Thursday, April 26, 2018

Conquest by marriage

[Charles V's] vast heritage was the culmination of the marriage policy of the House of Hapsburg, whose diplomats were always on the lookout for eligible heiresses. A single marriage might determine the political destiny of a region for centuries, and it was by a constant succession of those marriages that the Hapsburg family built up its extensive but unnatural empire.

(from A History of England and the British Empire)

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