ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses forty genealogies written between 1525 and 1700 by authors from all corners of the Habsburg monarchies (both the Spanish and Austrian parts). It discussed how genealogists dealt with the dynasty's earliest origins, illustrating how this debate about the family originated at a Habsburg court, but was soon continued outside it mainly by learned scholars in various locations and slipped therefore out of the control of the dynasty. Genealogists’ dealing with the various branches of the dynasty show that they considered the existence of several medieval branches to be problematic and they made strong efforts to represent the family retrospectively as an essentially unilineal family. The historical construction of the House of Habsburg was focused on the vertical, patrilineal dynasty. When dealing with current living relatives, the genealogies reveal how the dynasty took a different shape in the various territories where it ruled and in present. Locally, relatives represented the dynasty as governors were remembered and included, even if they were cognatic cousins and nephews, or illegitimate children. In stark contrast to genealogists’ slimmed-down, patrilineal reconstruction of the genealogical past, the genealogical present included collateral, illegitimate and cognatic relatives.
