Vain, inbred and inept: how could the Habsburgs have survived so long?

One of the great mysteries of European history is how for the best part of 700 years a family who produced so many complete duffers as the Habsburgs managed to play such a crucial role in world affairs. There was certainly the odd exception to the general rule, and some highly effective women; but it says a lot about a family that once controlled much of the Old and the New Worlds that at the end of this lucid and entertaining history Martyn Rady can offer up Dr Otto von Habsburg, the last ‘pretender’ to the Austrian throne and MEP for the Bavarian conservative CSU party, as the ‘best emperor the Habsburgs never had’.

One of the more mundane reasons for their remarkable durability in the early days was their canny gift for outliving their neighbours. From relatively modest beginnings in what is now northern Switzerland, the Habsburgs gradually expanded their lands and power through the early Middle Ages, marrying into some of the major Swabian families and then, when those family lines expired — what Rady nicely calls ‘the Fortinbras effect’ — scooping up estate after estate to give them the profitable control of the tolls and roads between France and northern Italy.

‘Who talks of victories’ — Rady quotes Rilke — ‘when to survive is all?’, and by the last quarter of the 13th century the Habsburgs were well placed to set the ultimate seal on their rise. The fragmentary structure of the Holy Roman Empire meant that their lands never added up to a consolidated whole, but in the chaos that followed the fall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, Rudolph of Habsburg — 7’ tall with ‘a nose long enough to halt the traffic’ — succeeded in having himself elected ‘King of Rome’ and (though never crowned by the Pope) self-styled Emperor.

While the Habsburg triumph proved only short-lived, the one permanent contribution Rudolph did make was the addition of the duchy of Austria to the family lands.