Don Carlos, the sickly, eldest son of…
July 1568 CE
Don Carlos, the sickly, eldest son of Habsburg monarch Philip II of Spain, has become wild and unpredictable in his behaviors since recovering from the head injuries sustained by his fall down a flight of stairs in 1562.
He has taken a dislike to the Duke of Alba, who had become the commander of Philip's forces in the Netherlands, a position that had been promised to Carlos.
Carlos possibly had made contacts with representative of the Count Egmont from the Low Countries, who was leading the revolt against the Spanish.
He also exhibits an antipathy towards his father, whose murder, according to Carlos' confessor, he supposedly contemplates at one time.
He had made preparations in the autumn of 1567 to flee to the Netherlands, but Don Juan de Austria had revealed these plans to King Philip.
Excluded from the succession because of his mentally disturbed state, he had been arrested in January 1568 and placed in solitary confinement on his father's orders.
He has grown very thin during his imprisonment and has developed eating disorders, alternating self-starvation with heavy binges.
He dies on July 25, 1568.
Images
Alonso Sánchez Coello: Don Carlos of Spain (1564) oil on canvas, 186 x 82,5 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna
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