Episode 2870
Charles II of Spain
Wed, 2025-Mar-12 03:44 UTC
Length - 2:08
Direct Link
Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.
With 192,386 views on Tuesday, 11 March 2025 our article of the day is Charles II of Spain.
Charles II (6 November 1661 – 1 November 1700) was King of Spain from 1665 to 1700. The last monarch from the House of Habsburg, which had ruled Spain since 1516, he died without an heir, leading to the War of the Spanish Succession over his successor.
For reasons still debated, Charles experienced lengthy periods of ill health throughout his life. This made the question of who would succeed him central to European diplomacy for much of his reign, one historian writing that "from the day of his birth, they were waiting for his death".
The two main candidates were the Austrian Habsburg Archduke Charles, and 16-year-old Philip of Anjou, grandson of Charles' half-sister Maria Theresa and Louis XIV of France. Shortly before his death in November 1700, Charles named Philip his heir, but the acquisition of an undivided Spanish Empire by either France or Austria threatened the European balance of power. Failure to resolve these issues through diplomacy resulted in the 1701 to 1714 War of the Spanish Succession.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 03:44 UTC on Wednesday, 12 March 2025.
For the full current version of the article, see Charles II of Spain on Wikipedia.
This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.
Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.
Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.
Until next time, I'm neural Ayanda.
|
|
Buy WotD Stuff!!
