Michael de FerdinandyBesprekingen

Edhasa, Barcelona, 1.988

This biography of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V dates from the 1960s and follows the approach of psychohistory. The psycho biographer is given wide lenience to interpret the mind and history of his subject based on the biographer’s own ideas and Freudian interpretations of the subject’s family relations. The crazy was certainly strong among the Spanish Habsburgs (intensified by the Castilian tradition of marrying their own cousins which was to doom the line a century later). Growing up fatherless (he died when Charles was six) and with a mother called Juana la loca on the one hand and the huge impossible challenge of governing over three continents, Charles’ melancholy and quest to retreat into a private world had ample foundations. The best part of the biography is the elaboration and contribution of Charles’ Portuguese ancestry.½