Charles V was born February 24, 1500 in Ghent, Flanders (now Belgium), which was part of the Habsburg Netherlands, and died September 21, 1558 in San Jeronimo de Yuste, Spain. It was said that Charles was fluent in French and Dutch, later adding an acceptable Castilian Spanish, required as a condition for becoming king of Castile. He also gained a decent command of German, though he never spoke it as well as French. He eventually united the Hasburg, Burgundian, Castilian, and Aragonese inheritances.
Charles was the eldest son of Philip I the Handsome, the first member of the House of Habsburg to be King of Castile, and Joanna of Castile, a traditional central region constituting more than one-quarter of the area of peninsular Spain. The region formed the core of the Kingdom of Castille, under which Spain was united in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Philip inherited the greater part of the Duchy of Burgundy and the Burgundian Netherlands from his mother Mary and at 27 briefly succeeded to the Crown of Castile as the husband of Queen Joanna, who was also heir to the Crown of Aragon.
The name Castile, meaning "land of castles," is first known to have been used in about 800AC, when it was applied to a small district at the foot of the Cantabrian Mountains in the extreme North of the modern province of Burgos. The mountains extends along the Northern coast of Spain for 300km/180 mi and are of geological similar origins to the Pyrenees (a mountain chain of flat-topped massifs and folded linear ranges in South Western Europe), stretching from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea on the East to the Bay of Biscay on the Atlantic Ocean on the West. The Pyrenees form a high wall between France and Spain.
Due to the irregularity of Charles assuming the royal title while his mother was alive, the negotiations with the Castilian Courts proved difficult. Spanish kingdoms varied in their traditions. Castile was an authoritarian kingdom, where the monarch's own will easily overrode Law and the Courts. By contrast, in the kingdoms of the crown of Aragon, and specially in the Pyrenean kingdom of Navarra, Law prevailed, and the monarchy was a contract with the people.
During Charles' reign, the expansion of Spain territory took place, beginning with the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus to Central and South America. The new territories were incorporated to the crown as the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru between 1519 and 1542. These successes helped solidify Charles' rule by providing the state treasury with enormous amounts of wealth.
Charles suffered from an enlarged lower jaw, a deformity that became considerable worse in later Habsburg generations, giving rise to the term Habsburg jaw. This deformity was caused by the family's long history of inbreeding, which was commonly practiced in royal families of that era to maintain control of territory. He suffered also from epilepsy and was seriously afflicted with gout caused by a diet consisting mainly of red meat. As he aged, his gout progressed from painful to crippling. On his retirement, he was carried around the monastery of Saint Yuste in an special chair. A ramp was specially constructed to allow him easy access to his rooms.
On March 10, 1526, Charles married his first cousin Isabella of Portugal, sister of John III of Portugal, in Seville. They had 6 children. He also had 4 illegitimate children in Austria.
Isabella often administered Spain while Charles was in other lands. Due to Philip II being a grandson of Manuel I of Portugal through his mother he was in line of succession to the throne of Portugal, and claimed it after his uncle's death (Henry, the Cardinal-King, in 1580), thus establishing the Iberian Union.
The titles of King of Hungary, of Bohemia, and of Croatia, also were incorporated into the imperial family during Charles' reign, but they were held, both nominally and substantively, by his brother Ferdinand, who initiated a 4-century-long Habsburg rule over these eastern territories.
