by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2022

Carlos II, King of Spain was the last Spanish king from the House of Habsburg. He had physical and mental conditions probably caused by the continued inbreeding of the House of Habsburg. When Carlos died without children, the Spanish House of Habsburg became extinct. Carlos II, King of Spain was born on November 6, 1661, at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid, located at the site of today’s Royal Palace in Madrid, Spain. He was the youngest of the five children and the third but the only surviving of the three sons of Felipe IV, King of Spain and his second wife Mariana of Austria, who were uncle and niece, an example of inbreeding. Carlos’ paternal grandparents were Felipe III, King of Spain and Margaret of Austria, both children of parents who were an uncle and his niece, and were first cousins once removed and second cousins. Carlos’ maternal grandparents were Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia, Archduke of Austria and his first wife Maria Anna of Spain who were first cousins.

The House of Habsburg was notorious for its inbreeding. The Habsburgs had built their empire by marriage. They wanted to keep the land they amassed all in the family, so they began to intermarry more and more frequently among themselves. Seven of Carlos II’s eight great-grandparents were descended from Juana I, Queen of Castile and León and Aragon and her husband Philip of Habsburg, Duke of Burgundy. While a person in the fifth generation normally has thirty-two different ancestors, Carlos II had only ten different ancestors in the fifth generation. See the family tree of the ancestors of Carlos II, King of Spain at Wikipedia: Ancestors of Charles II of Spain.

Carlos had four siblings but only one survived childhood. Five days before Carlos’ birth, Felipe Prospero, his nearly four-year-old elder brother and heir to the throne died. He had been ill for quite some time, suffered from epilepsy, and was frequently ill, probably due to the generations of inbreeding. At birth, Carlos was the heir to the Spanish throne and was titled Prince of Asturias, the title of the heir to the Spanish throne.

Carlos’ siblings:

• Margarita Teresa of Austria, Infanta of Spain (1651 – 1673), married her maternal uncle and first cousin Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, and had four children, only one daughter survived infancy
• Maria Ambrosia de la Concepción of Austria, Infanta of Spain (born and died 1655), died in infancy
• Felipe Prospero of Austria, Infante of Spain, Prince of Asturias (1657 – 1661), died in childhood
• Fernando of Austria, Infante of Spain (1658 – 1659), died in infancy

Carlos had eight half-siblings from his father’s first marriage to Elisabeth of France who died in 1644, at the age of forty-one, after miscarrying a son. All but one of Carlos’ half-siblings had died before he was born. Only his half-sister Maria Theresa who married King Louis XIV of France survived childhood. The death in 1646 of Balthasar Carlos, Carlos’ half-brother and heir to the Spanish throne, caused King Felipe IV to marry for a second time, in search of a male heir.

Carlos’ half-siblings:

• Maria Margarita of Austria, Infanta of Spain (born and died 1621)
• Margarita Maria Catalina of Austria, Infanta of Spain (born and died 1623)
• Maria Eugenia of Austria, Infanta of Spain (1625 – 1627)
• Isabella Maria of Austria, Infanta of Spain (born and died 1627)
• Balthasar Carlos of Austria, Infante of Spain, Prince of Asturias (1629 – 1646), died at age 16 from smallpox
• Francisco Fernando of Austria, Infante of Spain (born and died 1634)
• Maria Ana Antonia of Austria, Infanta of Spain (born and died 1636)
• Maria Theresa of Austria, Infanta of Spain (1638 – 1683), married King Louis XIV of France, had six children but only one son survived childhood, the House of Bourbon, the reigning house of Spain from 1700 to today, descends from this marriage

In early September 1665, Carlos’ father King Felipe IV began to feel unwell. His stools were bloody which meant he may have had dysentery. After great suffering, Felipe IV, King of Spain, aged 60, died on September 17, 1665, at the Royal Alcázar of Madrid. Carlos’ mother Queen Mariana was appointed Regent for her nearly four-year-old son, now Carlos II, King of Spain. In his will, Felipe IV had ordered the creation of a government commission consisting of carefully selected important people from politics, the church, and society to assist Mariana in her role as Regent of Spain.

Carlos was a weak, sick child from birth. He did not learn to talk until he was four years old and could not walk until he was eight years old. Like many of the Habsburg family, Carlos had the Habsburg jaw (mandibular prognathism), a disfiguring genetic disorder in which the lower jaw outgrows the upper jaw. However, Carlos’ very pronounced Habsburg jaw was so severe that he swallowed his food without thoroughly chewing. Because of his physical condition, the superstitions of the time caused him to be considered bewitched and he was given the nickname El Hechizado – the bewitched one. Carlos was subjected to unsuccessful medical attempts at healing, mystical practices, and religious exorcisms. Carlos was educated by the Jesuit priest Juan de Mariana, however because of his developmental disability, both physically and mentally, he only received a basic education. Carlos’ condition showed clear signs of the long-time inbreeding of the House of Habsburg.

King Carlos II reached legal age on November 6, 1675, his 14th birthday, and legally could take over the government. Carlos wanted to appoint his elder illegitimate half-brother Juan José of Austria (1629 – 1679), the only illegitimate son of King Felipe IV of Spain to be acknowledged by his father, as his chief minister. Juan José had been trained and served in military command and political administration. However, Carlos’ mother Queen Mariana persuaded her son to extend her regency. In 1677, King Carlos II’s illegitimate half-brother Juan José of Austria marched on Madrid and took power with the help of the Spanish nobility. Queen Mariana left the court and lived at the Alcázar of Toledo. However, Mariana remained influential during her son’s reign, until she died in 1696.

After the 1678 Peace of Nijmegen was signed between France and Spain, a marriage was arranged between 17-year-old Carlos II, King of Spain and 16-year-old Marie Louise of Orléans, the eldest niece of King Louis XIV of France and daughter of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans and his first wife Henrietta of England. King Louis XIV was married to Carlos II’s half-sister Maria Theresa of Austria, Infanta of Spain, who was also his double first cousin. Carlos II was also a was a first cousin of Louis XIV and Louis wanted to have his brother-in-law/first cousin, weakened by years of inbreeding in the House of Habsburg, under French influence. Having no daughter, King Louis XIV offered his elder niece Marie Louise as a bride for Carlos. Thinking to the future, Louis XIV knew that if Marie Louise and Carlos II could have a child who would become the monarch of Spain, then French influence would remain. If Marie Louise and Carlos II did not have children, Louis XIV’s own line could inherit the Spanish throne. Louis XIV’s wife Maria Theresa was the elder surviving of two daughters of King Felipe IV of Spain and had senior succession rights after her half-brother King Carlos II of Spain. Even though the French ambassador to Spain wrote that Carlos “… is so ugly as to cause fear, and looks ill”, Carlos’ appearance and condition were considered irrelevant to the political benefits. Marie Louise of Orléans was distressed by the arranged marriage and spent most of her time crying.

On August 30, 1679, Carlos and Marie Louise were married via a proxy marriage at the Palace of Fontainebleau in France with Louis Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, a cousin of the bride, standing in for the groom. Arranging the marriage was one of the last acts that Juan José of Austria did as chief minister because he died on September 17, 1679, perhaps by poison. For the rest of his life, King Carlos II, fully aware of his inability to govern the Kingdom of Spain, appointed well-qualified people to the most important positions. On November 19, 1679, Marie Louise married Carlos II in person in Quintanapalla, near Burgos, Spain. Carlos fell in love with Marie Louise but she had a lonely life at the Spanish court. She found the court etiquette very confining and was distressed over not having children.

The childless marriage last ten years. One day after taking a ride on horseback, Marie Louise began to feel strong pain in her stomach. She died the next day, aged 26, on February 12, 1689, at the Royal Alcázar of Madrid in Spain and was interred in Chapel IX of the Pantheon of the Infantes at the Royal Basilica of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain. Although many reasons were considered as causes of Marie Louise’s death including poison, it is most likely that she died from appendicitis, a fatal infection until the mid-nineteenth century when the advent of anesthesia and new surgical techniques allowed for successful appendectomies.

The lack of an heir to the Spanish throne and concerns over Carlos II’s health made a second marriage urgent. Carlos’ mother Queen Mariana selected twenty-two-year-old Maria Anna of Neuburg, daughter of Philipp Wilhelm, Count Palatine and Duke of Palatinate-Neuburg, Duke of Jülich-Berg, and Elector Palatine based on the family’s history of fertility. Maria Anna’s mother Elisabeth Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt was pregnant twenty-three times and fourteen of the seventeen children born reached adulthood. The proxy wedding was held on August 28, 1689, in Ingolstadt, Duchy of Bavaria, now in the German state of Bavaria. Maria Anna arrived in Spain in the spring of 1690. Carlos II and Maria Anna of Neuberg were married in person on May 14, 1690, in the Church of the Convent of San Diego, within the complex of the Royal Palace of Valladolid in Spain.

As the years passed, it became increasingly clear that King Carlos II would never have an heir. It seemed that Carlos was almost certainly infertile and his autopsy did reveal he had only one atrophied testicle. During her marriage Maria Anna claimed to be pregnant on several occasions and encouraged Carlos to undergo treatments to increase his fertility, making it clear the failure to produce an heir was not her fault.

In 1698, Carlos II became seriously ill and seemed likely to die. Because Carlos was childless, the closest heirs were from the Habsburgs who ruled in Austria or the French House of Bourbon. The acquisition by either Austria or France of the undivided Spanish Empire would change the European balance of power. Negotiations took place immediately to attempt to resolve the issue without another war. The 1698 Treaty of The Hague negotiated by France, Great Britain, and the Dutch Republic would make six-year-old Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria the heir to the Spanish throne, with Spain’s European possessions divided between France and Austria. Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria was the grandson of Carlos’ full sister Margarita Teresa of Austria, Infanta of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. However, the Spanish did not agree with this. Carlos published his will naming Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria as his heir but stipulating that he would inherit an undivided Spanish Empire. In February 1699, Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria died from smallpox, and the Treaty of The Hague was a useless piece of paper.

In September 1700, Carlos became ill again, and by September 28, 1700, was no longer able to eat. Louis, Le Grand Dauphin, the only child of King Louis XIV of France and Maria Teresa, Infanta of Spain, Carlos’ half-sister, had the strongest genealogical claim to the throne of Spain. However, neither Louis, Le Grand Dauphin nor his elder son, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, could be displaced from their place in the succession to the French throne. Therefore, in his will, Carlos II, King of Spain named 16-year-old Philippe of France, Duke of Anjou, the second son of Louis, Le Grand Dauphin, and the grandson of Carlos’ half-sister Maria Teresa of Austria, Infanta of Spain and her husband King Louis XIV of France, as his successor.

Carlos II, King of Spain died on November 1, 1700, five days before his thirty-ninth birthday at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid, Spain. He was buried in the Pantheon of Kings in the Royal Crypt of the Monastery of El Escorial in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain. Carlos II was succeeded by his half-sister’s grandson Philippe of France, Duke of Anjou who reigned as Felipe V, King of Spain, the first monarch of the House of Bourbon which still reigns in the Kingdom of Spain today.

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Works Cited

• En.wikipedia.org. 2022. Charles II of Spain – Wikipedia. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain> [Accessed 18 October 2022].
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• En.wikipedia.org. 2022. Marie Louise d’Orléans – Wikipedia. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Louise_d%27Orl%C3%A9ans> [Accessed 18 October 2022].
• Es.wikipedia.org. 2022. Carlos II de España – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre. [online] Available at: <https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_II_de_Espa%C3%B1a> [Accessed 18 October 2022].
• Flantzer, Susan, 2022. Felipe IV, King of Spain, Filipe III, King of Portugal. [online] Unofficial Royalty. Available at: <https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/felipe-iv-king-of-spain-filip-iii-king-of-portugal/> [Accessed 18 October 2022].
• Flantzer, Susan, 2022. Mariana of Austria, Queen of Spain. [online] Unofficial Royalty. Available at: <https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/mariana-of-austria-queen-of-spain/> [Accessed 18 October 2022].
• Wheatcroft, Andrew (1995). The Habsburgs. London: Viking.