History UsefulNotes / PhilipII

Possibly one of the biggest base-breakers in the history of historiography, describing Philip II is a pharaonic work. Thousands of books about him have been written through the centuries from all possible perspectives and agendas, to the point one could say that, like [[Creator/FriedrichNietzsche Nietzsche]], there is a Philip for every author who tries to write about him. To make things worse, Philip himself was a man so concerned with ''not'' cultivating any public image and memory of himself, especially by the standards of his own time, that he left no official biography or even letters. Some have called him the original culprit of the Spanish Black Legend, not so much by what he did but what he did not do: in a time in which his many enemies started churning out hot propaganda about the supposedly disproportionate savagery of the Spanish Empire, Philip's stance was a staunch HeadInTheSandManagement, whether because he believed the pen to be worthless compared to the sword or just because he did not care very much about what people thought... as long as they were Catholic.

For traditional Anglophone and Protestant media, Philip might be the original BigBad of history: the "Demon of the South", a megalomaniac emperor, former husband to the infamous [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Bloody Mary]], who sought to spread his reign of terror to the entire world to bind it to the mind-numbing authority of the Catholic Church and the [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus always unexpected]] UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition. Certainly, by our pop culture standards, Philip is one of those historical figures who genuinely resembles a fictional villain, in this case of the DarkMessiah variety: chronicles profile him as a deadly serene man, always dressed in stern black and adept of religious mysticisms to the point of supposedly building his palace over a {{hellgate}}, who went to war basically against the entire world, investing uncompromisingly the resources of his global empire and his fearsome armies in the mission of stamping out any opposition to his religion. It is indeed set on stone that Philip, as an unyielding Catholic, would not suffer a Christian world not subjected to the authority of the Pope (whether the Pope himself wanted or not!), and some have attributed him a true Messiah complex, a belief not unlike that of his father Charles of being the champion of God against all sorts of heretics and Muslims. Under his reign, the so-called Iberian Union would simultaneously and boneheadedly take on the Dutch, the British, the French, the Ottomans and roughly everybody who fit the quota.

A recent current of thought has been much more benevolent with him, considering Philip a beacon of the opposite to all which the Black Legend claims. The Spanish Golden age began under the patronage of Philip, with masses of genius writers, artists, architects, engineers, thinkers and men of science, like the underrated UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, flowing into the landscape of UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. He also kickstarted the first true wave of commercial globalization, extending trade routes around the world that managed to connect the old Europe and the new America to realms as remote as the China and Japan, while at the same time managing to hold together a diverse, composite monarchy where he didn't even wield absolute power. He could even be ironically considered a defender of the indigenous in his own right, writing royal orders to pursue crimes against his many American subjects, officializing their languages so they didn't have to learn Spanish, sending scholars to record as much native culture and knowledge as they could, and ultimately [[EveryoneHasStandards ruling against conquistar by the sake of conquistar]] (almost ironic, given that one of his courtiers was Martín Cortés, the mestizo son of UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and UsefulNotes/LaMalinche). Much of the Enlightenment, globality and modernity grew from the ground he helped to cultivate, without counting the number of pioneering systems of administration that were innovated in Philip's reign, to the point some have even called him the first modern king.

Regardless of how he is viewed, it cannot be denied Philip was, for good and bad, a man who could not stand idle. A tireless, hard-working bureaucrat of a densely intellectual nature, he spent most of his time doing paperwork reportedly equivalent to the job of five or six men, obssessed with [[ControlFreak micromanaging every small corner]] of his imperial machine through a keen messaging system - a trait that would keep it afloat at the cost of becoming its very feet of clay, as Philip's obssession to have his orders followed to the letter often led him to entrust his exploits to yes-men and disregard the massive pool of military and political talent he had access to. He represents well the perpetual state of the early Spanish Empire by the sheer number of wars he failed not to wage: his zealous refusal to lose any country to UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation dragged him to a whack-a-mole of international conflicts that bankrupted the Iberian Union thrice, only refloating every time thanks to its vast natural resources and control of several centers of finances, which eventually caused a comparable inflation. As said above, it's difficult to judge whether Philip and his reign deserve scorn for having wasted their humongous advantages in such silly ways, or credit for having reached so far with such a flawed approach.

Being more of a bureaucrat and a scholar, Philip was not a [[FrontlineGeneral soldier-king]] like his father Charles, but never had much necessity of it either, being at the head of a Spanish army probably at its very historical peak, a "jungle of Spanish lances" of multiple provenances captained by old veterans like [[UsefulNotes/TheDukeOfAlba Fernando Álvarez de Toledo]] and UsefulNotes/AlvaroDeBazan, younger promises like UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria and UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, and talents born in the wild like UsefulNotes/JulianRomero, UsefulNotes/JuanDelAguila and UsefulNotes/JeronimoDeAyanz. He also enjoyed a network of spies laid across the entire Europe, helped by the many nationalities of his subjects and the dense commercial exchanges of his monarchy, that was almost too good for what he could actually do with it. Ironically, in contrast to his father's more typically Germanic attitude that WarIsGlorious, Philip himself was disgusted at war and considered it a NecessarilyEvil solution to secure the universal rule of Catholicism. The first time he stepped on a battlefield, after the Battle of St. Quentin, he could not detract his mind from all the blood and corpses, apparently muttering, "[[WarIsHell Is it even possible that my father liked this?]]"

This is not to say Charles completely fell of a BrokenPedestal in his mind. Although Philip's thoughts on the matter are characteristically obscure, there is a consensus in that he always believed himself to be an unworthy successor to his father, perhaps not realizing or accepting that he simply had a completely different set of skills and circumstances. What he could never match were Charles' initiative and ability to be a political snakecharmer, as Philip was too much of a centralist and an introvert, and unlike Charles, he was not the kind of ruler willing to make concessions. While Charles ultimately gave up on his own dreams of universalism, Philip was convinced he could succeed where Charles had failed and never really let it go.

What Philip certainly loved was knowledge, both earthly and otherworldly. A massively cultured man, not only in arts and sciences but also in weirder fields like mysticism and the occult, he celebrated his victory at St. Quentin by building the [[CoolHouse palace-monastery-library-whatever]] of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, erected with the surely modest ambition to show that Spain was the biggest and baddest cultural power in the world. El Escorial was not only the largest Renaissance building ever, it also housed the [[GreatBigLibraryOfEverything biggest private library in all of Europe at its time]][[note]]It was also the second biggest at all after the Catholic Church's library in Rome. This status varied over the years, though, as many books were moved to other centers and a a fire in 1671 destroyed many of them. The kings of the Bourbon dynasty, who were much less bookish, also sent a lot of them to France after taking possession of Spain. Currently, even the Vatican owns some of the books.[[/note]] (including forbidden books and texts captured from the Turks and the Aztecs), and served as a laboratory, garden, hospital and everything needed, being designed after Solomon's Temple with all sorts of esoteric symbology. Folklore claims that its placement was chosen to seal a pesky mouth to Hell, whose hounds tormented the construction until it was finished. Philip collected holy relics and patronized several religious mystics, but also went to engage himself in the stuff by researching in necromancy and UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}}, which he considered another way to explore the mysteries of God's work (many volumes in his library would have not passed the Inquisition's filter and only did because he was the king after all). He researched how to produce gold and elixir of life in order to help his reign a bit, although the fact that we are writing about him in past and in English should inform he failed.

As accustomed for the House of Habsburg, Philip's entire life was a game for the control of Europe and the entire world from the very beginning. He was still a young heir apparent, widow of the Infanta María of Portugal and father to a RoyallyScrewedUp son that would die young and crazy, when Charles V married him to UsefulNotes/MaryTudor as part of a move to attract England to their cause, giving Philip a stint as nominal King of England that he found a supreme sacrifice given that he did ''not'' reciprocate the mad love of the substantially older and unsexy queen. The plan went nowhere, as Mary died without producing a heir and Philip failed at convincing her sister [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethI Elizabeth]] to become her replacement, after which England would only add to the list of enemies of Spain - and for extra irony, they would launch against him an English navy he had worked himself to improve and develop back when he was their king. Elizabeth herself owed much of her ascension to the throne to Philip before going separate ways, and legend has that she always kept a [[FormerFriendsPhoto Former Friends Picture]] of him in her chambers.

Not much after marrying Anna, Philip discovered just like his late father that, far from leading an united Europe against the Ottoman Empire, he would have to go to war against Europe ''and'' the Ottomans in order to upheld his inflexible Catholic principles. The Habsburg Netherlands revolted against him with the start of UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar, fueled by a mutual political mistrust and outraged by his attempts to control the traditionally plutocratic Low Countries, and this eventually expanded to a multiple conflict against the entire Protestant world with the swashbuckling intrusion of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSpanishWar15851604 Anglo-Spanish War]] and Philip's own hasty decision to intervene too deeply in the UsefulNotes/FrenchWarsOfReligion. The Mediterranean did not stay exactly calm either while all of this raged, but it could be said that even with the lesser resources he could dedicate, Philip had some success there: after drowning a savage Moorish rebellion within Spain, his victory at the UsefulNotes/BattleOfLepanto and some well placed truces mitigated the Ottoman threat for around forty years, and the timely death of King of Portugal Sebastian I against the Moors allowed Philip, being half-Portuguese himself, to inherit the Portuguese Empire and assimilate it.

By the end of his reign, troubles just multiplicated, as courtly intrigues with his own secretary Antonio López del Hierro and his possible lover Ana de Mendoza y de Silva, Princess of Éboli, caused much inner turmoil when López, guilty of slandering Philip's half-brother John, took refuge in the political refuge of the Kingdom of Aragon, where not even Philip could maneuver freely. The princess was arrested, but López managed to escape to the Protestant countries and contributed heavily to their propaganda against Spain. Philip and the European branches of his empire were truly overworked at this point, and this still discounts an absolutely insane overseas plan that never came to fruition, the ''Empresa de China'', where Spanish and Portuguese sectors in the Pacific planned to ally with UsefulNotes/ToyotomiHideyoshi and initiate a Chinese rebellion against the UsefulNotes/MingDynasty in order to take over China, hoping to some day control all of Asia and corner the Muslims from the back. The bad course of the wars in Europe and Philip's own common sense impeded it, not to mention that the plan itself was a bit too unlikely to go neat even in the best case, but the image of a Habsburg-aligned China extending tentacles across Southeast Asia and India would have given a whole new meaning to the Spanish title of Hugh Thomas's monography of Philip, ''El Señor del Mundo''.

A famously contemplative, even melancholic character, who had [[TheStoic endured stoically]] not only political mishaps, but also various health problems throughout his life, Philip managed to die at the age of 71, reportedly depressed that he failed to live up to his hype - although, loyal to himself, he still micromanaged the preparation of his own funeral. Always the philosophic man, he allowed for his sons to see him in his deathbed, surrounded with his beloved holy relics yet emaciated and unable to control his own sphincter, so they could see "[[HowTheMightyHaveFallen what became of the kingdoms and lordships of this world]]". He was unhappily succeeded by his son UsefulNotes/PhilipIII, almost his opposite in personality and ambition, who at the best put an end to some of his wars. Ultimately, Philip left behind a global state that was still the empire on which the sun never set, but now exhausted and exsanguinated in its monumental effort to wage war against all the other nearby powers, for the sake of a religious doctrine that, in hindsight, was never really worthy the effort.

* BigBad: Almost every appearance by him in film or TV (including Spanish productions, out of PopCulturalOsmosis) has him as the main villain, usually as an evil warmonger who leads TheEmpire.
* ControlFreak: Some portrayals acknowledge that Philip caused the failure of the Spanish Armada by whimsically placing the inept but obedient Duke of Medina Sidonia in command. This is true, even if not the entire story.

* TheFundamentalist: He was a fanaticaly devout Catholic, to the point that he deeply resented his own father, Charles V, for having not done more to curb the rise of Protestanism.
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Portrayals tend to paint him as a power-hungry despot, who leads a reign of terror on his own people and may openly desire to conquer the entire world. The real Philip was decidedly not a laissez-faire kind of ruler, but few of his subjects considered him a tyrant and his rule was not especially dystopic or personalist compared to other monarchies of the time (one could make an argument that it was much less, even at its worst). Similarly, Philip was absolutely a fan of what we would call today political interventionism, but by all appearances held little desire to actually conquer and assimilate lands he didn't feel were his already, whether in Europe and the rest of the world, even although there were cultural and political think tanks calling for him to do so.

* BigBad: Almost every appearance by him in film or TV (including Spanish productions, out of PopCulturalOsmosis) has him as the main villain, usually as a conqueror and tyrant who leads TheEmpire.
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Portrayals tends to paint him as a power-hungry warmonger, often who may openly desire to conquer the entire world.
* WellSonDoneGuy: Both ''Ministry of Time and

* He appears in ''Carlos, rey emperador'', spinoff to ''Series/{{Isabel}}'', where he's played by Pablo Arbués and later by Álvaro Cervantes.

Being more of a bureaucrat and a scholar, Philip was not a [[FrontlineGeneral soldier-king]] like his father Charles, but never had much necessity of it either, being at the head of a Spanish army probably at its very historical peak, a "jungle of Spanish lances" of multiple provenances captained by old veterans like UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel and UsefulNotes/AlvaroDeBazan, younger promises like UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria and UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, and talents born in the wild like UsefulNotes/JulianRomero, UsefulNotes/JuanDelAguila and UsefulNotes/JeronimoDeAyanz. He also enjoyed a network of spies laid across the entire Europe, helped by the many nationalities of his subjects and the dense commercial exchanges of his monarchy, that was almost too good for what he could actually do with it. Ironically, in contrast to his father's more typically Germanic attitude that WarIsGlorious, Philip himself was disgusted at war and considered it a NecessarilyEvil solution to secure the universal rule of Catholicism. The first time he stepped on a battlefield, after the Battle of St. Quentin, he could not detract his mind from all the blood and corpses, apparently muttering, "[[WarIsHell Is it even possible that my father liked this?]]"

For traditional Anglophone and Protestant media, Philip might be the original BigBad of history: the "Demon of the South", a megalomaniac emperor, former husband to the infamous [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Bloody Mary]], who sought to spread his reign of terror to the entire world to bind it to the mind-numbing authority of the Catholic Church and the [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus always unexpected]] UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition. Certainly, by our pop culture standards, Philip is one of those historical figures who genuinely resembles a fictional villain, in this case of the DarkMessiah variety: chronicles profile him as a deadly serene man, always dressed in stern black and adept of religious mysticisms to the point of supposedly building his palace over a {{hellgate}}, who went to war basically against the entire world, investing uncompromisingly the resources of his global empire and his fearsome armies in the mission of stamping out any opposition to his religion. It is indeed set on stone that Philip, as an inflexible Catholic, would not suffer a Christian world not subjected to the authority of the Pope (whether the Pope himself wanted or not!), and some have attributed him a true Messiah complex, a belief not unlike that of his father Charles of being the champion of God against all sorts of heretics and Muslims. Under his reign, the so-called Iberian Union would simultaneously and boneheadedly take on the Dutch, the British, the French, the Ottomans and roughly everybody who fit the quota.

Being more of a bureaucrat and a scholar, Philip was not a [[FrontlineGeneral soldier-king]] like his father Charles, but never had much necessity of it either, being at the head of a Spanish army probably at its very historical peak, a "jungle of Spanish lances" of multiple provenances captained by old veterans like UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel and UsefulNotes/AlvaroDeBazan, younger promises like UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria and UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, and talents born in the wild like UsefulNotes/JulianRomero, UsefulNotes/JuanDelAguila and UsefulNotes/JeronimoDeAyanz. He also enjoyed a network of spies laid across the entire Europe, helped by the many nationalities of his subjects and the dense commercial exchanges of his monarchy, that was almost too good for what he could actually do with it. Ironically, in contrast to his father's more typically Germanic attitude that WarIsGlorious, Philip himself was disgusted at war and considered it a NecessarilyEvil solution to secure the universal rule of Catholicism. The first time he stepped on a battlefield, after the Battle of St. Quentin, he could not detract his mind from all the blood and corpses, apparently muttering, "[[BrokenPedestal Is it even possible that my father liked this?]]"

What Philip certainly loved was knowledge, both earthly and otherworldly. A massively cultured man, not only in arts and sciences but also in weirder fields like mysticism and the occult, he celebrated his victory at St. Quentin by building the [[CoolHouse palace-monastery-library-whatever]] of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, erected with the surely modest ambition to show that Spain was the biggest and baddest cultural power in the world. El Escorial was not only the largest Renaissance building ever, it also housed the [[GreatBigLibraryOfEverything biggest private library in all of Europe at its time]][[note]]It was also the second biggest at all after the Catholic Church's library in Rome. This status varied over the years, though, as many books were moved to other centers and a a fire in 1671 destroyed many of them. The kings of the Bourbon dynasty, who were much less bookish, also sent a lot of them to France after taking possession of Spain. Currently, even the Vatican owns some of the books.[[/note]] (including forbidden books and texts captured from the Turks and the Aztecs), and served as a center of knowledge, laboratory, garden, hospital and everything needed, being designed after Solomon's Temple with all sorts of esoteric symbology. Folklore claims that its placement was chosen to seal a pesky mouth to Hell, whose hounds tormented the construction until it was finished. Philip patronized several religious mystics, but also went to engage himself in the stuff by researching in necromancy and UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}}, which he considered another way to explore the mysteries of God's work (many volumes in his library would have not passed the Inquisition's filter and only did because he was the king after all). He researched how to produce gold and elixir of life in order to help his reign a bit, although the fact that we are writing about him in past and in English should inform he failed.

Becoming King of Spain in 1556 with Charles' abdication, Philip compensated slightly for the loss of England by sealing temporally the threat of France, putting an end to UsefulNotes/ItalianWars with a military victory and a peace treaty that included a marriage between Philip and the teenaged princess of France, Elisabeth of Valois. In spite of the age difference, and unlike the previous case, this turned out to be a PerfectlyArrangedMarriage, with Philip falling in love with his French bride to the point that, according to his biographers, her premature death nine years later would be the first, only and last time the stoic Philip cried in his life. She gave birth to his first daughters Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela, who, once passed the initial disappointment of the lack of a male heir, became his close confidents and secretaries. In fact, Philip intended to make Isabella Queen of France during the French religious turmoil, which would have given the House of Habsburg [[TheEmpire virtual control of continental Europe]], but the usual politics impeded it. He later married his distant niece Anna of Austria, who finally produced four sons.

Not much after marrying Anna, Philip discovered just like his late father that, far from leading an united Europe against the Ottoman Empire, he would have to go to war against Europe ''and'' the Ottomans in order to upheld his inflexible Catholic principles. The Habsburg Netherlands revolted against him in the start of UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar, fueled by a mutual political mistrust and outraged by his attempts to control the traditionally plutocratic Low Countries, and this eventually expanded to a multiple conflict against the entire Protestant world with the swashbuckling intrusion of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSpanishWar15851604 Anglo-Spanish War]] and the hasty decision to intervene too deeply in the UsefulNotes/FrenchWarsOfReligion. The Mediterranean did not stay exactly calm either while all of this raged, but it could be said that even with the lesser resources he could dedicate, Philip had some success there: after drowning a savage Moorish rebellion within Spain, his victory at the UsefulNotes/BattleOfLepanto and some well placed truces mitigated the Ottoman threat for around forty years, and the timely death of King of Portugal Sebastian I against the Moors allowed Philip, being half-Portuguese himself, to inherit the Portuguese Empire and assimilate it.

By the end of his reign, troubles just multiplicated, as courtly intrigues with his own secretary Antonio López del Hierro and his possible lover Ana de Mendoza y de Silva, Princess of Éboli, caused much inner turmoil when López, guilty of slandering Philip's half-brother John, took refuge in the political refuge of the Kingdom of Aragon, where not even Philip could maneuver freely. The princess was arrested, but López managed to escape to the Protestant countries and contributed heavily to their propaganda against Spain. Philip and the European branches of his empire were truly overworked at this point, and this still discounts an absolutely insane overseas plan that never come to fruition, the ''Empresa de China'', where Spanish and Portuguese sectors in the Pacific planned to ally with UsefulNotes/ToyotomiHideyoshi and initiate a Chinese rebellion against the UsefulNotes/MingDynasty in order to take over China, hoping to some day control all of Asia and corner the Muslims from the back. The bad course of the wars in Europe and Philip's own common sense impeded it, not to mention that the plan itself was a bit too unlikely to go neat even in the best case, but the image of a Habsburg-aligned China extending tentacles across Southeast Asia and India would have given a whole new meaning to the Spanish title of Hugh Thomas's monography of Philip, ''El Señor del Mundo''.

A famously contemplative, even melancholic character, who had [[TheStoic endured stoically]] not only political mishaps, but also various health problems throughout his life, Philip managed to die at the age of 71, reportedly depressed that he failed to live up to his hype - although, loyal to himself, he still micromanaged the preparation of his own funeral. Always the philosophic man, he allowed for his sons to see him in his deathbed, emaciated and unable to control his own sphincter, so they could see "[[HowTheMightyHaveFallen what became of the kingdoms and lordship of this world]]". He was succeeded by his son Philip III, who put an end to some of his wars, although not all of them. Ultimately, Philip left behind a global state that was still the empire on which the sun never set, but now exhausted and exsanguinated in its monumental effort to wage war against all the other nearby powers, for the sake of a religious doctrine that, in hindsight, was never really worthy the effort.

Being more of a bureaucrat and a scholar, Philip was not a [[FrontlineGeneral soldier-king]] like his father Charles, but never had much necessity of it either, being at the head of a Spanish army probably at its very historical peak, a "jungle of Spanish lances" of multiple provenances captained by old veterans like UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel and UsefulNotes/AlvaroDeBazan, younger promises like UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria and UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, and talents born in the wild like UsefulNotes/JulianRomero, UsefulNotes/JuanDelAguila and UsefulNotes/JeronimoDeAyanz. He also enjoyed a network of spies laid across the entire Europe, helped by the many nationalities of his subjects and the dense commercial exchanges of his monarchy, that was almost too good for what he could actually do with it. Ironically, in contrast to his father's more typically Germanic attitude that WarIsGlorious, Philip himself was disgusted at war and considered it a NecessarilyEvil solution to secure the universal rule of Catholicism. The first time he stepped on a battlefield in St. Quentin, he could not detract his mind from all the blood and corpses, apparently muttering, "[[BrokenPedestal Is it even possible that my father liked this?]]"

Becoming King of Spain in 1556 with Charles' abdication, Philip compensated slightly for the loss of England by sealing temporally the threat of France, putting an end to UsefulNotes/ItalianWars with a military victory and a peace treaty that included a marriage between Philip and the teenaged princess of France Elisabeth of Valois. In spite of the age difference, and unlike the previous case, this turned out to be a PerfectlyArrangedMarriage, with Philip falling in love with his French bride to the point that, according to his biographers, her premature death nine years later would be the first, only and last time the stoic Philip cried in his life. She gave birth to his first daughters Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela, who, once passed the initial disappointment for the lack of a male heir, became his close confidents and secretaries. In fact, Philip intended to make Isabella Queen of France during the French religious turmoil, which would have given the House of Habsburg virtual control of continental Europe, but the usual politics impeded it. He later married his distant niece Anna of Austria, who finally produced four sons.

By the end of his reign, troubles just multiplicated, as courtly intrigues with his own secretary Antonio López del Hierro and his possible lover Ana de Mendoza y de Silva, Princess of Éboli, caused much inner turmoil when López, guilty of slandering Philip's half-brother John, took refuge in the political refuge of the Kingdom of Aragon, where not even Philip could maneuver freely. The princess was arrested, but López managed to escape to the Protestant countries and contributed heavily to their propaganda against Spain. Philip and the European branches of his empire were truly overworked at this point, and this still discounts an absolutely insane overseas plan that never come to fruition, the ''Empresa de China'', where Spanish and Portuguese sectors in the Pacific planned to ally with UsefulNotes/ToyotomiHideyoshi and initiate a Chinese rebellion against the UsefulNotes/MingDynasty in order to take over China, hoping to some day control all Asia and corner the Muslims from the back. The bad course of the wars in Europe and Philip's own common sense impeded it, not to mention that the plan itself was a bit too unlikely to go neat even in the best case, but the image of a China aligned to the Habsburg, preparing to extend tentacles across Southeast Asia and India, would have given a whole new meaning to the Spanish title of historian Hugh Thomas's monography of Philip, ''El Señor del Mundo''.

A famously contemplative, even melancholic character, who had [[TheStoic endured stoically]] not only political mishaps, but also various health problems throughout his life, Philip managed to die at the age of 71, reportedly depressed that he failed to live up to his hype - although, loyal to himself, he still micromanaged the preparation of his own funeral. Always the philosophic man, who had built the biggest private library in all of Europe, patronized several religious mystics, and even engaged in UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}} in order to explore the mysteries of God's work (and maybe produce some gold and elixir of life if he could), he allowed for his sons to see him in his deathbed, emaciated and unable to control his own sphincter, so they could see "[[HowTheMightyHaveFallen what became of the kingdoms and lordship of this world]]". He was succeeded by his son Philip III, who put an end to some of his wars, although not all. Ultimately, Philip left behind a global state that was still the empire on which the sun never set, but now exhausted and exsanguinated in its monumental effort to wage war against all the other nearby powers, for the sake of a religious doctrine that, in hindsight, was never really worthy the effort.

A lot of his legacy still lives in Spain. He was the first monarch to make Madrid the Spanish capital, and part of his buidings, such as his impressive palace-monastery-library-etc. of El Escorial, are still standing, like his network of roads, which was superseded by modern high ways. The UsefulNotes/{{Philippines}} in Asia was also named in his honor. Ironically, Philip himself would also sow the seeds of the dynasty that would replace the Habsburg in Spain, the French House of Bourbon, as when the Protestant pretender Henry IV of France realized he could not take the throne with the Iberian Union among his enemies, he made the shocking turn of just converting to Catholicism ("Paris is well worth a mass") and let the whole conflict die off, becoming the first Bourbon king.

For traditional Anglophone and Protestant media, Philip might be the original BigBad of history: the "Demon of the South", a megalomaniac emperor, former husband to the infamous [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Bloody Mary]], who sought to spread his reign of terror to the entire world to bind it to the mind-numbing authority of the Catholic Church and the [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus always unexpected]] UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition. Certainly, by our pop culture standards, Philip is one of those historical figures who genuinely resembles a fictional villain, in this case of the DarkMessiah variety: chronicles profile him as a deadly serene man, always dressed in stern black and adept of religious mysticisms to the point of supposedly building his palace over a {{hellgate}}, who went to war basically against the entire world, investing uncompromisingly the resources of his global empire and his fearsome armies in the mission of stamping out any opposition to his religion. It is indeed set on stone that Philip, as an inflexible Catholic, would not suffer a Christian world not subjected to the authority of the Pope (whether the Pope himself wanted or not!), and some have attributed him a true Messiah complex, a belief not unlike that of his father Charles of being the champion of God against all sorts of heretics and Muslims. Under his reign, the Iberian Union would simultaneously and boneheadedly take on the Dutch, the British, the French, the Ottomans and roughly everybody who fit the quota.

A recent current of thought has been much more benevolent with him, considering Philip a beacon of the opposite to all which the Black Legend claims. The Spanish Golden age began under the patronage of Philip, with masses of genius writers, artists, architects, engineers, thinkers and men of science, like the underrated UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, flowing into the landscape of UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. He also kickstarted the first true wave of commercial globalization, extending trade routes around the world that managed to connect the old Europe and the new America to realms as remote as the China of the UsefulNotes/MingDynasty, while at the same time managing to hold together a diverse, composite monarchy where he didn't even wield absolute power. He could even be ironically considered a defender of the indigenous in his own right, writing royal orders to pursue crimes against his many American subjects, officializing their languages so they didn't have to learn Spanish, sending scholars to record as much native culture and knowledge as they could, and ultimately [[EveryoneHasStandards ruling against conquistar by the sake of conquistar]]. The modern western democracies owe to him much of the merit of helping preserving Christian Europe against the Muslim Ottoman Empire, setting up the ground over which the Enlightenment, globality and modernity were born, without counting the number of pioneering systems of administration that were innovated in Philip's reign.

Regardless of how he is viewed, it cannot be denied Philip was, for good and bad, a man who could not stand idle. A tireless, hard-working bureaucrat of a densely intellectual nature, he spent most of his time doing paperwork reportedly equivalent to the job of five or six men, obssessed with [[ControlFreak micromanaging every small corner]] of his imperial machine through a keen messaging system - a trait that would keep it well oiled at the cost of becoming its very feet of clay, as Philip's proneness to favor underlings who would follow his orders to the letter often led him to entrust his exploits to yes-men and disregard the massive pool of military and political talent he had access to. Furthermore, Philip represents well the perpetual state of the Spanish Empire by the sheer number of wars he failed not to wage: his zealous refusal to lose any country to UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation dragged him to a whack-a-mole of international conflicts that bankrupted the Iberian Union thrice, only refloating every time thanks to its vast natural resources and control of several centers of finances, which eventually caused a comparable inflation. As said above, it's difficult to judge whether Philip and his reign deserve scorn for having wasted their humongous advantages in such silly ways, or credit for having reached so far in feats with such a flawed approach.

Philip was not a [[FrontlineGeneral soldier-king]] like Charles, but never had much necessity of it either, being at the head of a Spanish army probably at its very historical peak, a "jungle of Spanish lances" of multiple provenances captained by old veterans like UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel and UsefulNotes/AlvaroDeBazan, younger promises like UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria and UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, and talents born in the wild like UsefulNotes/JulianRomero, UsefulNotes/JuanDelAguila and UsefulNotes/JeronimoDeAyanz. He also enjoyed a network of spies laid across the entire Europe, helped by the many nationalities of his subjects and the dense commercial exchanges of his monarchy, that was almost too good for what he could actually do with it. Ironically, in contrast to his father's more typically Germanic attitude that WarIsGlorious, Philip himself was disgusted at war and considered it a NecessarilyEvil solution to secure the universal rule of Catholicism. The first time he stepped on a battlefield, he could not detract his mind from all the blood and corpses, apparently muttering, "[[BrokenPedestal Is it even possible that my father liked this?]]"

A famously contemplative, even melancholic character, who had [[TheStoic endured stoically]] not only political mishaps, but also various health problems throughout his life, Philip managed to die at the advanced age of 71, reportedly depressed that he failed to live up to his hype - although, loyal to himself, he still micromanaged the preparation of his own funeral. Always the philosophic man, who had built the biggest private library in all of Europe, patronized several religious mystics, and even engaged in UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}} in order to explore the mysteries of God's work (and maybe produce some gold and elixir of life if he could), he allowed for his sons to see him in his deathbed, emaciated and unable to control his own sphincter, so they could see "[[HowTheMightyHaveFallen what became of the kingdoms and lordship of this world]]". He was succeeded by his son Philip III, who put an end to some of his wars, although not all. Ultimately, Philip left behind a global state that was still the empire on which the sun never set, but now exhausted and exsanguinated in its monumental effort to wage war against all the other nearby powers, for the sake of a religious doctrine that, in hindsight, was never really worthy the effort.

* A no less flanderized portrayal of him appears in ''Series/TheMinistryOfTime'', though impressively played by Carlos Hipólito.

For traditional Anglophone and Protestant media, Philip might be the original BigBad of history: the "Demon of the South", a megalomaniac emperor, husband to the infamous [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Bloody Mary]], who sought to spread his reign of terror to the entire world to bind it to the mind-numbing authority of the Catholic Church and the [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus always unexpected]] UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition. Certainly, by our pop culture standards, Philip is one of those historical figures who genuinely resembles a fictional villain, in this case of the DarkMessiah variety: chronicles profile him as a deadly serene man, always dressed in stern black and adept of religious mysticisms to the point of supposedly building his palace over a {{hellgate}}, who went to war basically against the entire world, investing uncompromisingly the resources of his global empire and his fearsome armies in the mission of stamping out any opposition to his religion. It is indeed set on stone that Philip, as an inflexible Catholic, would not suffer a Christian world not subjected to the authority of the Pope, and some have attributed him a true Messiah complex, a belief not unlike that of his father Charles of being the champion of God against all sorts of heretics and Muslims. Under his reign, the Iberian Union would simultaneously and boneheadedly take on the Dutch, the British, the French, the Ottomans and roughly everybody who fit the quota.

A recent current of thought has been much more benevolent with him, considering Philip a beacon of the opposite to all which the Black Legend claims. The Spanish Golden age began under the patronage of Philip, with masses of genius writers, artists, architects, engineers, thinkers and men of science, like the underrated UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, flowing into the landscape of UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. He also kickstarted the first true wave of commercial globalization, extending trade routes around the world that managed to connect the old Europe and the new America to realms as remote as the China of the UsefulNotes/MingDynasty, while at the same time managing to be at the head of a diverse, composite monarchy where he didn't even wield absolute power. He could even be ironically considered a defender of the indigenous in his own right, writing royal orders to pursue crimes against his many American subjects, officializing their languages so they didn't have to learn Spanish, sending scholars to record as much native culture and knowledge as they could, and ultimately [[EveryoneHasStandards ruling against conquistar by the sake of conquistar]]. The modern western democracies owe to him much of the merit of helping preserving Christian Europe against the Muslim Ottoman Empire, setting up the ground over which the Enlightenment, globality and modernity were born, without counting the number of pioneering systems of administration that were innovated in Philip's reign.

Philip was at the head of a Spanish army probably at its very historical peak, a "jungle of Spanish lances" captained by old veterans like UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel and UsefulNotes/AlvaroDeBazan, younger promises like UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria and UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, and talents born in the wild like UsefulNotes/JulianRomero, UsefulNotes/JuanDelAguila and UsefulNotes/JeronimoDeAyanz. He also enjoyed a network of spies across the entire Europe, helped by the many nationalities of his subjects and the dense commercial exchanges of his monarchy, that was almost too good for what he could actually do with it. Ironically, in contrast to his father's more typically Germanic attitude that WarIsGlorious, Philip himself was disgusted at war and considered it a NecessarilyEvil solution to secure the universal rule of Catholicism. The first time he stepped on a battlefield, he could not detract his mind from all the blood and corpses, apparently muttering, "[[BrokenPedestal Is it even possible that my father liked this?]]"

A famously contemplative, even melancholic character, who had [[TheStoic endured stoically]] not only political mishaps, but also various health problems throughout his life, Philip managed to die at the advanced age of 71, yet reportedly depressed that he failed in his enterprises - although, loyal to himself, he still micromanaged the preparation of his own funeral. Always the philosophic man, who had built the biggest private library in all of Europe, patronized several religious mystics, and even engaged in UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}} in order to explore the mysteries of God's work (and maybe produce some gold and elixir of life if he could), he allowed for his sons to see him in his deathbed, emaciated and unable to control his own sphincter, so they could see "[[HowTheMightyHaveFallen what became of the kingdoms and lordship of this world]]". He was succeeded by his son Philip III, who put an end to some of his wars, although not all. Ultimately, Philip left behind a global state that was still the empire on which the sun never set, but now exhausted and exsanguinated in its monumental effort to wage war against all the other nearby powers, for the sake of a religious doctrine that, in hindsight, was never really worthy the effort.

A lot of his legacy still lives in Spain. He was the first monarch to make Madrid the Spanish capital, and part of his buidings, such as his impressive palace-monastery-library-etc. of El Escorial, are still standing, like his network of roads, which was superseded by modern high ways. The UsefulNotes/{{Philippines}} in Asia was named in his honor. Ironically, Philip himself would also sow the seeds of the dynasty that would replace the Habsburg in Spain, the French House of Bourbon, as when the Protestant pretender Henry IV of France realized he could not take the throne with the Iberian Union among his enemies, he made the shocking turn of just converting to Catholicism ("Paris is well worth a mass") and let the whole conflict die off. Henry would be the first Bourbon king.

* He appears as a villain, and an appropriately evil one, in ''Film/{{Elizabeth}}'' and its sequel. He's played first by George Yiasoumi and later by Jordi Mollà, who for a chance gets to play a Spaniard and not a Latino (although ironically, both things were one and the same by the age the film is set).

A lot of his legacy still lives in Spain. He was the first monarch to make Madrid the Spanish capital, and part of his buidings, such as his impressive palace-monastery-library-etc. of El Escorial, are still standing, like his network of roads, which was superseded by modern high ways. Ironically, Philip himself would also sow the seeds of the dynasty that would replace the Habsburg in Spain, the French House of Bourbon, as when the Protestant pretender Henry IV of France realized he could not take the throne with the Iberian Union among his enemies, he made the shocking turn of just converting to Catholicism ("Paris is well worth a mass") and let the whole conflict die off. Henry would be the first Bourbon king.

Philip II of Spain and I of Portugal (21 May 1527 – 13 September 1598) from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]], known rather non-indicatively as "Philip the Prudent", was the king of Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, as well as technically England and Ireland for a time (''and'' Duke of Burgundy and Lord of the Netherlands), during the mid-to-late 16th century. As the sovereign of both the Spanish and the Portuguese Empires and a blood ally to the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, like his late father UsefulNotes/CharlesV before him, Philip could be considered the most powerful man in the planet at his day, with all of its [[TheChainsOfCommanding related, varied and existential troubles]].

For traditional Anglophone and Protestant media, Philip might be the original BigBad of history: the "Demon of the South", a megalomaniac emperor, husband to the infamous [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Bloody Mary]], who sought to spread his reign of terror to the entire world to bind it to the mind-numbing authority of the Catholic Church and the [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus always unexpected]] UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition. Certainly, by our pop culture standards, Philip is one of those historical figures who genuinely resembles a fictional villain, in this case of the DarkMessiah variety: chronicles profile him as a deadly serene man, always dressed in stern black and adept of religious mysticisms to the point of supposedly building his palace over a {{hellgate}}, who went to war basically against the entire world, investing uncompromisingly the resources of his global empire and his fearsome armies in the mission of stamping out any opposition to his religion. It is indeed set on stone that Philip, as an inflexible Catholic, would not suffer a Christian world not subjected to the authority of the Pope, and some have attributed him a true Messiah complex, a belief not unlike that of his father Charles of being the champion of God against heretics and Muslims. Under his reign, the Iberian Union would simultaneously and boneheadedly take on the Dutch, the British, the French, the Ottomans and roughly everybody who fit the quota.

Philip was at the head of a Spanish army probably at its very historical peak, a "jungle of Spanish lances" captained by old veterans like UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel and UsefulNotes/AlvaroDeBazan, young promises like UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria and UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, and talents born in the wild like UsefulNotes/JulianRomero, UsefulNotes/JuanDelAguila and UsefulNotes/JeronimoDeAyanz. Ironically, in contrast to his father's more typically Germanic attitude that WarIsGlorious, Philip himself was disgusted at war and considered it a NecessarilyEvil solution to secure the universal rule of Catholicism. He fought personally at the famous Battle of St. Quintin, and in spite of achieving an easy, crushing victory, he could not detract his mind from all the blood and corpses, apparently muttering, "[[BrokenPedestal Is it even possible that my father liked this?]]"

Philip II of Spain and I of Portugal (21 May 1527 – 13 September 1598) from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]], known rather non-indicatively as "Philip the Prudent", was the king of Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, as well as technically England and Ireland for a time (''and'' Duke of Burgundy and Lord of the Netherlands), during the mid-to-late 16th century. As the sovereign of both the Spanish and the Portuguese Empires and a blood ally to the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, he could be considered the most powerful man in the planet at his day, with all of its [[TheChainsOfCommanding related, varied and existential troubles]].

Possibly one of the biggest base-breakers in the history of historiography, describing Philip II is a pharaonic work. Thousands of books about him have been written through the centuries from all possible perspectives and agendas, to the point one could say that, like [[Creator/FriedrichNietzsche Nietzsche]], there is a Philip for every author who tries to write about him. To make things worse, Philip himself was a man so concerned with ''not'' cultivating any public image and memory of himself, especially by the standards of his own time, that he left no official biography or even letters. Some have called him the original culprit of the Spanish Black Legend, not so much by what he did but what he did not do: in a time in which his many enemies started churning out hot propaganda about the supposed savagery and wickedness of the Spanish Empire, Philip's stance was a staunch HeadInTheSandManagement, whether because he believed their pen to be worthless compared to his sword or just because he did not care very much about what people thought... as long as they were Catholic.

For traditional Anglophone and Protestant media, Philip might be the original BigBad of history: a megalomaniac emperor, husband to the infamous [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Bloody Mary]], who sought to spread his reign of terror to the entire world to bind it to the mind-numbing authority of the Catholic Church and the always unexpected UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition. Certainly, by our pop culture standards, Philip is one of those historical figures who genuinely resembles a fictional villain, in this case of the DarkMessiah variety: chronicles profile him as a deadly serene man, always dressed in stern black and adept of religious mysticism to the point of supposedly building his palace over a {{hellgate}}, who went to war basically against the entire world, investing uncompromisingly the resources of his global empire and his fearsome armies in the mission of stamping out any opposition to his religion. It is set on stone that Philip, as an inflexible Catholic, would not suffer a Christian world not subjected to the authority of the Pope, and some have attributed him a true Messiah complex, a belief of being the champion of God against heretics and Muslims. Under his reign, the Iberian Union would simultaneously and boneheadedly take on the Dutch, the British, the French, the Ottomans and roughly everybody who fit the quota.

A recent current of thought has been much more benevolent with him, considering Philip a beacon of the opposite to all which the Black Legend claims. The Spanish Golden age began under the patronage of Philip, with masses of genius writers, artists, architects, engineers, thinkers and men of science, like the always rich UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, flowing into the landscape of UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. He also kickstarted the first true wave of commercial globalization, extending trade routes around the world that managed to connect the old Europe and the new America to realms as remote as the China of the UsefulNotes/MingDynasty, while at the same time managing to be at the head of a diverse, composite monarchy where he didn't even wield absolute power. He could even be ironically considered a defender of the indigenous in his own right, writing royal orders to pursue crimes against his many indigenous subjects, officializing their languages so they didn't have to learn Spanish, sending scholars to record as much native culture and knowledge as they could, and ultimately [[EveryoneHasStandards ruling against conquistar by the sake of conquistar]]. The modern western democracies owe to him much of the merit of preserving Christian Europe against the Muslim Ottoman Empire, setting up the ground over which the Enlightenment, globality and modernity were born, without counting the number of pioneering systems of administration that were innovated in Philip's reign.

Regardless of how he is viewed, it cannot be denied Philip was, for good and bad, a man who could not stand idle. A tireless, hard-working bureaucrat, he spent most of his time doing paperwork equivalent to the job of five or six men, obssessed with [[ControlFreak micromanaging every small corner]] of his imperial machine through a keen messaging system - a trait that would keep it well oiled at the cost of becoming its feet of clay, as his tendency to favor underlings who would follow his orders to the letter often led Philip to entrust his exploits to yes-men and disregard the massive pool of military and political talent he had access to. Furthermore, Philip represents well the perpetual state of the Spanish Empire by the sheer number of wars he failed not to provoke: his zealous refusal to lose any province to UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation dragged him to a whack-a-mole of international conflicts that bankrupted the Iberian Union thrice, only refloating every time thanks to its vast natural resources and control of several centers of finances, which eventually caused a comparable inflation. As said above, it's difficult to judge whether Philip and his reign deserve scorn for having wasted their humongous advantages in such silly ways, or credit for having reached so far in power with such a flawed approach.

A famously contemplative, even melancholic character, who had [[TheStoic endured stoically]] not only political mishaps, but also various health problems throughout his life, Philip managed to die at the advanced age of 71, yet reportedly depressed that he failed in his enterprises - although, loyal to himself, he still micromanaged the preparation of his own funeral. Always the philosophic man, who had built the biggest library in all of Europe, patronized several religious mystics, and even engaged in UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}} in order to explore the mysteries of God's work (and maybe turn some lead into gold if he could), he allowed for his sons to see him in his deathbed, emaciated and unable to control his own sphincter, so they could see "[[HowTheMightyHaveFallen what became of the kingdoms and lordship of this world]]". He was succeeded by his son Philip III, who put an end to some of his wars, although not all. Ultimately, Philip left behind a global state that was still the empire on which the sun never set, but now exhausted and exsanguinated in its monumental effort to wage war against all the other nearby powers for a religious doctrine that never really returned the favor.

A lot of his legacy still lives in Spain. He was the first monarch to make Madrid the Spanish capital, and part of his buidings, such as his impressive palace of El Escorial, are still standing, like his network of roads, which was superseded by modern high ways. Ironically, Philip himself would also sow the seeds of the dynasty that would replace the Habsburg in Spain, the French House of Bourbon, as when the Protestant pretender Henry IV of France realized he could not take the throne with the Iberian Union among his enemies, he made the shocking turn of just converting to Catholicism ("Paris is well worth a mass") and let the whole conflict die off. Henry would be the first Bourbon king.

* ''Film/TheSeaHawk'' also has him as the baddie.
* He appears as a villain, and an appropriately evil one, in ''Film/{{Elizabeth}}'' and its sequel. He's played first by George Yiasoumi and later by Jordi Mollà, who for a chance gets to play a Spaniard and not a Latino (although both things were one and the same by the age the film is set).

Possibly one of the biggest base-breakers in the history of historiography, describing Philip II is a pharaonic work. Thousands of books about him have been written through the centuries from all possible perspectives and agendas, to the point one could say that, like [[Creator/FriedrichNietzsche Nietzsche]], there is a Philip for every author who tries to write about him. To make things worse, Philip himself was a man so concerned with ''not'' cultivating any public image and memory of himself, especially by the standards of his own time, that he left no official biography or even letters. Some have called him the original culprit of the Spanish Black Legend, not so much by what he did but what he did not do: in a time in which his many enemies started churning out hot propaganda about the supposed savagery and wickedness of the Spanish Empire, Philip's stance was a staunch HeadInTheSandManagement, whether because he believed the pen to be worthless compared to the sword or just because he did not care very much about what people thought... as long as they were Catholic.

Philip II of Spain and I of Portugal (21 May 1527 – 13 September 1598) from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]], known rather non-indicatively as "Philip the Prudent", was the king of Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, as well as technically England and Ireland for a time (''and'' Duke of Burgundy and Lord of the Netherlands), during the mid-to-late 16th century. As the sovereign of both the Spanish and the Portuguese Empires and a blood ally to the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, he could be considered the most powerful man in the planet at his day, with all its related, varied and existential troubles.

For traditional Anglophone and Protestant media, Philip might be the original BigBad of history: a megalomaniac emperor, husband to the infamous [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Bloody Mary]], who sought to spread his reign of terror to the entire world to bind it to the mind-numbing authority of the Catholic Church and the always unexpected UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition. Certainly, by our pop culture standards, Philip is one of those historical figures who genuinely resembles a fictional villain, in this case of the DarkMessiah variety: chronicles profile him as a deadly serene man, always dressed in stern black, adept of religious mysticism to the point of supposedly building his palace over a {{hellgate}}, who went to war basically against the entire world, investing uncompromisingly the resources of his global empire and his fearsome armies in the mission of stamping out any opposition to his religion. It is set on stone that Philip, as an inflexible Catholic, would not suffer a Christian world not subjected to the authority of the Pope, and some have attributed him a true Messiah complex, a belief of being the champion of God against heretics, pagans and Muslims. Under his reign, the Iberian Union would simultaneously and boneheadedly take on the Dutch, the British, the French, the Ottomans, various American and Asian peoples and roughly everybody who fit the quota.

A recent current of thought has been much more benevolent with him, considering Philip a beacon of the opposite to all which the Black Legend claims. The Spanish Golden age began under the patronage of Philip, with masses of genius writers, artists, architects, engineers, thinkers and men of science, like the always rich UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, flowing into the landscape of UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. He also kickstarted the first true wave of commercial globalization, extending trade routes around the world that managed to connect the old Europe and the new America to realms as remote as the China of the UsefulNotes/MingDynasty, while at the same time managing to be at the head of a diverse, composite monarchy where he didn't even wield absolute power. He could even be ironically considered a defender of the indigenous in his own right, writing royal orders to pursue crimes against his many indigenous subjects, officializing their languages so they didn't have to learn Spanish, sending scholars to record as much indigenous culture and knowledge as they could, and ultimately [[EveryoneHasStandards ruling against conquistar by the sake of conquistar]]. The modern western democracies owe to him much of the merit of preserving Christian Europe against the Muslim Ottoman Empire, setting up the ground over which the Enlightenment, globality and modernity were born, without counting the number of pioneering systems of administration that were innovated in Philip's reign.

Regardless of how he is viewed, it cannot be denied Philip was, for good and bad, a man who could not stand idle. A tireless, hard-working bureaucrat, he spent most of his time doing paperwork equivalent to the job of five or six men, obssessed with [[ControlFreak micromanaging every small corner]] of his imperial machine through a keen messaging system - a trait that would keep it well oiled at the cost of becoming his feet of clay, as his tendency to favor underlings who would follow his orders to the letter often led Philip to entrust his exploits to yes-men and disregard the massive pool of military and political talent he had access to. Furthermore, Philip represents well the perpetual state of the Spanish Empire by the sheer number of wars he failed not to provoke: his zealous refusal to lose any province to UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation dragged him to a whack-a-mole of international conflicts that bankrupted the Iberian Union thrice, only refloating every time thanks to its vast natural resources and control of several centers of finances, which eventually caused a comparable inflation. As said above, it's difficult to judge whether Philip and his reign deserve scorn for having wasted their humongous advantages in such silly ways, or credit for having reached so far in power with such a flawed approach.

A famously contemplative, even melancholic character, who had [[TheStoic endured stoically]] not only political mishaps, but also various health problems throughout his life, Philip managed to die at the advanced age of 71, yet reportedly depressed that he failed in his enterprises - although, loyal to himself, he still managed the preparation of his own funeral. Always the philosophic man, who had built the biggest library in all of Europe, patronized several religious mystics, and even engaged in UsefulNotes/{{Alchemy}} in order to explore the mysteries of God's work (and maybe turn some lead into gold if he could), he allowed for his sons to see him in his deathbed, emaciated and unable to control his own sphincter, so they could see "[[HowTheMightyHaveFallen what became of the kingdoms and lordship of this world]]". He was succeeded by his son Philip III, who put an end to some of his wars, although not all. Ultimately, Philip left behind an empire still great, but exhausted and exsanguinated in its monumental effort to wage war against all the other nearby powers for a religious doctrine that never really returned the favor.

A lot of his legacy still lives in Spain. He was the first monarch to make Madrid the Spanish capital, and part of his buidings, such as his impressive palace of El Escorial, are still standing, like his network of roads, which was superseded by modern ways. Ironically, Philip himself would also sow the seeds of the dynasty that would replace the Habsburg in Spain, the French House of Bourbon, as when the Protestant pretender Henry IV of France realized he could not take the throne with the Iberian Union among his enemies, he made the shocking turn of just converting to Catholicism ("Paris is well worth a mass") and let the whole conflict dy off. Henry would be the first Bourbon king.

Possibly one of the biggest base-breakers in the history of historiography, describing Philip II is a pharaonic work. Thousands of books about him have been written through the centuries from all possible perspectives and agendas, to the point one could say that, like [[Creator/FriedrichNietzsche Nietzsche]], there is a Philip for every author who tries to write about him. To make things worse, Philip himself was a man so concerned with ''not'' cultivating any public image and memory of himself, especially by the standards of his own time, that he left no official biography or even letters. Some have called him the original culprit of the Spanish Black Legend, not so much by what he did but what he did not do: in a time in which his many enemies started churning out hot propaganda about the supposed savagery and wickedness of the Spanish Empire, Philip's stance was a staunch HeadInTheSandManagement, whether because he believed the pen to be worthless compared to the sword or just because he did not care very much about what people thought about him.

For traditional Anglophone and Protestant media, Philip might be the original BigBad of history: a megalomaniac emperor, husband to the infamous [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Bloody Mary]], who sought to spread his reign of terror to the entire world to bind it to the mind-numbing authority of the Catholic Church and the always unexpected UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition. Certainly, by our pop culture standards, Philip is one of those historical figures who genuinely resembles a fictional villain, in this case of the DarkMessiah variety: chronicles profile him as a deadly serene man, always dressed in stern black, adept of religious mysticism to the point of supposedly building his palace over a {{hellgate}}, who went to war basically against the entire world, investing uncompromisingly the resources of his global empire and his fearsome armies in the mission of stamping out any opposition to his religion. It is set on stone that Philip, as an inflexible Catholic, would not suffer a Christian world not subjected to the authority of the Pope, and some have attributed him a true Messiah complex, a belief of being the champion of God against heretics, pagans and Muslims. Under his reign, the Iberian Union would simultaneously take on the Dutch, the British, the French, the Ottomans, various American and Asian peoples and roughly everybody who fit the quota.

A recent current of thought has been much more benevolent with him, considering Philip a beacon of the opposite to all which the Black Legend claims. The Spanish Golden age began under Philip, with masses of genius writers, artists, architects, engineers, thinkers and men of science, like the always rich UsefulNotes/SchoolOfSalamanca, flowing into the landscape of the Renaissance. He also kickstarted the first true wave of commercial globalization, extending trade routes around the world that managed to connect the old Europe and the new America to realms as remote as the Ming dynasty, while at the same time managing to be at the head of a diverse, composite monarchy rather than absolute power. He could even be ironically considered a defender of the indigenous in his own right, writing royal orders to pursue crimes against his many indigenous subjects, officializing their languages so they didn't have to learn Spanish, sending scholars to record as much indigenous culture and knowledge as they could, and ultimately ruling against conquistar by the sake of conquistar. The modern western democracies owe to him much of the merit of preserving Christian Europe against the Muslim Ottoman Empire, setting up the ground over which the Enlightenment, globality and modernity were born, without counting the number of pioneering systems of administration that were innovated in Philip's reign.

Regardless of how he is viewed, it cannot be denied Philip was, for good and bad, a man who could not stand idle. A tireless, hard-working bureaucrat, he spent most of his time doing paperwork equivalent to the job of five or six men, obssessed with [[ControlFreak micromanaging every small corner]] of his imperial machine through a keen messaging system - a trait that would keep it well oiled at the cost of becoming his feet of clay, as his tendency to favor underlings who would follow his orders to the letter often led Philip to entrust his exploits to yes-men and disregard the massive pool of military and political talent he had access to. It's difficult to judge whether Philip and his reign deserve scorn for having wasted their humongous advantages in such silly ways, or credit for having reached so far in feats of power with such a flawed approach. In any case, Philip represents well the state of the Spanish Empire by the sheer number of wars he failed not to provoke: his zealous refusal to lose any province to the Reformation dragged him to a whack-a-mole of international conflicts that bankrupted the Iberian Union thrice, only refloating every time thanks to its vast natural resources and control of several centers of finances, which eventually caused a comparable inflation.

Philip died of the last of his several health problems, reportedly depressed that he failed in his enterprises, although, loyal to himself, he still managed the preparation of his own funeral. Always the trascendent man, he allowed for his sons to see him in his deathbed, emaciated and unable to control his own sphincter, so they could see "what became of the kingdoms and lordship of this world". He was succeeded by his son Philip III, who put an end to some of his wars, although not all. Ultimately, Philip left behind an empire still great, but exhausted and exsanguinated in its monumental effort to wage war against all the other nearby powers for a religious doctrine that never really returned the favor.

A lot of his legacy still lives in Spain. He was the first monarch to make Madrid the Spanish capital, and part of his buidings, such as his impressive palace of El Escorial, are still standing, like his network of roads, which was superseded by modern ways. Ironically, Philip II himself would sow the seeds of the dynasty that would replace the Habsburg in Spain, the French House of Bourbon, as when the Protestant pretender Henry IV of France realized he could not take the throne with the Iberian Union among his enemies, he made the shocking turn of just converting to Catholicism ("Paris is well worth a mass") and let the whole conflict dy off. Henry would be the first Bourbon king.