Archduke Leopold V of Further Austria was born on 9 October 1586. Through his father, Charles II of Inner Austria, he was the grandson of Emperor Ferdinand I. Leopold’s mother, Maria Anna of Bavaria, was her husband’s niece. Their marriage produced two Queens of Poland, a Queen of Spain, and, of course, the future Emperor Ferdinand II.
Among his numerous siblings, Archduke Leopold did not occupy a particularly prominent position. As the younger son of a younger son, he was initially destined for an ecclesiastical career, but in the interests of the family, he abandoned that plan in favour of marriage. Surprisingly for a Habsburg, his wife, Claudia de’ Medici, was not closely related to him.
Their children formed a short-lived Tyrolean branch of the Habsburg dynasty which, however, produced two Holy Roman Empresses. Leopold and Claudia’s daughter Maria Leopoldine married her first cousin, Emperor Ferdinand III. A generation later, one of their granddaughters, Claudia Felicitas, became the second wife of Emperor Leopold I. Neither of them left surviving children.
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