Contents

Introduction......................................................................... 5

1. (Not your average) childhood and adolescence.... 13

2. Getting the throne....................................................... 21

3. Ruling the kingdoms................................................... 29

4. The conquest of Granada.......................................... 35

5. Putting the Catholic into ‘Catholic Monarchs’.... 47

6. Becoming a global power..........................................49

7. The (not so) happy couple........................................ 55

8. The final years................................................................ 61

Glossary.............................................................................. 65

Before reading activities.................................................. 67

While reading activities................................................... 68

After reading activities................................................... 72

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 Introduction

On a cold October morning in 1469, a royal

wedding *took place in the city of Valladolid. The bride
was a light-haired, 18-year-old princess. The groom was a
pale-skinned prince with a high voice and long, straight
hair. But the preparations for the big day had been a bit
unusual.

Like today, most royal weddings were extravagant

public occasions, but this one was small and took place in
secret. The princess had come to the city under armed
guard because her half-brother, King Henry IV of
Castile, wanted to arrest her. The prince had travelled to
the wedding disguised as a merchant. He was almost
killed when a guard threw a rock at him as he passed by a
castle on his way from Zaragoza. The ‘happy couple’ had
met for the first time just four days before the wedding.
They were so poor they had to borrow money to pay for
the celebrations! Not exactly the glamour you’d expect of
a royal wedding.

The ceremony itself was also, well, a bit weird.

Officially, the wedding wasn’t even legal because the
princess had promised not to marry without her half-
brother Henry IV’s permission. She didn’t have his
permission – that’s why he wanted to arrest her. To
complicate things even more, the bride and groom were
second cousins. This meant they need special permission
* Words that look like this appear in the glossary at the end of the book.

5
from the Pope to get married. This could take a long
time, so the Archbishop of Toledo (who conducted the
ceremony), decided to use the signature and seal of a
dead pope instead. Ingenious!...but this didn’t really help
to make the wedding look more legal, did it?!

A secret ceremony between a bride and groom

who didn’t really know each other had taken place, without
proper permission and using false papers…it sounds more
like a soap opera than a royal wedding! But these two
teenagers became two of Spain’s most famous rulers, two
people whose names were forever associated with each
other: FERDINAND and ISABELLA.

This is the story of the lives of these two

monarchs who became famous for, well, doing quite a lot
of important things.

Ferdinand and Isabella to do

list Nov 1469
-have illegal secret wedding
-unite the crowns of CASTILE AND ARAGON
-bring law and order to the land
-conquer the Muslim Kingdom of Granada?
-achieve religious unity
-find a new route to Asia?
-buy potatoes haven’t been discovered yet!

6
 But before we find out about all that, we need to
know what Spain was really like in the mid-15th century.

The first thing that might surprise you is that

there was no such thing as the Kingdom of Spain, it just
didn’t exist! Most people didn’t even use the word ‘Spain’!
Instead they referred to the five kingdoms on the Iberian
Peninsula: Portugal, Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Granada.
In fact, the only time in history that the Iberian Peninsula
had been a single unit was when it was Hispania, part of
the Roman Empire. It had been conquered by the Muslims
in the 8th century. Two centuries later, the Christians
recovered part of the north of Spain and began to
move south in a slow advance known as the Reconquest.
By Ferdinand and Isabella’s time, only the Kingdom of
Granada was under Muslim rule.

Isabella was Princess of Castile, a wild and warlike

kingdom dominated by powerful nobles. These nobles had
led the fight against the Muslims and took large areas of
land from them as they moved south. Ferdinand’s Aragon
looked east towards the Mediterranean. It had established
a trading empire which included the Balearic Islands, Sicily,
Sardinia and Naples, as well as some fortified towns in
North Africa.

But by the middle of the 15th century, its

neighbour Castile was growing in importance. Castile
was four times bigger than Aragon, it had five times the
population, it had the largest cities and it was more unified
than its neighbour.

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 Aragon had a more developed economy, but the
dreaded Black Death, civil wars and economic crisis
had weakened it. Also, Castile’s economy was beginning
to grow fast. Why? The reason was simple: sheep – the
humble sheep, or to be exact, the merino sheep. The
merino produced a soft white wool that rich merchants
in Flanders, Italy and England loved. The sheep trade was
run by a powerful group of producers called the Mesta.
They controlled the great flocks of sheep that migrated
across the peninsula in summer and winter, and made lots
and lots and lots of money.

Some of this money was used to build the great

Gothic cathedrals in Burgos, Segovia and León. But most
of it went into making a number of aristocratic families
fabulously super rich. Some of these aristocrats became
even more powerful than the royal family itself!

10
 Not only did Castile and Aragon have very
different economies, the two kingdoms were also ruled
in very different ways. Aragon was made up of three
separate kingdoms: Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia, each
with its own laws and own cortes. The cortes were advisory
councils that helped the monarch rule each area. All laws
had to be approved by each cortes. Castile also had a
cortes, but it was much weaker than those in Aragon.

The number one religion in both Castile and

Aragon was Christianity, but there were large communities
of Muslims and Jews in both kingdoms. Jews were
often involved in trade, finance and professions such as
medicine. Muslims usually lived in the countryside. The
three religions had existed side by side in relative peace,
but this situation was beginning to go downhill. With the
advance of the Reconquest, the Christians were becoming
increasingly intolerant. Religion became one of the most
important influences in Ferdinand and Isabella’s reign:
they weren’t called the Catholic Monarchs for nothing!

The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella brought

the two kingdoms of Castile and Aragon together. But
this wasn’t a smooth or easy process…as we’re going to
find out!

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Strange, but true!

D
id you know that
one of the original
candidates to marry
Isabella was the Duke
of Gloucester, who later
became King Richard III of
England? Richard’s body
was recently found in a
very glamorous location: a
car park in the English city
of Leicester. Hmm..
Richard III Richard III has traditionally
been represented as an
ugly, evil murderer. He became king after imprisoning
and probably murdering his nephews (who were 12
and 9 years old). So, it’s not difficult to understand why
nobody liked him very much. Lucky escape, Isabella!

Richard III certainly met a humiliating end when

he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. His
skeleton showed that he had been stabbed 10 times,
including twice in the head and once in the backside.
Richard was not the only foreign royal to be linked with
Isabella. Both the Portuguese King Afonso V and the
brother of Louis XI of France were also considered as
potential husbands for her.

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 1. (Not your average)
childhood and adolescence

Isabella was the daughter of a king, but she wasn’t

born to be queen. She was the product of John II of
Castile’s second marriage, to Isabella of Portugal. Nobody
ever thought she would *rule the kingdom. After all,
Isabella was a girl: in those days, girls weren’t considered
to make good rulers (sorry girls!). Isabella’s father already
had a son, Henry, from his first marriage, to Maria of
Aragon. Here’s what the chronicler Enríquez del Castillo
said about Isabella’s half brother Henry:

He is tall, with white skin, red hair,

freckles and a broad forehead. His arms
and legs are big and his appearance lion-
like. He has a prominent jaw and teeth
that don’t join together.
In fact, people were so uninterested in Isabella’s
birth that we aren’t even sure about the exact place or
date! She was probably born on 22 April 1451, just before

* Words that look like this appear in the glossary at the end of the book.
Aurelio Sanchez Martin ed., Cronica de Enrique IV de Diego Enriquez del Castillo Universidad de
Valladolid (Translated and adapted)

13
Easter, in the little town of Madrigal de las Altas Torres
in Ávila. As a princess, her education would focus on her
role as a potential wife and mother, rather than as a queen.

Isabella’s father died when she was only three years

old, and her half-brother Henry became King. Isabella was
sent to live with her mother and her brother Alfonso in
a gloomy castle in city of Arévalo. Conditions there were
pretty horrible, and unlike most royals, they didn’t have
much money. To make things worse, Isabella’s mother was
sinking into a deep depression. Back in 1451, she had
persuaded her husband John II to order the execution
of his friend and favourite Álvaro de Luna. Maybe she
felt bad about this afterwards, and that’s why she got
depressed.

Isabella and Alfonso were then taken away from

their mother by King Henry and brought to the court
in Segovia. This was so that he could control them and
supervise the rest of their education. Isabella’s mother
stayed in Arévalo and gradually went madder and madder.
In the end, she didn’t recognise anybody and didn’t even
remember who she was! People said that Isabella’s mother
ended her days running up and down the stairs of the
castle tower, chased by ghostly voices calling out De
Luna’s name. The possible moral of this story is: don’t
persuade your husband to execute people! It may come
back to haunt you (literally).

In the fairy-tale castle in Segovia, Isabella

continued her education under the watchful eye of
Henry’s wife, Queen Joan. Although Isabella lived in more
comfort than in Arévalo, she didn´t get on with Queen
Joan, and even compared her to a wicked stepmother.

14
 Meanwhile, outside Segovia, things were getting
difficult for King Henry. As usual, rival groups of nobles
were competing for power. Some were trying to damage
Henry’s reputation by saying he was incapable of having
children. This gossip wasn’t completely invented. Henry’s
first marriage, to Blanche of Navarre, had been annulled
for this reason, although Henry blamed his problems on
an evil spell (??!!). The fact that he had no children with
his second wife Joan seemed to confirm the rumours.

But to everybody’s surprise, the queen became

pregnant in 1461. She gave birth to a baby girl called
Joanna the following year. The birth didn’t stop the gossip,
though. Henry’s enemies called baby Joanna ‘la Beltraneja’
because they said she was really the daughter of the king’s
favourite, the handsome Beltrán de la Cueva.

The Segovia Star

15 April 1462

ROYAL EXCLUSIVE

Doubts over ‘miracle’ baby

The Kingdom of Castile whose childless marriage to
was overjoyed earlier his fi rst wife Blanche was
this year when King Henry annulled because it had
announced the birth of his been cursed by an evil
fi rst child Joanna. ‘She’s a spell. After seven years of
gift from God’, said the king, marriage, Henry’s second

15
wife Joan had finally given Un-named nobles close to
birth to a bouncing baby the royal couple have told the
girl, Princess Joanna. Star that the REAL father
could be the handsome
young royal favourite
Beltrán de la Cueva, aged 19.
Sources close to the queen
deny the rumours, though.
‘They don’t look like one
another at all’, these sources
said. ‘Beltrán is tall, la
Beltraneja, oops, I mean
Princess Joanna, is short, he
wears armour, she doesn’t,
Beltrán de la Cueva he carries a sword, she
doesn’t. There is absolutely
But the Segovia Star can no resemblance, except
EXCLUSIVELY reveal that for the eyes, nose, hair, face
there are serious doubts shape and chin.’
about the identity of baby See page 4 for more
Joanna’s father. details about miracle
baby Joanna!

One group of nobles used baby Joanna’s birth as

a way to try to increase their power and influence. First
they insisted that Isabella’s brother Prince Alfonso should
be named as the heir to the throne. They then went a
step further, and demanded that Alfonso should replace
Henry as king. The dispute provided the perfect excuse
for the start of a civil war between Alfonso and his
supporters, and those who sided with King Henry.

16
 Isabella was now facing a difficult decision.
Which brother should she support: her half-brother the
king, or her younger brother Alfonso? In the end she
chose to side with Alfonso.

The rebel nobles continued their campaign

against Henry, which at times became a bit ridiculous.
In an event known as the FARCE OF ÁVILA in 1465, they
read out their accusations against Henry. Except the king
wasn’t actually there, so they read them out to an effigy
of Henry instead. It wasn’t called a farce for nothing! Then
the Archbishop of Toledo (him again!) took the crown
off the effigy. Another noble took the effigy’s sword,
the symbol of justice, and a third took the sceptre,
the symbol of royal government. Just in case this wasn’t
clear enough, they then kicked over poor Henry’s effigy.
Why doesn’t he It must be another evil spell!
defend himself?

17
 Alfonso was then proclaimed king, even though he was
still only 11 years old!
Poor King Henry tried to negotiate with the
rebels. He reluctantly agreed to accept Alfonso as
his heir. But he also had a cunning plan: to organise
a marriage between baby Joanna and Alfonso to ensure

John I of Castile
(1379–1390)

Ferdinand I of Aragon
(1412–1416)

Alfonso V of Aragon Maria

(1416–1458) John II of Aragon of Aragon
(1458–1479)

Blanche
of Navarre

Ferdinand II
(*1479–1516)
*Ferdinand became King of Castile in 1474, and King of Aragon in 1479.
18
 his grandchildren would rule. The plan didn’t work out.
Inconveniently for Henry, Alfonso died suddenly in 1468,
probably as a result of the plague. Alfonso’s supporters
didn’t believe this though. They said that Alfonso had
been poisoned or even had his throat cut.

Eleanor of Aragon

Henry III of Castile

(1390–1406) Mad

John II of Castile Isabella of Portugal

(1406–1454)
Curse
d? Wicked er
th
stepmo
Henry IV Joan
of Castile of Portugal
(1454–1474)

Joanna Poison
? e
Beltraneja d?

Isabella I Alfonso
(1474–1504)

19
They now championed Isabella as the rightful queen
(even though she was a girl!).

While Isabella was now at the centre of a civil

war in Castile, her future husband Ferdinand had been
growing up in neighbouring Aragon. Almost a year
younger than Isabella, the young Ferdinand was trained
as a warrior prince. He was also given a basic education
in the new Humanist learning that was becoming popular
across Europe. But people said that he preferred riding
and fighting to studying! Like Isabella, Ferdinand wasn’t
born to be king: he had an elder brother, Don Carlos,
the Prince of Viana. But Don Carlos died in 1461, and
Ferdinand became the heir to the throne of his father,
John II of Aragon (not to be confused with Isabella’s
father, who was also John II, but of Castile!).

Ferdinand was a man of action and took part

in a civil war in Catalonia in the 1460s. He got some
experience in government and administration during these
years. He also had time for some romantic interest, and
fathered two children with a Catalan noblewoman. One of
these children later became the Archbishop of Zaragoza.
However, his father King John II was looking to Castile,
and not to Catalonia, for a future wife for his son and
heir. Isabella was the number one candidate.

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Glossary

annul: make invalid; cancel

archbishop: highest rank of bishop in the church
Black Death: popular name for the mid-14th century
epidemic of bubonic plague
blame: attribute responsibility
borrow: get money or an object from someone with the
understanding that it must be returned to that person
bride: woman who is getting married
champion (vb.): support with great enthusiasm
civil war: war between inhabitants of the same country
curse: say a magic word or phrase that makes bad things
happen
disguise (vb.): dress as someone or something else to
hide one’s identity
effigy: doll or model that represents a real person and is
used to ridicule them
face (vb.): confront
fairy-tale: related to traditional children’s stories like
Cinderella
favourite: person who is very close to the monarch and
has great influence over him or her
flock: group of sheep, goats or birds that live or move
around together
gossip: talk or rumours about people’s private lives
groom: man who is getting married
half-brother: brother by only one parent
haunt: appear as a ghost; cause anxiety

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heir: person with the legal right to someone’s property
or position after they die
lead (vb.): be in the front of something; be the leader
meanwhile: at the same time
murder: kill someone unlawfully
nephew: son of a person’s brother or sister
overjoyed: very happy
poison (vb.): give someone a toxic substance that causes
illness or death
recover: regain territory
reign: period of time during which a monarch or emperor
rules
reluctantly: without enthusiasm, unwillingly
resemblance: fact of being similar
rule (vb.): govern, usually in the case of a monarch or
emperor
sceptre: ornamental rod held by a monarch
seal: piece of wax with a personalised design used to
authorise or agree to a document
side (vb.): support, join with
signature: a person’s name written with the purpose of
authorising or agreeing to something
sink: become submerged
soap opera: type of television series that usually focuses
on domestic situations and is often very melodramatic and
sensationalised
spell: word or phrase supposed to have magical powers
stepmother: wife of a person’s father
sword: long weapon with a sharp blade, made of metal
take place: happen, occur
warrior: person who fights wars and is very brave
weaken: make something weaker (less strong)
wicked: very bad

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Before Reading Activities
1. Match the words to the correct descriptions.
Reconquest Ecclesiastical tribunal that persecuted
people that it believed to be false
converts to Christianity
Granada Kingdom that included much of the
central part of the Iberian Peninsula
Inquisition Representative assemblies made up
of the clergy, nobility and the
bourgeoisie
New World Gradual advance of the Christians
towards the south of the Iberian
Peninsula between the 8th and 15th
centuries
Cortes Institution created to keep law and
order in rural areas
Holy Brotherhood Name given to the lands in America
that were discovered in the 15th and
16th centuries
Kingdom of Castile Kingdom that was in the eastern
part of the Iberian Peninsula whose
economy was based on Mediterranean
trade
Kingdom of Aragon Muslim kingdom that was conquered
y Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492

2. Write sentences about these people.

a) Isabella I of Castile d) Christopher Columbus

b) Ferdinand II of Aragon e) Boabdil
c) The Pope f) The Jews

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While reading activities
Read the introduction. Find the mistake in each sentence and
correct it.

a) Isabella’s half-brother Henry IV was very happy about

her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon.
b) Ferdinand and Isabella needed the Pope’s permission
to get married because they were members of the royal
family.
c) In the 15th century there were four kingdoms on the
Iberian Peninsula: Portugal, Aragon, Granada and Castile.
d) Aragon was bigger than Castile and its population was
five times greater than that of Castile.
e) Muslims often worked in trade, finance and the
professions.
f) The Reconquest made Christians more tolerant.

1. Read chapter 1. Then complete the sentences using these

words (there are more words than you need!): cousin,
Ferdinand I of Aragon, first, grandparents, great-grandparents,
half-brother, Henry III of Castile, niece, second, sister-in-law,

a) Henry IV was Isabella and Alfonso’s__________.

b) Joan of Portugal was Henry IV’s__________wife and
Isabella’s__________.
c) Joanna of Castile was Isabella’s__________.
d) Henry IV’s mother was Ferdinand’s__________.
e) Isabella’s paternal grandfather was__________.
His brother_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _was Ferdinand II’s paternal
grandfather.
f) John I of Castile and Eleanor of Aragon were__________
to both Ferdinand and Isabella.

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