ABSTRACT
Summarising the conclusions of this work, the Conclusion reiterates that the Spanish Habsburg dynasty was a composite of constructed family groups that reflected the dynasty's existence in the past, present and future: community of heirs, a genealogical narrative, a community of the dead and a ruling family group. It argues that the dynasty's head – most often the king of Spain – did not shape these family groups on his own. Apart from natural processes of demography, like births and deaths, that determined the available ‘biological hardware’, processes and dynamics such as dynastic centralisation, pressure from subjects, individual agency, rivalry among groups of relatives and the institutionalisation of roles for certain types of relatives limited the family head's power.
