Spain's last Habsburg king was sicker than most, but not as simple as legend says
Charles II inherited the Spanish throne as a small child in 1665 and spent his whole reign with Europe waiting for him to die. Generations of close-kin marriage had left him frail, and he produced no heir, triggering the War of the Spanish Succession. Yet many famous stories about his incapacity turn out to be exaggerated or wrong.
His parents, Philip IV and Mariana of Austria, were uncle and niece, one of two such pairings among eleven Spanish royal marriages between 1450 and 1661. The family's pronounced jaw was so marked in Charles that he reportedly swallowed food half chewed and suffered stomach trouble. Rickets kept him from walking unaided until four. Why he was so often ill is still debated, since his sister Margaret, also born of that marriage, had no similar problems; some researchers suggest hydrocephalus following an infant infection.
The caricature of a king who could barely think does not survive scrutiny. He had a university legal scholar as tutor from age six and lessons in music and mathematics from twelve. He hunted constantly. The notorious episode of sleeping beside his father's exhumed body was ordered by his mother on doctors' advice, as a supposed aid to fertility. Diplomats, including a Moroccan envoy received in 1691, described him taking a full part in discussions, shy and lacking confidence but affable and mentally intact.
His reign was dominated by factional struggle, first between his mother as regent and his illegitimate half-brother Don Juan, then among successive chief ministers. Spain faced the Little Ice Age, chronic bankruptcy and costly wars with Louis XIV; Castile's population fell from 6.5 million in 1600 to under 5 million by 1680. A drastic 1680s currency revaluation briefly wrecked commerce before stabilising the coinage in 1686. Still, historians note the monarchy remained largely intact when he died.
Neither of his wives, Marie Louise of Orléans and then Maria Anna of Neuburg, chosen from a family famed for fertility, bore children; his autopsy suggested he was incapable of fathering any. The rival claimants were Leopold I's son Charles of Austria and Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV. Charles named Philip shortly before dying on 1 November 1700, and fear that either candidate would take the whole empire plunged Europe into war from 1701 to 1714.
Source: Charles II of Spain
