Velázquez himself must have been keenly aware…

Albert of Prussia was born in Ansbach in Franconia as the third son of Frederick I, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach.

His mother is Sophia, daughter of Casimir IV Jagiellon, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, and his wife Elisabeth of Austria.

Raised for a career in the Church, he had spent some time at the court of Hermann IV of Hesse, Elector of Cologne, who had appointed him canon of the Cologne Cathedral.

Not only is he quite religious, he is also interested in mathematics and science, and sometimes is claimed to have contradicted the teachings of the Church in favor of scientific theories.

His career has been forwarded by the Church however and institutions of the Catholic clerics had supported his early advance.

Turning to a more active life, Albert had accompanied Emperor Maximilian I to Italy in 1508, and after his return spent some time in the Kingdom of Hungary.

When Duke Frederick of Saxony, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, died in December 1510, Albert had been chosen as his successor early in 1511 in the hope that his relationship to his maternal uncle Sigismund, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, would facilitate a settlement of the disputes over eastern Prussia, which has been held by the Order under Polish suzerainty since the Second Peace of Thorn (1466).

The new Grand Master, aware of his duties to the empire and to the papacy, had refused to submit to the crown of Poland.

As war over the Order's existence appears inevitable, Albert has made strenuous efforts to secure allies and carried on protracted negotiations with Emperor Maximilian.

The ill-feeling, influenced by the ravages of members of the Order in Poland, culminates in a war that begins in December 1519 and devastates Prussia.

It is considered likely that Sten’s wife Christina acted as political adviser to her spouse and participated in state affairs, given her later role.

In practice, Sten and Christina already function as king and queen of Sweden.

In 1519, Peder Månsson, Bishop of Västerås, expresses his surprise in a letter from Rome to the Abbess of Vadstena Abbey that Sten has not yet been crowned, and in the contemporary Stockholm chronicle, Christina is referred to as "Our Gracious Princess".

Gustav Eriksson escapes from Kalø in 1519, fleeing to the Hanseatic city of Lübeck where he arrives on September 30.

How he managed to escape is not certain, but according to a somewhat likely story, he had disguised himself as a teamster.

The Hazara identity in Afghanistan is believed by many to have originated in the aftermath of the 1221 Siege of Bamyan.

The first mention of Hazara, who are overwhelmingly Twelver Shia Muslims, is made by Babur in the early sixteenth century.

Babur's early relations with the Ottomans were poor because the Ottoman Sultan Selim I had provided his rival Ubaydullah Khan with powerful matchlocks and cannons.

In 1507, when ordered to accept Selim I as his rightful suzerain, Babur had refused, and gathered Qizilbash servicemen in order to counter the forces of Ubaydullah Khan during the Battle of Ghazdewan.

In 1513, Selim I had reconciled with Babur (fearing that he would join the Safavids), and dispatched Ustad Ali Quli the artilleryman and Mustafa Rumi, the matchlock marksman, and many other Ottoman Turks, in order to assist Babur in his conquests; this particular assistance will prove to be the basis of future Mughal-Ottoman relations.

From them, he also adopts the tactic of using matchlocks and cannons in field (rather than only in sieges), which will give him an important advantage in India.

Babur still wants to escape from the Uzbeks, and finally chooses India as a refuge instead of Badakhshan, which is to the north of Kabul.

After his third loss of Samarkand, Babur gives full attention to ths conquest of India: launching a campaign, he reaches the Chenab River, now in Pakistan, in 1519.

Quli Qutb Shah, a Turkmen from Hamadan, had migrated to Delhi with some of his relatives and friends in the beginning of the sixteenth century, later migrating south to the Deccan and serving the Bahmani sultan.

After the disintegration of the Bahmani Sultanate into the five Deccan sultanates, he had declared independence in 1512 and taken the title Qutb Shah, establishing the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda.

Sultan Quli, a contemporary of Krishana Deva Raya and his younger brother Achyuta Deva Raya of the Vijayanagara empire, has extended his rule by capturing forts at Warangal, …

…Kondapalli, …

…Eluru, and …

…Rajahmundry, while Krishnadevaraya is busy fighting the ruler of Odisha.

Quli Qutb Shah defeats Sitapati Raju (known as Shitab Khan), the ruler of Khammam, and captures the fort, eventually forcing Odisha's ruler to surrender all the territories between the mouths of Krishna and Godavari rivers.