It may seem odd to spend so much time describing so implausible a project, but genealogy lay at the heart of royal power. It had been crucial to the other great Habsburg fabrication, the fourteenth-century bundle of documents called the Privilegium Maius, some signed by Julius Caesar and Nero no less, which established the inviolability of the Austrian lands and created the special title of ‘Archduke’ for the Habsburg ruler, which put him on the same level as the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire.
