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While Charles continued to seduce girls and father children, he tried to control his son: ‘You’ll soon be married; it is important you restrain your desires’ which ‘can be dangerous both for the body’s growth and its strength. It even causes death as it did with Prince Juan which is how I came to inherit these kingdoms … I require and request that once you’ve consummated the marriage, you plead some illness and keep away from your wife.’ On the wedding night, a courtier dashed into the bedchamber after two and half hours and removed the bridegroom. When he heard that Maria was pregnant, Charles congratulated Philip: ‘I thought it would take you longer.’ Philip was not the grim fanatic of legend: he enjoyed dancing and flirting, and was now enjoying an affair with a beautiful lady-in-waiting (even though she had a rabbi among her ancestors). His wife gave birth to a son, but died of infection, at seventeen. The baby Carlos was born with physical and mental handicaps – the result of intermarriage and perhaps oxygen starvation – that ultimately threatened his father and the monarchy itself. Philip, filled with ‘anguish and regret’, retired to a monastery for a month.

In 1543, when Charles left Spain, Philip started to rule in that kingdom. ‘Don’t fail to send me soldiers,’ his father demanded. Philip resisted, reminding his father ‘of the exhaustion of your kingdoms’. Demands for soldiers and cash, and nagging, soured their relationship. At the same time, Charles beat François in a race to win over the ageing and obese Henry VIII, conveniently overlooking his oafish treatment of his aunt Catherine.^* In 1544, Henry landed in Calais and both monarchs attacked France, forcing François to sue for peace.

Charles had promised his brother Ferdinand that he and his son would succeed him as emperor but then suddenly announced he would nominate his own son Philip. The brothers almost fell out. ‘We have to decide who is emperor, you or me,’ Charles told Ferdinand. This could have caused the fracturing of the Habsburgs, but instead Charles backed down. In a Family Compact that would last for the next 150 years, the two branches of the family would help each other. Philip would inherit Spain, which he was already ruling, the Netherlands, Italy and the Americas; Ferdinand would rule Austria and the empire.

In 1547, Charles defeated the Protestant princes at Mühlberg,^* a Catholic triumph – the culmination of his life’s work. Yet in 1552 the Protestant princes, fortified by France, bounced back, routing Charles, whom they almost killed or captured, forcing him to flee, semi-conscious in a litter, tormented by debts, haemorrhoids and gout – the nadir of his reign – while the Ottoman admirals retook Tunis. ‘I can’t be everywhere and do everything,’ he wrote forlornly to Ferdinand. Bankrupt and broken, he complained, ‘I can’t find a penny, or anyone who wants to lend me one or a man in Germany ready to declare support for me.’ He even distrusted his brother: ‘I begin to wonder whether Ferdinand might have some secret understanding with the authors of this conspiracy.’

In 1556, Charles finally allowed Ferdinand to negotiate a German peace that allowed German princes to choose their sect: cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion). It is rare for any family to produce two able statesmen simultaneously, but Charles V’s brother, the cautious, wise, conciliatory Archduke Ferdinand, had created a Habsburg realm in Mitteleuropa encompassing Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, had rebuilt the Hofburg Palace of Vienna as his headquarters, had achieved a happy marriage with his heiress wife that produced thirteen surviving children, had trained a moderate heir, Maximilian, whom he married to Charles’s daughter Maria of Spain, and had fought off four invasions by Suleiman. The sultan, now sixty, was now dealing with his own family crisis the Ottoman way – with the bowstring.

THE OTTOMAN EMPRESS, THE LUCKY LOUSE AND DOñA GRACIA

Hürrem, the Ukrainian-born ex-slave who was now his empress, remained Suleiman’s companion, constantly corresponding with him on his campaigns and acting as his eyes in Constantinople. ‘Sometimes you treat me with kindness, sometimes you torment me,’ he wrote. ‘My love, whatever your mood, I will always adapt to it.’ When his first son with Roxelana died, he wept desperately, refusing initially to let the body be buried, then prayed for forty days. But he was ice-cold in politics.

Wizened, watchful, world-weary, Suleiman monitored his sons carefully. He was close to Mustafa, his eldest, who had become dangerously popular with the Janissaries, the elite musketeers feared by the sultan.