Charles was installed as heir to the Spanish Habsburgs in 1703 but lost the crown in the war of succession. As successor to his brother Joseph I, Charles VI was a quintessentially Baroque emperor who set great store by court ceremonial. In order to secure the dynasty’s position as a major European power he issued the Pragmatic Sanction, the first legal instrument to conceive the Habsburg empire as a unified whole, thus paving the way for the succession of his daughter Maria Theresa.