court, and he was this trope to a degree to the young Prince William of Orange.
* PerfectlyArrangedMarriage: His relationship with Isabella of Portugal. He married her purely political reasons, but when they met for the first time (to finalize the agreement), they fell intensely in love with each other almost at once. They honeymooned for several months at the Alhambra in Granada, where he ordered the seeds of a red carnation, which delighted her. He then ordered thousands more to be planted in her honour, establishing it as Spain's floral emblem. As a sign of how happy the marriage truly was, he remained faithful to her for as long as she lived. Despite their mutual affection, their marriage was not easy due to his constant absences. She wrote to him regularly, but often spent months without receiving letters, and he was even absent when she died. He was so distraught that he retired to a monastery for two whole months of mourning.[[note]] He would later return to the monastery after too many years fighting the Wars of Religion in Central Europe led him to Abdicate the Throne completely.[[/note]] Even on a practical level, her death was a big blow - she had been ruling Spain as regent during his absences and there were few people he could trust as much as his very competent wife to take care of business there. He never emotionally recovered from her death; wearing black for the rest of his life and never remarrying[[note]], though he had an affair long after her death[[/note]]. In her memory, he commissioned portraits, which he kept with him whenever he was. As he was dying, he held the same cross she had held as she had passed.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: So much that he was exhausted when he got into his 50s.
* StayInTheKitchen: Subverted. He took charge of Castile, though his mother was still alive as he did so. This was partly justified by her being declared insane, but made easier to justify because he was male and she female. However, he grew up with his aunt acting as regent and inherited many of his lands through the female lines. He tended to leave female relatives in charge in his various territories, like his aunt, wife, sister, and daughter.

The big enemy for his family was France. Francis I was Charles' rival for the imperial title (with Henry VIII as a distant darkhorse candidate). With Charles' territories encircling Francis' and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples, this was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner, strengthening his position. The resulting treaty not only effectively ended French ambitions in Italy, but was also successful in regaining parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, but not the Duchy itself. With the help of his aunt Margaret and a lot of money, Charles was finally elected Holy Roman Emperor as well.

* KingBobTheNth: Depending on which territory we are talking about, he can be numbered as either: I (in Spain and Austria), II (in Burgundy and most of the Low Countries), III (in the Guelders, Luxembourg and Flanders), IV (in Naples) and finally V (as Holy Roman Emperor). Consequently, much of the English-speaking world uses the Imperial numbering of V.

Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI at his birth. His aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria was regent for him in the Netherlands. He had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end, he married his cousin [[TheWomanOfTheQueenlyMask Isabella of Portugal]], who served as his regent in Spain.

* StayInTheKitchen: Subverted. He took charge of Castile, though [[MadwomanInTheAttic his mother was still alive as he did so. This was partly justified by her being declared insane, but made easier to justify because he was male and she female. However, he grew up with his aunt acting as regent and inherited many of his lands through the female lines. He tended to leave female relatives in charge in his various territories, like his aunt, wife, sister, and daughter.

Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Castile, Aragon and León, Archduke of Austria and Lord of the Netherlands, among other titles[[note]]The amount of titles he held was actually much larger, as he had titles for individual areas in the Low Countries (most of current Belgium and the Netherlands) as well as some titles of places he claimed but where he did not actually rule.[[/note]]. He hails from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]] and was named after his great-grandfather UsefulNotes/CharlesDukeOfBurgundy.

All his grandparents had inherited lands. Through his mother, UsefulNotes/JoannaOfCastile, he inherited his Spanish territories. Through his father, his Dutch and Austrian possessions, as well as a connection to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was his grandfather UsefulNotes/MaximilianI at his birth.

Born in what is now Belgium, he grew up in the Low Countries. His father died in 1506. His mother was declared insane and incarcerated in Spain. As he was too young to rule, his aunt UsefulNotes/MargaretOfAustria was regent for him in the Netherlands, while his grandfather Ferdinand was still king of Aragon and regent in Castile.
As he came of age and his grandfathers passed away, he laid claim to more and more territories. With the help of his aunt Margaret and a lot of money, he was elected Holy Roman Emperor as well.

The big enemy for his family was France, Francis I was his rival for the Imperial title (with Henry VIII as a distant darkhorse candidate). With his territories encircling Francis's and their conflicting designs on the Duchy of Milan and Kingdom of Naples, this was sort of inevitable. At the battle of Pavia in 1526, Charles was successful in not only defeating the French, but also taking Francis prisoner strengthening his position. The resulting treaty not only effectively ended French ambitions in Italy, but was also successful in regaining parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that had been lost in 1482, but not the Duchy itself.

Charles had been betrothed to several princesses, but in the end married his cousin Isabella of Portugal. They were very devoted to each other. None of his bastard children were born during their marriage.

The amount of territories he had accumulated were a strength, but also a weakness. Charles constantly had to travel from one place to another and deal with people from very different cultures and sensibilities. He often left his female relatives in charge as regents in parts of his lands as he traveled elsewhere.

Apart from the threat of France, another important issue was the rise of Protestantism during his reign. Charles always remained an unwavering Roman Catholic. In different parts of his lands, there were different rules and not infrequently, people were prosecuted. This did little to stop the spread of various forms of Protestantism in the Empire and the Low Countries.

Near the end of his life, he abdicated. Exhausted, he left for Spain with two of his sisters. His vast territories were then divided with Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy going to his son Philip II, while the rest (Austria and the Imperial title) went to his younger brother Ferdinand.

* AChildShallLeadThem: Charles was still a child when his father died. His grandfather Maximilian was still alive, but he did inherit the possessions that had come to him through his grandmother Mary. His aunt acted as regent until he came of age.
* AnnoyingYoungerSibling: Sometimes clashed with his brother Ferdinand, but nothing to the extent of a total break down in relations.
** Averted with his sisters, with whom he got on well most of the time.
* ArrangedMarriage: Subverted. Depending on the politics of the moment, Charles was betrothed to several princesses. In the end he decided himself to marry the Portuguese Isabella.
* BabiesMakeEverythingBetter: One of the reasons he married Isabella of Portugal and not UsefulNotes/MaryTudor of England, to whom he had been betrothed, was that Isabella was of child-bearing age and he needed heirs. Averted later when Isabella died after giving birth to their third child.

* BlueBlood: It is difficult to find anyone in history with such close connections to various royal and noble houses. The only grandparent to never be a monarch of a country was Mary, Duchess of the rich Burgundy, and even she descended from the French and Portuguese royal houses.
* TheChainsOfCommanding: Probably why he abdicated his various thrones and retired to a monastery in 1555. Trying to govern his disparate and diverse territories, which stretched, if not for the existence of France, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the borders of Hungary (which his Brother had ruled since 1526) and from Sicily to the Netherlands became taxing on his health and treasury. Put on top of this the beginning of the Protestant revolution and the colonization of the New World, it's no wonder he chose to divide his territories between his brother and son, rather than leave such a headache to a single heir.
* ChristianityIsCatholic: Averted from his early adulthood. He was the first ruler to really have to deal with the rise of Protestantism in the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire.
* CultureClash: Bound to happen when one rules over so many different territories. In Spain, many were reluctant to accept him, as he was seen as a foreigner there. A revolt against his rule in Castile was intended to put his mother back in power, but was not successful. Things would grow better as he grew fond of Spain and would later even go in retirement there.
** Later worked against his son in the Low Countries, when he was compared to his father. Charles was often strict, but understood the limits to his power and the culture there in ways Philip, who had grown up in Spain, never understood.
* DecadentCourt: Averted. His court was not noted for being frivolous. Possibly a side effect of it having to move where the Emperor needed to be at a given moment.
* DysfunctionalFamily: His parents had a very dysfunctional marriage. His mother was locked away by his grandfather Ferdinand and Charles left her there, as her claim to the throne of Castile was bigger than his. Apart from this, his relationship with his siblings was often loving and less dysfunctional than that of many other powerful families throughout the ages.
* TheEmperor: Upon his election as Holy Roman Emperor, never mind the already extensive territories of the Castillian Crown in the New World (Cortes would conquer the Aztecs during his reign). In fact, he was probably the most powerful monarch in Europe between the ages of UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}} and UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte.

** Particularly, the ancestors of his paternal grandmother Mary of Burgundy 'the Rich' is filled with people with nicknames like 'the Bold' or 'the Fearless'.

* IJustWantToBeNormal: By the end of his life, he spend most of his days fishing or seeing his sisters.
* KingBobTheNth: Depending on which territory we're talking about, Charles can be numbered as either: I (in Spain and Austria), II (in Burgundy and most of the Low Countries), III (in the Guelders, Luxembourg and Flanders), IV (in Naples) and finally V (as Holy Roman Emperor). Consequently, much of the English-speaking world uses the Imperial numbering of V, while the Spanish-speaking world knows him as Carlos I.
* KissingCousins: Charles started a tradition of very close family members marrying each other. His wife was his first cousin. Their son Philip married four times, of which only one wife was not closely related to him. His fourth wife was the daughter of his niece and even her father was a first cousin of Philip. The Habsburg chin, already visible on portraits of Charles, would grow to grotesque proportions as his descendants kept marrying each other.
* TheLostLenore: After Isabella's death, Charles was broken. He wore black for the rest of his life and never remarried. As he was dying, he held the same cross she had held as she had passed. Even on a practical level, her death was a big blow. She had been ruling Spain as regent during his absences and there were few people he could trust as much as his competent wife to take care of business there.
* MadwomanInTheAttic: His mother was locked away in a castle for many decades.
* TheMistress: Has a few of these before his marriage, and one after. Some of his bastard children would become important figures in his son Philip's politics.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: His parents and several of his forebears are known by their nicknames first. People in the Netherlands would recognize Joanna the Mad and Philip the Handsome before they would know them by their more formal names. It's quite surprising that this is averted with Charles, who is simply known as Charles V.
* ParentalSubstitute: Margaret of Austria. He grew up at her court.
** Was this himself to a degree to the young Prince William of Orange.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: So much that he was exhausted when he got into his fifties.
* StayInTheKitchen: Partly averted. He grew up with his aunt acting as regent and inherited many of his lands through the female lines. Charles tended to leave female relatives in charge in his various territories, like his aunt, sister, wife and daughter. He did, however, take charge of Castile, though his mother was still alive as he did so. This was partly justified by her being declared insane, but made easier to justify because he was male and she female.
* UrbanLegends: Is the subject of many early versions of this in the Low Countries, often showing his goodness or wisdom.