13 November – Great expectations for a new kingdom

Archduke Albert VII was born on 13 November 1559. He was the fifth son of Emperor Maximilian II and Maria of Spain.

Albert grew up at the Spanish court and spent most of his life in the service of his maternal uncle, King Philip II. As a younger son, he was destined for an ecclesiastical career and held several high, though largely titular, positions in the Church, such as archbishop and even cardinal. Although personally pious, he never received ordination and simultaneously served as a secular viceroy and governor-general.

In his late thirties, political considerations determined that Albert should marry his first cousin, Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. Philip II gave his beloved daughter the Spanish Netherlands as her dowry, with the prospect that it might one day become a hereditary realm of their descendants. In the first years of the seventeenth century, there was a realistic possibility that Europe would see the establishment of a new sovereign kingdom. The couple even minted their own coin, the Albertusthaler.

However, these great hopes did not come true. Although Albert and Isabella’s marriage was otherwise happy, it remained childless — probably owing to their close kinship (Albert’s parents had themselves been first cousins). The couple governed the Netherlands together until Albert’s death in 1621. After Isabella’s passing in 1633, the country reverted to Spain.