Ferdinand II of Aragon's marriage to Isabella I of Castile produced seven children, five of whom survived birth and lived to adulthood. They arranged strategic political marriages for all of these children to powerful monarchs and well-connected women. Although several bloodlines were cut short and the rest initially intermarried to form a close-knit group centered around the House of Habsburg, this group became the most powerful family in Europe. Within only six generations of the Catholic Monarchs their offspring ruled in the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Portugal (before, during and after the Iberian Union), the Archduchy of Austria with the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Kingdom of Hungary in personal union, the Kingd