Christopher Columbus meets Ferdinand and Isabella in a detail from a tapestry. It was with Isabella’s patronage that the
sailor made his momentous journey to the Americas in 1492- the founding member of a small club of
women whose influence spread well beyond
their country’s borders and which includes
England’s Elizabeth I and Victoria, the
Russian empresses Catherine the Great and
Elizabeth, as well as Maria Theresa of
Austria. Yet of all these strong women, none
had as lasting an effect as Isabella.
THE THRILL OF POWER
Isabella was coquettish, but there was never
anything sexually scandalous about her
(though her husband sired several illegitimate
children). Instead, she got her thrills from
power. As Castile’s Muslims and Jews would
learn to their cost, this she sometimes wielded
in a way that, today, shocks and repels. Yet
contemporaries, while admitting she was
harsh, were rarely outraged. She was an ‘Iron
Queen’, as tough and determined as other
female leaders who gained similar nicknames.
By insisting on keeping power to herself and
her husband, she imposed order on a chaotic
country, where monarchs had been weak and
whose ordinary people lived in fear of crime,
violence and the lack of proper justice.
Isabella’s reign is best measured in two
ways: firstly, for reversing decades of
shrinkage of western Christendom in the face
of Muslim encroachment (with Constantinople
lost two years after her birth); and, secondly,
as the start of a steady but unstoppable shift
of global power away from the sophisticated,
wealthy orient, towards the countries of the
Atlantic rim – starting with Spain itself, then
Great Britain and, finally, the United States.
Few of those who watched Isabella
process through Segovia would have
foreseen this. She was the daughter of a
former king, Juan II, and of a princess from
the adventurous Portuguese royal family.
Yet the paucity of Grandees (Castile’s
grandiose, self-regarding magnates) and
powerful bishops in Segovia that day proved
that she had few backers. A small, delicate-
looking young woman was easy to
underestimate. Those who knew Isabella,
however, were already aware of how
single-minded, even stubborn, she was. She
had first shown that mettle aged 18 – when
she snubbed her half-brother, King Henry IV
of Castile, and a powerful faction of
Grandees by choosing her own husband,
rather than accept one foisted on her
(candidates had included the future Richard
III of England). Seventeen-year-old
Ferdinand, already bloodied in battle, had to
sneak through Castile disguised as a servant
boy, but his willingness to brave hostile
territory in order to reach his princess fittedthat was then delivered down a thin gold
tube. When the queen eventually had a
daughter, some claimed his chief steward,
Beltran de la Cueva, was the real father.
Whatever the biological reality, ‘la
Beltraneja’ was the proper, legal heiress.
None of this bothered Isabella. She hated
her half-brother for dragging her to his court
as a child, after being “inhumanely and
forcibly torn from our mother’s arms”. She
was happy to put her claim to the throne to
the ultimate test – on the battlefield where, it
was accepted, God chose the winners.FORMIDABLE PARTNERSHIP
When they married, Isabella had forced
Ferdinand into a humiliating deal that gave
her far more authority than him. But once
war broke out (with Portugal supporting her GETTY IMAGES X2perfectly with Isabella’s ideal of romantic,
masculine chivalry. More importantly, both
already realised the power they would
accrue by joining Castile and Aragon.
This precocious act of rebellion cost
Isabella dear. An angry Henry reversed a
decision to make her his heiress – naming
his daughter Juana ‘la Beltraneja’ instead.
Henry was an awkward, tragic, figure.
Nicknamed ‘The Impotent’, he suffered a
form of gigantism, known as acromegaly,
which meant that he grew oversized hands
and feet as well as thick facial features. He
was also reported to have a bulb-shaped
penis, making sex difficult. His wife was
subject to the world’s first reported
experiment in artificial insemination after
doctors manually obtained what was
reported to be “watery and sterile” semenHISTORY