For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians, and warriors, they saw off -through luck, guile and sheer mulishness- any number of rivals, until finally packing up in 1918. From their principal lairs along the Danube they ruled most of Central Europe and Germany and interfered everywhere -indeed the history of Europe hardly makes sense without them.
It is the history of a dynasty, but it is at least as much about the people they ruled, who spoked many different languages, lived in a vast range of landscapes, believed in may rival gods and often showed a marked ingratitude towards their oddball ruler in Vienna.