Rudolf of Habsburg was Duke of Austria and Styria from 1298 as well as King of Bohemia and titular King of Poland from 1306 until his death.
Background
A member of the House of Habsburg, he was the eldest son of King Albert I of Germany and his wife Elizabeth of Gorizia. Upon the election of his father as King of the Romans, Rudolph was vested as a co-ruler with the Austrian and Styrian hereditary lands of the Habsburg dynasty. On May 25, 1300, King Albert I arranged his marriage with Blanche, a daughter of King Philip III of France by his second wife Marie of Brabant.
Career
Another opportunity for a Habsburg gain in power opened when in 1306 King Wenceslaus III, the last Bohemian ruler of the Přemyslid dynasty, was killed and Albert I as rex Romanorum was able to seize his kingdom as a reverted Imperial fief. When several Bohemian nobles elected Henry King of Bohemia, Albert I placed his brother-in-law under the Imperial ban and marched against Prague. Henry fled, first to Bavaria, then back to his Carinthian homelands.
Mocked as král kaše ("king porridge") for his stomach problems, Rudolf was rejected by several Bohemian nobles, who continued to hold out for Henry.
His aims to take hold of the silver deposits at Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) sparked a rebellion led by the noble House of Strakonice. The king besieged the rebel fortress of Horažďovice, but died at the campsite in the night of 3 to 4 July 1307, probably of gastrointestinal perforation.
As Rudolf left no children, the first grab of the Habsburgs for the Crown of Saint Wenceslas failed when the Bohemian nobles restored Henry as king in return for a charter of privileges, who in turn had to renounce the throne in favour of Count John of Luxembourg three years later. Rudolph is buried at the Saint Vitus Cathedral in Prague.
Membership
To further legitimate the Habsburg claims to the Bohemian and the Polish throne, Albert had Rudolph married to Princess Elizabeth Richeza of Poland, a member of the Piast dynasty and widow of the predeceased King Wenceslaus World War II