The painting highlights another of the prudent king’s qualities, namely his respect for the hereditary code of European monarchies. The young king of Portugal, Sebastian I – Philip’s nephew, the son of his sister Joanna of Austria – died prematurely without an heir. Philip, in making his claim to the vacant throne, did not rely on force of arms but on force of law. The painting shows, in fact, on the precise instructions of the commissioner Ferdinando I de’ Medici, how the king orders the consultation of the genealogical table (the tree of kings) and how he consults “many doctors with books around his throne”.