Difficult Women: Isabella of Castile (part one)
On the first page of our story / The future seemed so bright
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So, two weeks ago we looked at the story of Isabel of Portugal and how she was gaslit into insanity and left to rot in a ghost castle. This week, we’re looking at the life of her daughter, Isabella.
Isabella of Castile was born on April 22, 1451, the first child of King Juan II of Castile and Isabel of Portugal. Her younger brother Alfonso was born when Isabella was three; later that same year, their father, Juan, died. Although Juan had left instructions in his will that El Impotente (his older, useless, adult son) should take care of Isabel, Isabella, and Alfonso, El Impotente… basically, did not do this. He sent Isabel — still in the throes of postpartum along with likely PTSD from traumatic Medieval childbirth and her tendency toward depression — along with her newborn baby and toddler-aged daughter to live in the Castle of Arévalo. How did this go? NOT WELL.
Isabel’s mental state, already precarious, began to worsen as she found herself stranded in a mostly abandoned castle in the middle of nowhere. El Impotente didn’t send them as much money as they should have received, meaning that the three-person family didn’t have enough food or clothes or furniture, etc., and also possibly the castle was haunted by ghosts (Isabel, the Mom, spent a lot of her time screaming at ghosts she said were chasing her). Little Girl Isabella lived in this situation from ages three to nearly eleven, meaning she and her brother Alfonso mostly fended for themselves. Even in this situation, though, Isabella distinguished herself for being extremely clever and intelligent and for not giving up despite living in a dire underdog situation. All of the members of the family drew strength from their Catholic faith, which is essential to mention as perhaps Isabella’s experience of religion mixed with deep personal trauma and psychological distress could have something to do with her worldview later on. Spoilers.
But why, when Isabella was about eleven years old, did El Impotente invite her and Alfonso to join him at the royal court in Segovia? Well, it’s because, after seven years of marriage, El Impotente’s wife Juana of Portugal was having a baby! As this baby would supplant Isabella and Alfonso in the line of succession, El Impotente felt more kindly towards his much younger half-siblings. After all, once he had his own heir, those two wouldn’t be threats to him, right? OR SO HE THOUGHT.
Now, a few words on El Impotente’s wife Juana of Portugal. Like all the women who surrounded El Impotente, Juana had developed a reputation for being “crazy.” In her case, this mostly meant that she voiced her opinions, sometimes wore lower-cut dresses than the Castilian nobles preferred, and was seen to be bossy towards El Impotente. Also, rumour said she was carrying on affairs with various lovers while still married to El Impotente. Now, based on everything we know about El Impotente (namely, that his personality was terrible and his penis wasn’t shaped in such a way to go inside of vaginas), this all seems reasonable to me. It’s very Henry VIII of El Impotente to always be like, “We all know I’m fine; it’s just these crazy women all around me who keep not having sons and are crazy, am I right?” But the point of all this is that Juana suddenly became pregnant after seven years together with El Impotente, and everybody agreed immediately that there’s no way El Impotente was possibly this baby’s father.
Juana’s rumoured lover was Beltrán de la Cueva, a fantastic name, and I bet he was super-hot. When she gave birth to a daughter, she and El Impotente named her Baby Juana (aww), but everyone started referring to the baby as Juana La Beltraneja, meaning “Beltrán’s baby.” Now, if El Impotente had been a more popular King and less of a horrible human being, maybe this nickname wouldn’t have stuck. But he was both a terrible King and a useless person and so even in history books, Baby Juana is referred to as Juana La Beltraneja. But her father was officially El Impotente, which made Juana La Beltraneja the new heir to the throne of Castile, shoving Isabella and Alfonso down to second and third in line. El Impotente decided to let his half-siblings stay, and I’m sure they were like, “YES, PLEASE,” so Isabella finally got to begin getting proper education from non-ghost tutors.
It was here that Isabella’s extreme intelligence started to become apparent. She was brilliant in all her studies, including science, math, religion, and dancing. She was the real deal and especially interested in learning about politics. Namely, the politics of Castile and Portugal and what was happening in the world she was living in. She learned about how her half-brother El Impotente was an incredibly terrible King and how Portugal and other countries were constantly trying to attack Castile. She understood that a strong faction wanted to make her brother Alfonso the new heir instead of Juana La Beltraneja. She laid low and paid attention and was the most brilliant teen girl in the castle.
Meanwhile, in the outside world, battles were fought, and treaties were brokered. Eventually, El Impotente agreed with the rebels that he’d name Alfonso his heir, but only if his half-brother married his daughter Juana La Beltraneja. And before we can all screw up our faces at that weird incestuous child marriage situation, Alfonso died under MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES. (Spoiler: basically everybody in this story dies of MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES; it’s that sort of story).
With Alfonso now dead, there were two potential heirs left for El Impotente: his half-sister, the brilliant Isabella, or his potentially illegitimate baby daughter, Juana La Beltraneja. Both girls had supporters, none of whom cared about them as people but primarily for what they represented. Isabella’s genetic profile was preferable since nobody doubted who her parents had been. Juana La Beltraneja was tainted by association with her mother’s “crazy” reputation, and everybody hated El Impotente. Isabella knew she had the chance to seize power but had to play her cards right. As a girl who’d gone from royal Princess to living in an abandoned ghost castle, she knew how quickly luck could change. She was also a bit of a busybody and couldn’t just sit by while her half-brother El Impotente ran around being a terrible King. She had to intervene for the good of the country that she hoped to inherit one day!
Seeing how the country of Castile was engaging in a civil war over who would inherit from El Impotente, Isabella took it upon herself to sort things out. She sat El Impotente down at a negotiating table and forced him to make a peace treaty with her. Bear in mind, she was seventeen years old, and her half-brother, the King, was forty-three, and she had all the power because that’s just how amazing she was. Isabella proposed that she’d get her supporters to stop fighting against El Impotente if he named her Isabella as his heir instead of Juana La Beltraneja. El Impotente was like, “Sure, but you have to marry someone I choose.” Isabella said, “Okay, but I get veto power, and you can’t make me marry someone I don’t want to marry.” And El Impotente was like, “FINE, but you can’t get married without my permission.” They were both already thinking of sneaky ways around all of these terms, but they still shook hands that day and agreed to the terms. Isabella got her supporters to stand down, and the civil war was ended. Which meant it was time to find a husband for this seventeen-year-old master negotiator!
So, as a princess in late Medieval Europe, Isabella’s marriage question had been discussed since the day she was born. Her first betrothal had come about when she was just a little six-year-old princess living in the ghost castle, and her child fiance had been a boy one year younger than her named Prince Ferdinand of Aragon. But one year later, this all went belly-up due to various infighting and shenanigans between the people of Castile, Portugal, and Aragon. In fact, as evidence that Ferdinand’s family was just as much the most as Isabella’s, these failed marriage negotiations wound up with one of Ferdinand’s relatives thrown in jail for plotting to kill his father. Reminder: every single person in this whole saga is highly dramatic, and yet it’s just the women who get called “crazy,” like: I see you, misogyny.
Shortly after seventeen-year-old Isabella signed the treaty with her useless King-brother, King Afonso V of Portugal, she contacted El Impotente with a marriage proposal for Isabella. Note that his name was Afonso, one letter removed from Isabella’s dead brother, Alfonso. But more important than his name was Afonso’s scheminess as he worked with El Impotente on a double-treaty that would marry Isabella (aged seventeen) to Afonso (aged thirty-six) AND ALSO marry Juana La Beltrenaja (aged four) to Afonso’s son Juan (aged thirteen). The result of these inter-family marriages would be that Isabella would wind up the Queen of Portugal, with Juana La Beltraneja as the heir to the thrones of both Portugal and Castile. I think. Somehow, this arrangement would cut Isabella out of the entire line of succession for Castile (in a way that Isabella keenly understood, but I don’t, but I trust her, so let’s go with it). Isabella was like, “I would like to use my VETO POWER,” and refused to agree to these terms. But because she didn’t trust El Impotente, she also began working on her super sexy secret marriage plans. To marry… Ferdinand, her childhood fiance!
This part of the story is terrific. There are so many stories about women who ran away to get secretly married (often because they knew that Queen Elizabeth I wouldn’t approve **cough Lettice Knollys** **cough Mary Grey**). But this is the first story I’ve encountered where the bride-to-be arranged for a secret, sexy papal dispensation, which is part of what Isabella was up to. She wasn’t just secretly marrying some random noble; she was going to marry Prince Ferdinand of Aragon, and they had to do it all very legally. So she secretly exchanged messages with Ferdinand’s father, THE KING OF ARAGON, and also with THE POPE because Isabella and Ferdinand were second cousins and had to get special permission from the Pope to get married due to their family relationship. And while she was sorting that all out, El Impotente was still trying to find a way to marry Isabella off in a way that would also get rid of her. He busied himself trying to arrange a marriage to a French Prince named Charles, meaning Isabella would be shipped off to France and out of his way, but little did he know, Isabella was MILES AHEAD OF HIM, scheming-wise.
So, Isabella and Ferdinand couldn’t ask the Pope for a dispensation for their marriage because the news might get back to El Impotente. But one of them knew someone who knew someone who had access to the Pope’s stationery or something like that, and one way or another, they acquired a falsified letter from the dead previous Pope, a man who had been dead for five years, that said basically, “Ferdinand can marry his second cousin, or his third cousin, no big deal” and that was that! They were good to go!
Once the paperwork was all in place, Isabella casually was like, “Hey, I’m just going to go pay tribute to my dead brother Alfonso and visit my increasingly unhinged mother outside the city, don’t wait up for me, byeee!” And she took off. Meanwhile, Ferdinand left his castle DISGUISED AS A SERVANT, and they headed out to meet each other for their secret sexy wedding. Honestly, from being a little toddler in a spooky ghost castle to running away for a secret marriage to a Prince, through which she’d screw over her awful half-brother and position herself to take over most of Western Europe: THIS STORY IS EVERYTHING. And because these two were so clever and their plan was so good, Isabella and Ferdinand met up and got married immediately, on October 19, 1469, in the Palacio de los Vivero in Valladolid. Isabella was eighteen at the time, and Ferdinand was seventeen. Ah, young love!
Isabella’s secret wedding was effectively a declaration of war against her half-brother El Impotente. She’d broken their brother-sister treaty (where she’d agreed to get his permission before getting married) and had landed herself a powerful alliance with Ferdinand’s country of Aragon. Isabella and Ferdinand got to work immediately having an heir because that would help solidify their strength as a new super couple. While a son would have been ideal, their first child was a daughter they named Isabel (because so far, everyone in this story named Isabel or Isabella is AMAZING, so: good name). But El Impotente was super mad about this sneaky marriage and so amended his will to name Juana La Beltraneja, not Isabella, as his heir. And guess who wanted the 12-year-old Juana La Beltraneja to be Queen? Her mother, Juana of Portugal. Remember her?
FLASHBACK: As we all recall, Juana of Portugal had a reputation for being “crazy,” which seems to mean that she “didn’t put up with El Impotente’s bullshit, so he badmouthed her, and then she took a lover, and here we all are.” Eventually, El Impotente kicked her out of his royal court, and she was like, “Is that supposed to be a punishment? Because THANK YOU?” and peaced out of there. She went to stay with a Bishop friend, fell in love with the Bishop’s sexy nephew and took him as her new lover. She had two out-of-wedlock children with him and was living her best life. El Impotente had eventually declared their marriage invalid and also divorced her, which might have been good for his self-esteem but put their daughter Juana La Beltraneja in a tricky position as she was now illegitimate.
BACK TO OUR STORY: Just two days after El Impotente did us all a favour by finally dying, Isabella marched into Segovia (where the Royal court was) to pull a full-on coup. At this time, she was twenty-three years old, just for reference. She paraded in a procession down the street wearing JEWELS and carrying a SWORD. Who was going to cross her now? No woman had ever taken over like this, and she was so impressive the nobles just let her become Queen because she was so terrifying and incredible. I mean, she launched a COUP PARADE with herself as Grand Marshall. She believed that she was God’s choice to be in charge of Castile, which helped soothe the hurt feelings of all the misogynists around her who typically wouldn’t support a woman in power. But when the options were the 23-year-old parade-holding political genius versus her 12-year-old possibly illegitimate half-niece, Isabella seemed like the better of the two options.
To complicate (or maybe simplify?) things, Juana of Portugal died at around this time, too, leaving Juana La Beltraneja in her own sort of ghost castle underdog scenario. But she still had many influential supporters like the Portuguese royal family, including a man you might remember from a few paragraphs back, King Afonso V! His proposal to marry Isabella hadn’t worked out, and he now had his sights set on marrying Juana La Beltraneja and, through her, taking over Castile.
And so, just five months after Isabella had been crowned Queen, Afonso and his troops marched from Portugal into Castile, and he picked up Juana La Beltraneja and married her just like that. (If you’d like to visit the site of their nuptials, it’s in the Spanish city of Plasencia, which looks gorgeous; I’m so sorry for Juana that she had to get married there at the age of twelve to this old ambitious King). Again, this marriage was an act of war, and the next four years comprised the War of the Castilian Succession. On one side are Juana La Beltraneja and Afonso; on the other are Isabella and Ferdinand. Lives were lost, battles were fought, four years passed by, and now it’s 1476, and it’s the Battle of Toro, where the whole war ended when Ferdinand invented PR stunts.
Here’s the thing: neither side was sure who had won the Battle of Toro. So Afonso’s troops returned like, “I guess we won?” And Ferdinand went around spreading Fake News that he had won in a huge victory. His Fake News spread to some of Afonso’s allies who were like, “Oh wow, I guess we lost, let’s go back home to Portugal or whatever,” and so many of Afonso’s troops mistakenly left that Ferdinand’s side won. It was a victory for mind games and strategy, and it wound up with Juana La Beltraneja and Afonso heading back to Portugal, where they stayed basically forever. (*More on this next time)
And back home, Isabella was busy with a parallel PR stunt. In front of witnesses, she had her daughter Isabel officially declared the heir to the crown of Castile. So, not only was Isabella the Queen, but by naming her daughter her heir, she was swearing herself to be Queen. Both Isabella and Ferdinand were just really aces at this sort of thing, using The Secret to basically will themselves into the positions they wanted to be in.
But the team-up wasn’t just Ferdinand being a warrior and Isabella being a political mastermind back home. Oh no, because Isabella was a literal warrior Queen/ negotiating genius. For instance, while Ferdinand was off fighting random other enemies later that same year, a rebellion broke out against Isabella and Ferdinand. Isabella was like, “I’m off to go and quash this!” All of her (male) advisors were like, “But what if you just stayed home with your baby daughter?” and she was like, “Sorry, can’t hear you! I’m busy riding a horse to negotiate with the rebels single-handedly!!” And that’s just what she did, and the rebellion ENDED because she’d been negotiating peace treaties since she was a teenager and could outsmart anyone at any game.
So she was a political mastermind, had married a man who seemed to be her true equal in terms of scheming and ambition, had given birth to a daughter and heir, and had driven her tween half-niece back to Portugal… what more was left to solidify Isabella’s place as Queen? Basically, because of patriarchy and misogyny, she still needed to have a son. And lo and behold, she gave birth in 1478 to a son named Juan, Prince of Asturias. With this baby boy now supplanting his sister Isabel as heir, there was no argument about why Isabella shouldn’t be in charge of everything. She had the pedigree, she had the son, she had the record of military battles, she had the charisma and the intelligence… she was IT. She’d raised herself from a toddler in a ghost castle to one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe, and she was just getting started.
Next time: Isabella oversees more than one genocide ft. not-so-special guest star Christopher Columbus!!
VULGAR HISTORY A LA CARTE is a feminist women’s history comedy newsletter. It is the companion publication to the Vulgar History podcast. Click here to hear the latest episode of the podcast.
Ann Foster is a writer and podcaster. She’s currently writing a nonfiction biography of Caroline of Brunswick. Don’t know who that is? You will soon! She’s represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk at Trellis Literary Management.
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Can you please teach all the history classes?!? I love your style so much. Thank you for this.
Oh my gosh, Ann, that was a ride! I could read your stories about history all day, they are so entertaining.
Oh, she’s THAT Isabella! 😁