"Let others wage war: you, happy Austria, marry’. Is that really it? Did this family acquire an empire where the sun never sets through just luck and longevity?

That is what we will try to find out in this season where we follow the family from the murder of king Abrecht I in 1308 to the election of emperor Charles V in 1519.

For most of that period the Habsburgs had been languishing in the wilderness. They experienced defeats, divisions and humiliations, were even expelled from their duchy of Austria just before they rose meteorically to world leadership under Maximilian and Charles V. Something must have happened in this period that forged them into the most successful European dynasty. As they say in the music industry, every overnight success was years in the making”.

That is why this season is called “The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg” and is dedicated to the question, what made the Habsburgs so special.