The Psychology of the Habsburgs
Throughout his reign, Charles V was accompanied by incredible luck: he won battles against both internal and external enemies, including the Spanish and Dutch rebels, popes and heretics, German princes and Tunisian pirates, the French and English, Indians and Turks. Yet, these victories led to nothing of sufficient importance to be considered significant in the history of European culture. This can be explained by the ruler's character and, more generally, by the nature of the Habsburgs.
This family, which was a defining factor in European history for more than half a millennium, is a psychological mystery. They had no sense of reality because they themselves were not real. Their natural gift, their inherited ability, was to hover in a completely new guise at any moment, far above the surface of the earth. They were present, yet not present; stronger than what is real, yet weaker than what is real, like a nightmare, a bad dream. Transparent, two-dimensional, elusive. No bridge leads from them to the people, and from the people to them. They are islands. "Reality must conform to them, not they to reality"—this would be the definition of genius, but the Habsburgs were unfortunately not geniuses. A person with such inclinations is a dangerous fantasist, an enemy of humankind. Thus, they ruled over the real world for centuries from an illusory world of their own making, a world they never left.
The reverse side of this whimsical arrogance is the tremendous sobriety, the complete lack of enthusiasm, drive, and dedication, which characterizes all the Habsburgs. This is linked to their complete inability to learn from people, events, or things, to develop or change according to life. They always derive the material for their worldview exclusively from themselves. A classic example of these traits is Emperor Franz Joseph: in his nearly ninety-year life, no person, no experience ever came close to him; for nearly seventy years of his reign, he never allowed a single advisor, nor even the changing times, to influence his decisions; he never had a single colorful or even warm word, a powerful gesture, nor any high or low deed. Nothing from which we could conclude that he was his fellow man's brother on this earth. It was as if history's last Habsburg ruler wanted to summarize all the essential traits of this family in a singular example. The last one, yes, because the tragic and ironic epilogue of this six-hundred-year fate ends in a zero. Charles I was nothing more than a line officer. The time of the Habsburg family was over.
Egon Friedell "Az újkori kultúra története II." Holnap Kiadó, Budapest, 1989