Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Algonquian Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 to one of Powhatan's many wives. They named her Matoaka, though she is b...

Gustav II Adolf, widely known in English by the Latinized name Gustavus Adolphus and variously in historical writings sometimes as simply just Gustavus, or Gustavus the Great, or Gustav Adolf the Great, (Swedish: Gustav Adolf den store, fr...

Shah Jahan was the fifth Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1628 to 1658. He was widely considered to be the most competent of Emperor Jahangir's four sons and after Jahangir's death in late 1627, when a war of succession ensued, Shah Jahan e...

Frederick Henry, prince of Orange; son of William the Silent by Louise de Coligny. He became stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands upon the death (1625) of his brother Maurice of Nassau. As a minor prince heading a federati...

Philip III, King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of Naples and Sicily was the king of Spain and Portugal and Algarves (as Philip II Portuguese: Filipe II), from 1598 until his death. His chief minister was the Duke of Lerma. Philip III mar...

Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, of the house of Habsburg, ruled 1620-1637. Originally Archduke of Styria, his appointment as King of Bohemia was one of the causes of the Thirty Years' War. He was also the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire...

Christian IV was the king of Denmark-Norway from 1588 until his death. With a reign of more than 59 years, he is the longest-reigning monarch of Denmark, and he is frequently remembered as one of the most popular, ambitious and proactive Da...

Marie de' Medici, was queen consort of France. She was the second wife of King Henry IV of France, of the Bourbon branch of the kings of France. Later she was the regent for her son King Louis XIII of France. Born in Florence, Italy, she...

Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort and Verneuil, Marchioness of Monceaux was a mistress, confidante and adviser of Henry IV of France. She persuaded Henry to renounce Protestantism in favour of Catholicism in 1593. Later she urged Fre...

James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death. The kingdoms of England and Scotland were individu...

Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was an English nobleman and a favourite of Elizabeth I. Politically ambitious, and a committed general, he was placed under house arrest following a poor campaign in Ireland during the Nine Years' War in...

William Louis of Nassau-Dillenburg was Count of Nassau-Dillenburg from 1606 to 1620, and stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe. He was the eldest son of John VI, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg. William Louis served as a cavalry offic...

Michael the Brave was the Prince of Wallachia (1593–1601), of Transylvania (1599–1600), and of Moldavia (1600). He ruled all three principalities in a personal union for a short period of time. During his reign, which coincided with the Lon...

Fyodor I Ivanovich, also known as Feodor the Bellringer, was the last Rurikid Tsar of Russia (1584–1598). Feodor's mother died when he was three, and he grew up in the shadow of his father, Ivan the Terrible. A pious man of retiring disp...

Matthias was Holy Roman Emperor from 1612, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1608 (as Matthias II) and King of Bohemia from 1611. He was a member of the House of Habsburg....