Vulgar History - Women Leaders, part 6： Genocidal Warrior Queen, Isabella I

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history my name is ann foster and this is a feminist women's history

00:00:46.460 comedy podcast and we are on season two and the theme for season two has been women leaders in

00:00:53.840 history and the men who whined about them and we've started off before the year zero we went

00:00:59.620 through ancient Roman times, early Britain situations. Last time we did Empress Matilda,

00:01:08.180 and now we're just zooming a few years ahead, like 300-ish years ahead. And we're looking at

00:01:14.580 a woman who was a descendant of Empress Matilda. And frankly, most Western European monarchs were

00:01:23.660 a descendant of Empress Matilda in some way or another, because she was one of those, or her son.

00:01:29.260 henry was one of those people who just had so many kids and they just kind of spread

00:01:32.840 far and wide all over the place and the person and i'm not like i can't even get into the great

00:01:38.880 great aunt removed of it all but just trust me i double check this my facts are solid empress

00:01:46.500 matilda was a an ancestor of this person who we're going to look at today this is another

00:01:52.220 sort of person who i was like oh does this like it fits the theme it fits the theme well and in

00:01:59.440 an interesting way but what my hesitation of doing this person for the podcast was more about um is it

00:02:07.680 inappropriate to be talking in sort of a light-hearted comedic type way about somebody

00:02:13.600 whose actions had horrific repercussions that are still being dealt with on an international scale

00:02:21.260 But then I thought, you know, I don't want to not talk about her. Like if we're looking at women and leadership through history, skipping over her would sort of leave a hole in the narrative. So I'm going to treat this story as I do other stories in a sort of lighthearted, whimsical way, but also with appropriate, I hope, respect to the consequences of her actions.

00:02:45.240 most of the women so far really have been sort of like it's easy to cheer for them because there's

00:02:51.460 so many gross dudes who are up against them and the women achieved great stuff and then eventually

00:02:57.500 were undone by some gross dudes around them and the thing about the women who are doing today

00:03:02.960 isabella the first is that she actually lived for like a pretty long time and she actually wound up 1.00

00:03:08.960 being successful in what she chose to be a success at doing which um spoiler includes uh genocide

00:03:18.820 of a couple different groups so but the thing about her reign is that she was so successful

00:03:26.140 the beginning of her story is similar to other people in the sense of like she was a woman and 1.00

00:03:31.720 people like oh but should women be in charge like all those same issues came up she she surpassed 0.60

00:03:36.720 them. She found ways around it and she ended up, so it's kind of like there's two parts to her 1.00

00:03:41.460 story. There's a part where you're like, yes, you know, I want this young woman to succeed

00:03:44.500 against all these odds. And then there's the second part where you're like, okay, well,

00:03:47.940 once she's in power, what's she gonna, what's she gonna do? And, and that's the part of this

00:03:54.160 whole situation that we haven't actually dealt with really so far in the season of this podcast 0.96

00:04:00.000 is so much of what the women we've been looking at have been doing is just like 1.00

00:04:04.460 trying to get a seat at the table or like the head seat at the head table. But like with the 1.00

00:04:10.640 exception maybe of Cleopatra, who was in charge for quite a while and did do a lot of governing, 0.97

00:04:17.640 etc. A lot of the other women just never got to really show their model as a leader beyond being 1.00

00:04:23.640 a military leader or behind the scenes leader. And the thing is, and it does still bother me

00:04:29.640 when I hear people say still today, when here's the things about like, you know,

00:04:33.780 well, men have had their chance. Like, let's just let women be in charge. Like women are more, 0.99

00:04:37.700 people think are more compassionate or are more, or smarter or whatever. And it's like, 1.00

00:04:43.360 there's a lot of cultural baggage around that as to why people think that. And a lot of it is that

00:04:47.440 women are culturally groomed to behave in a certain way. And for women to succeed, 1.00

00:04:53.840 often it means sort of leaning into these sort of stereotypical roles. But also, I firmly believe,

00:04:59.720 and this is a theoretical thing, and so I think it's fair to firmly believe things

00:05:04.220 that you can never actually prove, is that if there were an equal amount of male and female

00:05:08.660 leaders and other gender leaders, if there's an equal amount of every gender leader throughout

00:05:13.840 all of human history, there'd be an equal amount of good ones and shitty ones. Because your gender 0.98

00:05:20.020 doesn't mean you're going to be better or worse at being a leader. It can affect how people treat

00:05:26.120 you depending on the cultural context that you're looking at and it can depend what you're able to

00:05:30.040 do depending on the cultural context you're looking at but i don't think one gender is

00:05:34.800 inherently better or worse like inherently not with like if you divorce all the cultural stuff

00:05:39.680 from another and so this is the first time we can really look at a woman who actually got to lead

00:05:44.480 got to be very significant and what did that look like so when we get to the end and it's like

00:05:51.580 how scandalous was she it's like we'll see how we feel about that by that point i mean we're

00:05:58.680 gonna go through her story and see where she lands but personally i think she's gonna be high

00:06:02.760 up significance wise not very high up scandalous wise because she was a very um like she was

00:06:10.420 responsible for some horrific stuff but it's not scandalous stuff it's not like secretly poisoning

00:06:16.980 your lover or whatever. So I don't know, this is this is going to be a different sort of paradigm

00:06:21.860 we're looking at today. But it's an important story. It's one I want to look at. And I think

00:06:25.100 it's interesting, too, that Isabella of Castile was sort of a generation, basically one generation

00:06:31.440 before Queen Elizabeth the first and Queen Elizabeth the first. Like if you look at all

00:06:35.500 this sort of feminist, you know, picture books and fridge magnets and like t shirts and things,

00:06:41.080 there's a certain group of people who are often celebrated. It's like Queen Elizabeth the first 0.71

00:06:45.660 and like Frida Kahlo and Harry Tubman and there's certain sort of big names that are

00:06:52.280 often there. Cleopatra is often involved. Isabel the First isn't. And I think it's

00:06:56.780 because her, the repercussions of what she did really make it harder for us to be like,

00:07:03.480 yes, girl, like go queen when we're still wrangling with a lot of the stuff that she

00:07:08.580 was responsible for. On the other hand, she was a significant figure. She was,

00:07:14.820 she was successful at what she set out to be successful at doing. I think she was more

00:07:20.700 successful at those things than other people would have been of any gender. So she was a

00:07:26.180 significant woman, but this isn't like a go girl sort of scenario, but it's an interesting situation.

00:07:34.120 And maybe this will get all of our minds off of the fact that we're all self-isolating

00:07:38.040 and the world is, seems kind of different. Well, I mean, it's obviously different,

00:07:44.280 but it just seems sort of uncertain and what what's going to come next who knows um so we'll

00:07:50.540 get into it so Isabella of Castile we're going to do a bit of place setting because we've been

00:07:58.140 doing a bunch of like England slash Rome things that all sort of led into each other and now

00:08:03.620 we're going over into Castile slash Aragon slash Spain and that's a whole different different

00:08:10.820 kingdom so briefly what happened so isabella's parents so what what got her to the point of her

00:08:18.000 being born what's the situation so a clever and ambitious young woman named isabelle of portugal

00:08:24.660 not isabella but her mother isabel uh wound up with a terrible husband named king juan ii of

00:08:30.360 castile so castile was a kingdom there's a bunch of kingdoms all around sort of like how england

00:08:35.800 used to be all the different kingdoms so spain there was like aragon there's castile nearby was

00:08:40.500 portugal so there wasn't like one country of spain so castile was a medium powerful kingdom

00:08:45.460 so juan's first wife maria had probably been poisoned to death by juan's evil henchmen

00:08:51.420 because she was too old to have any more babies the only surviving baby that maria had was a

00:08:57.720 person named prince enrique who was aka like even while he was alive known as el impotente

00:09:05.540 the impotent because he grew up and he had two different wives and didn't have any children not

00:09:10.960 even illegitimate children so Juan wanted to have some new kids to be his heirs because of the usual

00:09:16.620 situation of like you want your dynasty to continue on because when dynasties change there's

00:09:21.660 civil war and that's just like not good for the economy or people being alive so Juan married

00:09:29.260 isabel so isabel of portugal which again so these are the parents of today's heroine isabella the

00:09:36.740 first so juan and isabel had one son and one daughter isabella our hero and alfonso her

00:09:43.100 brother when juan died enrique sent his stepmother and two little half siblings to live in poverty

00:09:49.360 in a castle that was allegedly haunted by ghosts isabel uh pretty understandably fed up with all

00:09:55.420 of this scheming and backstabbing and murdering um began she uh had a psychological break uh began

00:10:02.860 spending her time in a fugue state like not responding not eating um screaming at ghosts

00:10:07.520 in the castle just like not doing well psychologically and this brings us to this

00:10:14.580 heroine her daughter Isabella so Isabella was born April 22nd 1451 she was the older child

00:10:23.160 um alfonso was born three years later so when the same year that alfonso was born juan died

00:10:29.680 the king so although juan had left instructions in his will that his older useless adult son

00:10:35.440 enrique should take care of isabel isabella and alfonso um enrique did not do this so they went

00:10:42.900 to the ghost castle etc enrique didn't send them as much money as they should have received

00:10:49.220 meaning that the three-person family didn't have enough food or clothes or furniture.

00:10:53.600 Again, also the castle was potentially haunted by ghosts. So little girl Isabella lived in this

00:10:59.160 situation from ages three to 11. So meaning that she and her brother Alfonso were mostly fending

00:11:04.980 for themselves for several years, most of her childhood. Even in this situation, though,

00:11:12.120 Isabella distinguished herself by being extremely clever and intelligent and basically not giving up, 0.98

00:11:17.560 being resilient despite living in a pretty dire underdog unwinnable type situation all of the

00:11:24.620 members of this family drew strength from their catholic faith so they were like all really really

00:11:30.280 sincerely truly religious in a really strict sort of way and also it's important to mention because

00:11:37.000 perhaps her experience of religion mixed with a deep personal trauma of growing up with her mother

00:11:42.940 who had all these mental issues, not having enough to live on in like a castle that was

00:11:48.720 maybe haunted by ghosts. Like it was obviously a traumatic childhood. And this might have

00:11:52.960 something to do with her worldview later on, how she might have drawn her strength from

00:11:56.620 her Catholic religion. So when she was about 11 years old, her older half-brother Enrique

00:12:03.200 invited her and Alfonso to join him at the royal court. And this, why did he invite them after all

00:12:08.740 these years after ignoring and not giving them money etc it's because after seven years of

00:12:14.080 marriage Enrique's wife Juana of Portugal was having a baby and this baby would supplant both

00:12:20.980 Isabella and Alfonso in the line of succession so right now because Enrique aka El Impotente

00:12:26.800 had not had any children he didn't have an heir at all so when he died it would go to Alfonso

00:12:32.740 his young much younger half-brother because of it went to boys and not girls but he didn't want

00:12:37.920 thought he wanted the crown to go to his own son. So he was feeling more kindly towards his much

00:12:43.300 younger half-siblings because now they weren't threats anymore because he was going to have his

00:12:47.400 own heir, or so he thought. So just side note on Enrique's wife, Juana of Portugal. Like all the

00:12:55.940 women who surrounded him, Juana had developed a reputation for being quote-unquote crazy. 1.00

00:13:01.200 You know, it's the thing where like, oh my god, my ex-girlfriend was crazy, my wife was crazy, 0.99

00:13:05.560 where it's like, I think probably you treated them badly. Why is every woman around you 0.54

00:13:10.120 quote unquote crazy? So in this case, it mostly meant that Juana voiced her opinions,

00:13:16.280 sometimes wore lower cut dresses than the Castilian nobles preferred, and was seen to be 1.00

00:13:21.020 bossy towards her husband, Enrique. So also rumor had it that she was carrying on with various

00:13:26.860 lovers as well. And now based on everything we know about Enrique, namely that his personality

00:13:32.720 he was terrible and allegedly or maybe not even allegedly but he didn't have any children hence 0.99

00:13:38.540 the name el impotente um his penis was maybe shaped in a way that it just like wouldn't work 0.99

00:13:44.220 to father children um it seems reasonable to me that his wife might go and have a lover 0.98

00:13:49.640 it's very henry the eighth i think of enrique to always be like well i'm totally fine it's just 0.88

00:13:55.420 these crazy women all around me who keep not having sons and are crazy it's them not me right

00:14:00.460 so the point of all this is that juana suddenly became pregnant after seven years and everybody 0.62

00:14:05.960 pretty much agreed right away that there's no way that enrique was possibly the father of this baby

00:14:10.740 and he might have been who knows but basically nobody believed that so juana's rumored lover

00:14:16.420 was a man named beltran de la cueva which is an amazing name and he sounds super hot and i hope

00:14:21.980 he was um she gave birth to a daughter which of course everyone was just like oh the whole point

00:14:27.720 of this is we needed a son what are we going to do with the daughter etc the usual stuff so she

00:14:32.260 and Enrique named the daughter Juana after her mother and everybody started calling the baby

00:14:38.700 Juana la Beltraneja meaning basically Beltran's baby like they just started calling the princess

00:14:46.660 by the name of the guy who everyone thought was her father who was not the king so if Enrique had

00:14:52.700 been more of a popular king and less of a horrible human being maybe this nickname wouldn't have stuck

00:14:56.800 but he was a terrible king and a really useless person so even in history books baby juana is

00:15:03.380 referred to as juana la beltraneja but her father was officially the king which made her the new 0.71

00:15:09.860 heir to the throne of castile which shoved isabella and alfonso down to second and third in line

00:15:15.240 um enrique decided to let his half siblings stay and i'm sure they were pretty happy about that

00:15:20.800 to stay in a place with like enough food and clothes and not ghosts. And Isabella finally

00:15:28.000 got to begin getting proper education from actual teachers and not just ghosts. And it's here that

00:15:34.340 Isabella's extreme intelligence started to become more noticeable. She was brilliant in all of her

00:15:40.180 studies, including science, math, religion, and dancing. And she was also really interested in

00:15:44.960 learning about politics and scheming. So the politics of Castile and Portugal and were,

00:15:51.240 there's just a lot of back and forth going on. Everybody was always trying to take over

00:15:55.240 the other kingdoms. So Isabella learned about how her half-brother Enrique was not a good king. She

00:16:01.540 saw what he did that was bad and kind of learned like, okay, you know, if I was monarch, maybe I'd

00:16:06.240 do this different or that different. She learned about how Portugal and other kingdoms were

00:16:10.060 constantly trying to attack Castile. She also learned that there was a strong faction who

00:16:14.440 wanted to make her brother alfonso the new heir instead of baby juana basically isabella laid low

00:16:21.200 paid attention and was super smart and sort of like a sansa stark sort of way meanwhile in the

00:16:26.080 outside world battles were fought and treaties were brokered and eventually el impotente agreed

00:16:30.660 with the rebels that he named alfonso as his heir but only if his half-brother married baby juana

00:16:38.160 so and before like so this is just like a weird in such a was child marriage situation but then

00:16:44.920 you don't have to worry about it for too long because alfonso died under mysterious circumstances

00:16:49.960 spoiler everybody in this story dies of mysterious circumstances because it's that

00:16:55.000 sort of story so alfonso was now dead meaning that there were two potential heirs left for

00:17:02.100 Enrique, his half-sister, teenage brilliant Isabella, or his potentially illegitimate baby

00:17:07.840 daughter, Juana. Both girls had their own supporters, none of whom cared about either

00:17:12.600 of them as people, but mostly for what they represented. Isabella's genetic profile was

00:17:17.320 seen as preferable because nobody doubted who her parents had been, whereas baby Juana was

00:17:23.240 tainted by association with her mother's crazy reputation and the fact that she was maybe

00:17:29.220 illegitimate and also everybody hated Enrique who was her father so Isabella knew she had a chance

00:17:34.700 here to seize power because there was no potential male heirs anywhere and but she knew that she had 0.72

00:17:40.940 to play her cards right so she'd gone from being a royal princess to living in an abandoned ghost

00:17:45.220 castle and she knew how quickly luck could change and she didn't want to move until it was exactly

00:17:49.300 the right time but she was also a bit of a busy body and couldn't just sit by while her half

00:17:54.500 brother ran around being a terrible king she decided she had to intervene for the good of 0.73

00:17:58.560 the country that she wanted to take control over. So what she did is seeing as how the country of

00:18:04.840 Castile was literally engaging in a civil war over who would inherit from Enrique, Isabella took it

00:18:09.980 upon herself to sort things out on her own. So she sat her half-brother down a negotiating table and

00:18:16.120 forced him to make a peace treaty with her. So bear in mind at this point, she was 17 years old.

00:18:20.820 Her half-brother Enrique was 43 and she is the one who had all the power at that table because that

00:18:26.000 is just how amazing and intense and smart and capable she was. So she proposed. She got all

00:18:32.920 of her supporters to stop fighting against Enrique if he named her Isabella as his heir instead of 0.76

00:18:37.860 his daughter Juana. Enrique was like, sure, but you have to marry someone I choose. And Isabella 0.63

00:18:43.680 was like, okay, but I can veto and you can't make me marry someone if I don't want to. And Enrique

00:18:49.860 was like, okay, but you can't get married without my permission. So it's all just like loopholes,

00:18:54.540 loopholes they're both thinking of sneaky ways around all of these conditions but they still

00:18:58.980 shook hands that day and agreed to the term Isabella got her supporters to stand down and

00:19:03.140 the civil war was ended because of this 17 year old negotiator which is amazing it was amazing

00:19:10.120 like she got herself named heir so as a princess in late medieval Europe the question of Isabella's

00:19:15.940 marriage had been discussed by other people since basically the day she was born her first betrothal

00:19:23.220 had come about when she was six years old back in the ghost castle and her child fiance had been a

00:19:28.460 boy around her same age named prince ferdinand of aragon one year later though this had all

00:19:33.660 gone belly up due to various infighting and shenanigans in fact as evidence that ferdinand's

00:19:39.900 family was just as sort of like messy and drama filled as isabella's these failed marriage

00:19:45.060 negotiations wound up with one of ferdinand's relatives thrown in jail for plotting to kill

00:19:48.880 his own father so just bear in mind that every person in this whole story is like really dramatic

00:19:54.660 like everyone's always doing the most like it's very much like if you watch Picard it's like a

00:20:00.100 Romulan type situation everyone just like feels things really intensely um and there's a lot of 0.65

00:20:06.580 murder going on and yet it's just the women who get called crazy because misogyny so shortly after 0.86

00:20:13.800 17 year old Isabella signed the treaty with her useless king brother the king of Portugal 0.94

00:20:19.300 contacted Enrique with a proposal of marriage for Isabella so his name the king is King Afonso 0.60

00:20:26.060 so he was also very schemey and he kind of secretly worked back channels with Enrique

00:20:31.680 on a double treaty that would marry 17 year old Isabella to him King Afonso who's 36 and at the

00:20:38.340 same time the same treaty said that baby Juana who is now four so like toddler Juana would

00:20:43.780 marry Afonso's son Juan, who was 13. The end result of these proposed inter-family marriages

00:20:48.760 would be that Isabella would wind up Queen of Portugal, with Juana as the heir to both Portugal

00:20:55.400 and Castile, I think. Effectively, though, this arrangement would cut Isabella out of the entire

00:21:00.760 line of succession for Castile. In a way, Isabella knew this was happening. She is in this situation

00:21:07.460 and in many other situations, much smarter than me. So I'll trust that this was a bad deal for her.

00:21:13.100 so effectively she was like remember when you said i could have veto power about who i would

00:21:17.360 marry when we had the treaty so she refused to agree to these terms and because she didn't trust

00:21:22.320 her brother she also began working on her own secret plans to marry ferdinand her fiance from

00:21:28.080 when she was six years old this part of the story is amazing so what happens is there are so many

00:21:34.920 stories about women who run away to get secretly married but this is the first one that i've come 0.99

00:21:39.720 across with a bride to be she not only arranged for a secret sexy marriage but she also arranged 1.00

00:21:46.000 for a secret papal dispensation like she secretly she couldn't just secretly run off and elope she 0.66

00:21:52.620 had to get the pope to give a dispensation for the marriage and she secretly managed to do that

00:21:56.880 because she is amazing so she wasn't just secretly marrying some random noble she's going to marry

00:22:02.160 prince ferdinand of aragon and it had to be done legally so no one could have any questions about

00:22:06.460 the marriage so she was secretly exchanging messages with Ferdinand's father the king of

00:22:11.260 Aragon and also sending secret messages with the pope because the situation or the issue was that

00:22:17.600 Isabel and Ferdinand were second cousins and they had to get permission from the pope to get married

00:22:21.480 because of the family relationship and while she was sorting that all out secretly with the pope

00:22:28.100 Enrique was still trying to find a way to make her marry king Afonso of Portugal like he just

00:22:34.460 wanted to get rid of her, but he wasn't very good at it. So if she wouldn't marry King Afonso,

00:22:39.700 he tried to arrange a marriage between her and a French prince named Charles, which mean that he

00:22:44.820 could ship Isabella off to France and out of his way, but he didn't know what he was doing. Isabella

00:22:50.160 was super smart. And here's what happened. So because Isabella and Ferdinand couldn't straight 0.99

00:22:55.420 up ask the Pope for dispensation for the marriage, because then the news might get back to Enrique

00:23:00.520 and he might try to stop them. But one of them knew someone who knew someone who had access to

00:23:06.260 the Pope's personal stationery or something like that. And so they acquired a forged letter from

00:23:12.020 the previous Pope, like not the current Pope, but the previous Pope who was dead, a man who had been

00:23:17.600 dead for five years. And this false letter on the Pope's stationery said basically, Ferdinand can

00:23:22.260 marry his second cousin or his third cousin, no big deal if in the future this comes up. So they

00:23:27.140 were good to go so once the paperwork was all in place Isabella was like hey I'm just gonna go pay 0.74

00:23:31.820 tribute to my dead brother and visit my mentally unstable mother back in the ghost castle I'll be

00:23:39.120 back in a bit bye and she left and everyone was like that sounds true so meanwhile Ferdinand 0.58

00:23:45.500 left his castle disguised as a servant and the two of them headed out to meet each other for a secret

00:23:50.520 wedding so I love this part of the story and these and I love the story because they're both just

00:23:55.420 planned really well and were both really smart and capable. Because these two were so smart and

00:23:59.560 their plan was so good, they met up and got married immediately. So Isabella was 18, Ferdinand

00:24:04.060 was 17, and now they were married to each other officially. So the secret wedding was effectively

00:24:10.680 a declaration of war against Enrique. She'd broken the brother-sister treaty where she'd said that

00:24:15.560 she would let him choose her husband, but in so doing, she had landed herself in a powerful

00:24:20.300 alliance with Ferdinand's country of Aragon. Isabel and Ferdinand knew that to solidify

00:24:25.100 everything, they needed to have an heir because that would just kind of make their case even

00:24:30.060 stronger for why they should be in charge of basically all of Spain. So a son would have

00:24:34.000 been ideal, but their first child was a daughter who they named Isabel because every woman in the

00:24:39.660 story is called Isabel or Isabella. Enrique was super mad about the sneaky marriage. And so he

00:24:45.100 amended his will to name juana his heir instead of isabella and juana at this point was 12 years

00:24:52.660 old and just like poor her so remember her mother also called juana just flashback so juana of 1.00

00:25:00.480 portugal the mom had a reputation for being quote-unquote crazy which basically meant she 1.00

00:25:04.980 didn't put up with enrique's bullshit so he badmouthed her and then she took a lover and 1.00

00:25:09.100 here we all are so eventually enrique had her kicked out of his royal court and she was like 0.99

00:25:13.720 is that supposed to be a punishment because like great and she just like peaced the hell out of

00:25:19.080 there she went to stay with a bishop who was a friend of hers and then she fell in love with 0.99

00:25:23.360 the bishop's sexy nephew took him as her new lover had two out of wedlock children with him

00:25:29.160 and was just living her best life good for her Enrique because of all this had eventually

00:25:35.080 declared their marriage invalid and also divorced her which might have been good for his self-esteem

00:25:40.220 but it meant that their daughter Juana was now sort of illegitimate because if the marriage

00:25:45.720 had never been valid, then she was illegitimate. So that complicated things. So back to our story,

00:25:51.960 Juana is now 12 years old. So just two days after Enrique did us all a favor by finally dying,

00:25:58.200 but he had written in his will that Juana would be his heir instead of Isabella because he's a 1.00

00:26:03.900 petty bitch who lives for drama, etc. Two days later, Isabella marched into Segovia, which is 1.00

00:26:10.000 where the royal court was and she pulled a coup like she just marched in a coup like she was just 0.81

00:26:16.700 here to usurp things and she did it via a parade so she was 23 years old at this time and she

00:26:22.300 literally paraded in a procession down the street wearing jewels and carrying a sword 0.61

00:26:25.820 and basically daring anyone to stop her from doing this no woman had ever taken over anything like 0.99

00:26:31.380 this ever and she was so impressive the nobles basically just let her become queen because she 0.82

00:26:35.780 was so terrifying and incredible like she was grand marshal of her own coup parade and she just

00:26:41.360 kind of took over despite what the king's will had said and part of her confidence here comes from

00:26:47.380 her belief that she was god's choice to be in charge of castile and so that sort of helped

00:26:52.200 soothe the hurt feelings of all the misogynists around her who wouldn't normally support a woman

00:26:56.440 in power but when the options were a 23 year old parade holding political genius versus her 12 year

00:27:02.420 old, possibly illegitimate half-niece, Isabella seemed like the better of two options and she 1.00

00:27:07.360 just took over anyway. So like, let's just let her. So to complicate or maybe simplify things, 1.00

00:27:13.600 Juana, the mom, Juana of Portugal died at around this time too, leaving her daughter Juana in her

00:27:19.600 own sort of ghost castle underdog scenario. But younger Juana still had lots of powerful

00:27:25.300 supporters like the entire Portuguese royal family, including a man you might remember from

00:27:31.080 a few minutes ago from the same story King Afonso the one who had wanted to marry Isabella in the

00:27:37.860 first place but she didn't so his proposal to marry Isabella hadn't worked out and he now had

00:27:42.740 his sights set on marrying Juana and through her taking over Castile so just five months after

00:27:51.320 Isabella had been crowned Queen Afonso and his troops marched from Portugal into Castile and he

00:27:56.480 seemingly picked up 12 year old Juana and married her. And that just happened. Um, so this was

00:28:03.320 another marriage that was also marriage slash act of war. And for the next four years, there was a

00:28:08.780 war called the War of the Castilian Succession. On one side was Juana and Alfonso. On the other

00:28:14.720 side was Isabella and Ferdinand. Lives were lost. Battles were fought. Four years pass. And now it's

00:28:20.280 1476. And it's the Battle of Toro, where the whole war was ended when Ferdinand invented

00:28:26.000 public relations stunts. So here's the thing. Neither side was sure who had won the Battle of

00:28:31.400 Toro. Like they fought the battle. Everyone was just like tired and exhausted. A bunch of people

00:28:35.560 were dead. And everyone's just like, wait, who just won? So Afonso's troops went back like,

00:28:39.940 I guess we won. And Ferdinand went around spreading fake news that he had won in a huge

00:28:46.860 victory. And his fake news spread to some of Afonso's allies who were like, oh, I guess we

00:28:51.280 actually lost let's go home now to portugal or whatever and so many of afonso's troops mistakenly

00:28:57.060 left because of these rumors that ferdinand's side ended up actually winning so it was a victory for

00:29:02.600 mind games and strategy and it wound up with juana and afonso heading back to portugal where they

00:29:08.040 stayed basically for the time being back on the home front isabella was busy with a parallel pr 0.98

00:29:14.040 stunt in front of witnesses she had her daughter isabella her daughter isabel officially declared 0.98

00:29:19.860 to be the heir to the crown of castile so not only was isabella herself the queen by naming her

00:29:24.600 daughter her heir she was basically swearing herself in as queen at the same time so both

00:29:29.680 isabelle and ferdinand were just really good at this sort of thing using like mind games and just

00:29:35.180 like confidence to just will themselves into the positions they wanted to be in and they were just

00:29:40.140 so like self-assured about it everyone was like that seems true i guess that's what happened he

00:29:45.120 won that battle. She's the queen. Here we all are. Okay, moving on. So the team up wasn't just

00:29:50.160 Ferdinand being a warrior and Isabella being a political mastermind, because Isabella was also

00:29:55.500 a literal warrior queen slash continues to be a negotiating genius. For instance, later that same

00:30:01.420 year, while Ferdinand was off fighting like whoever other enemies, a rebellion broke out against the

00:30:06.640 pair of them. And Isabella was like, well, I'm just going to go and quash this. And all of her

00:30:10.420 male advisors were like, but what if you just stayed home and did like women things like sewing 1.00

00:30:15.300 and raising your baby daughter? And she was like, so I can't hear you. I'm busy running off on a 1.00

00:30:20.680 horse to single-handedly negotiate this all. And that's what she did. So she just negotiated with

00:30:25.660 the rebels. The rebels were like, oh, you know what? We're not against you anymore. We support

00:30:29.820 you. End of rebellion. Like she'd been negotiating peace treaties since she was a teenager and could

00:30:34.700 outsmart anyone like her mediation skills was just like amazing so she was a political mastermind

00:30:41.060 had married a man who seemed to be her true equal in terms of scheming and ambition had given birth 0.94

00:30:46.100 to a daughter and heir had driven her tween half-knees back to portugal what more was left 1.00

00:30:50.840 to solidify her place as queen well basically because of patriarchy and misogyny she still 1.00

00:30:56.540 needed to have a son like having a woman queen who who had a daughter was just like not quite 1.00

00:31:03.280 enough for everyone to be like super comfortable with the whole situation. But lo and behold,

00:31:07.940 in 1478, she gave birth to a son who was named Juan, Prince of Astorias. With this baby boy now

00:31:14.200 supplanting Isabel as heir, there was really no argument to be made about why she shouldn't be

00:31:18.700 in charge of literally everything. She had the pedigree, she had the son, she had the record of

00:31:23.340 military victories, she had charisma and intelligence, and she was just getting started.

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00:32:03.780 Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro level? This is Fidelity Connects,

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00:32:17.100 your next move tomorrow.

00:32:20.280 Hungry now.

00:32:23.500 Now.

00:32:25.700 What about now?

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00:32:45.260 today.

00:32:47.100 The war is over and both sides lost.

00:32:53.640 Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust.

00:32:58.640 Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.

00:33:06.520 But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.

00:33:10.860 This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.

00:33:14.040 Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.

00:33:20.240 This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make.

00:33:27.800 This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.

00:33:32.540 Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day.

00:33:43.080 See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

00:33:51.940 And we're back.

00:33:53.800 So what happens next?

00:33:55.520 So this is where she stops being underdog. 0.59

00:33:58.100 This is where she's like, we're getting into like, and now she's in charge of stuff.

00:34:01.780 And what's that going to look like? 0.94

00:34:04.040 Spoiler, genocide.

00:34:05.840 So Isabella and Ferdinand at this point are officially co-monarchs of both the huge kingdom

00:34:10.580 of castile and the smaller but important aragon they were truly an equal pairing so isabella was

00:34:16.800 given the same level of respect and responsibility as her husband it wasn't a thing where it's like

00:34:20.600 that's the king and that's his wife we'll call her the queen they're like co-monarchs and this

00:34:25.060 was the first time in western history that a woman actively ruled a country this was before

00:34:30.700 elizabeth i this was before catherine the great this was 300 years after matilda there had been 0.96

00:34:36.540 women who had ruled like kingdoms or like they'd been duchesses women had been in charge of stuff

00:34:43.420 but she was like actively a reigning monarch so she and Ferdinand were both reigning it wasn't

00:34:49.060 just the husband of or the wife of so when Isabella 23 years old and small she's like a small like 0.55

00:34:55.860 person with sort of like red goldish hair when she paraded down the street with a giant sword 1.00

00:34:59.860 and declared herself queen everyone was kind of like okay but by the middle of her 30-year reign

00:35:04.380 those same people were like Isabella is the greatest human being the world has ever seen

00:35:08.920 at least in the past 500 years she is we worship her basically so we're going to look now at what

00:35:14.940 made her what she was like as a queen and what made her such a significant figure so first of

00:35:21.300 all you remember when she was hanging around the castle and just paying attention to stuff and

00:35:24.980 seeing like oh this is why my half-brother is like a terrible king and here's what I would do

00:35:29.080 differently so she started implementing the stuff she figured out during her time Sansa starking it

00:35:33.700 So she was able to turn around Castile's finances through her careful and meticulous leadership.

00:35:39.140 The past two kings, so Enrique and also her father, who had been the puppet of his evil

00:35:43.980 pal, who is this guy called Del Luna. 0.98

00:35:46.940 Her father had been like a shitty king. 1.00

00:35:48.980 Her half-brother had been a shitty king. 1.00

00:35:50.740 They'd been like literally awful at the job. 0.99

00:35:53.540 She inherited a country that was in massive amounts of debt due to their financial mismanagement, 0.98

00:35:57.640 um including Enrique's idiotic decision to his short-sighted decision to increase the country's 0.98

00:36:04.840 money by just like making more coins that never works that that never works like that never work 0.97

00:36:10.780 so basically Isabelle had numerous ideas about how to salvage that particular situation like

00:36:17.540 for instance putting an end to excess coin manufacturing and also forcing nobles to pay

00:36:22.200 off their debts to the crown so the ongoing war between Castile and Portugal had also been putting

00:36:27.040 too much pressure on the country's budget so she used her brilliant strategic mind to put an end

00:36:31.660 to this war with a number of peace treaties among the terms of these treaties was portugal's

00:36:36.080 agreement that juana remember her i feel so badly for her she just like didn't have it so juana 0.74

00:36:42.320 would be confined to a convent for the rest of her life and forced to do lots of compulsory prayers

00:36:47.000 which is like a weirdly specific punishment but it's kind of a hint at the way that isabella 0.84

00:36:53.020 would sort of use piety and religion as sort of a punishment in other things she would do.

00:37:00.060 So another terrible thing about the reigns of Enrique and their father was that criminals

00:37:04.580 had never really been tracked down or punished in any sort of organized manner. And this kind

00:37:09.240 of made sense because the country's laws had never actually been written down. So Isabella

00:37:13.980 hired a scholar to write out an eight volume set of all of the laws. She saw herself as the

00:37:19.400 divinely appointed arbiter of all that was good and holy so again like she's so smart she's so

00:37:24.240 capable and she if you asked her she would be like well this is because god put me here like i'm a

00:37:29.420 brilliant genius because of god and so that's part of where her confidence came from and that's part

00:37:34.080 of where like she wasn't phased by men doubting her but that's also why a lot of men wouldn't

00:37:38.720 doubt her because they were like well god put her here like okay so she's determined to have a zero

00:37:42.880 tolerance policy against criminality especially rape and sexual crimes more rapists were tried 0.99

00:37:48.600 convicted during her reign than ever before but important note Isabella considered homosexual acts

00:37:54.960 in the same league of unforgivable criminality as she did rape and the punishment for men convicted 0.97

00:38:00.720 of sodomy was to be castrated and hanged which was also the punishment for heterosexual rapists 0.99

00:38:06.440 is that so basically consensual sodomy was given the same punishment as unconsensual sexual activity 1.00

00:38:14.540 between anyone. So because you can't have medieval Spanish law without medieval Spanish order,

00:38:19.740 Isabella also invented the concept of a state-sanctioned police department. Up to this

00:38:24.060 point, justice had been mostly meted out by ad hoc gangs of men called brotherhoods or

00:38:28.420 hermandads, hermanadads. So Isabella called her new royally appointed squad

00:38:33.400 La Santa Hermandad, the Holy Brotherhood. Her predecessors had been largely under the thumb

00:38:39.040 of powerful aristocrats who themselves gave and accepted bribes for their own self-interest and

00:38:44.320 they weren't really there for the country. They were just there for their own personal gain.

00:38:48.140 Isabella and Ferdinand put an end to this whole situation by positioning themselves as absolute

00:38:52.620 monarchs. Now, obviously being a dictator isn't ideal most of the time. All of the time? I'm going

00:38:59.800 to say most of the time. But this was one situation where it was kind of their only option.

00:39:05.220 The country's allegiances had been scattered and the new monarchs were determined to coalesce all

00:39:09.800 support behind them. So this is what was best for them. But in several ways, it was also kind of best

00:39:16.380 for the country. So this meant they removed all power from the nobles, consolidating it all for

00:39:21.720 themselves. Isabella had the nobles move from active participants in government to more like

00:39:26.340 audience members and replace them with actual administrative staff, like lawyers who would 0.97

00:39:31.140 perform the actual tasks of running the country. So it was sort of like really modernizing things

00:39:36.740 in a really effective way. So they got a stronghold over the country just by having a vision

00:39:42.420 and a plan and being a really good team together. The pair of them, especially Isabella, also wound

00:39:47.740 up being really effective in other ways, but the first steps and sort of the necessary first steps

00:39:52.560 were to take a struggling country and make it over into something actually productive. So in a sort

00:39:57.540 of triage way, once they gathered all control into their own hands and established law and order,

00:40:02.340 they were able to move on to other stuff such as to unify the country under a single religion

00:40:08.020 so Isabella and Fernand were so pious that the pope bestowed upon them the name

00:40:13.640 the catholic monarchs which is the way that people refer to them now sometimes so it comes

00:40:18.980 no surprise that the religion they want everyone to have was catholicism so this wasn't just

00:40:24.960 conversion for like to get the numbers up or whatever like Isabella truly saw herself as

00:40:30.260 god's hand on earth like god had put her there like this is her job is to make everyone like

00:40:35.360 save everyone or whatever so her role was as the savior to all non-catholics so at the time that

00:40:41.500 she took over spain was populated not by only catholics but there's also a lot of muslims

00:40:48.000 and the largest concentration of jewish people of anywhere in europe at that time uh so did this

00:40:53.100 mean she ran around like a missionary converting people no uh what it meant is that she created

00:40:58.380 policies forcing non-Catholics to convert. And then she changed her mind and later decreed that 0.58

00:41:03.020 all non-Catholics were to be expelled from Spain without their money or possessions. And their

00:41:08.400 money or possessions were then given to Isabel and Ferdinand, which helped out financially.

00:41:13.140 So they were all expelled. It was a horrifying time for Jews and Muslims in Spain. And there

00:41:19.580 isn't this podcast's thesis, not really time to get into all the details of it, but I'll put some

00:41:26.140 article links in the show notes to really get into how horrendous this whole thing was and the

00:41:31.320 effect it had on world history but basically it was genocidal so simultaneous to the expulsion of 0.79

00:41:38.060 jews and muslims isabelle and ferdinand were also hard at work conquering the remaining muslim

00:41:42.720 strongholds in their area which were run by a dynasty called the nasrid dynasty isabella was

00:41:49.160 actively involved with a multi-year campaign because again she had this military background

00:41:52.780 um she'd military victories before so she helped to plan campaigns and accompany troops near the

00:41:58.420 field of battle using the newly increased treasury of money that they got from genocide reasons she

00:42:06.260 amassed a larger arsenal of weapons than any previous monarch had ever acquired including 0.98

00:42:10.740 cannons strong enough to destroy castle walls her tactics and arsenal forced all armies in europe

00:42:15.680 to change their battle strategies like this is like again we're just i'm just presenting some

00:42:20.120 facts here and the fact is like she was a really competent leader and some of her actions were

00:42:26.900 horrific and everyone around her kind of had to change their strategies against her because she

00:42:31.940 was so effective the final stronghold of the nasrid empire was granada which finally surrendered to the

00:42:38.640 catholic monarchs in 1492 isabella and ferdinand entered the city and were ceremonial ceremonially

00:42:44.600 presented with the keys to the city and so then they set out converting not only the people but

00:42:49.120 the place itself they reconsecrated the primary mosque into a catholic church for instance 0.99

00:42:53.840 their success in defeating muslim expansion forever altered the global balance of power 0.99

00:42:59.440 forever internationally so at this point it had been like the global balance of power like eastern 0.98

00:43:05.640 areas countries kingdoms had been more powerful and then because of her actions the west suddenly

00:43:12.780 became more powerful so spain was becoming the first western superpower paving the way for the

00:43:18.060 domination of France and then England, and then some of the colonies on the world stage. And we're

00:43:22.800 still dealing with that world order today. So Isabella and Ferdinand had achieved massive

00:43:28.300 success in their plans to consolidate the various parts of Spain into a single empire with themselves

00:43:32.740 as supreme rulers. Rather than spreading themselves to the east, like spreading Spain

00:43:39.720 more east, Isabella's interest was piqued by a persistent Italian adventurer who kept visiting.

00:43:46.360 his name is christopher corombo or his anglicized name is better known as christopher columbus and

00:43:52.340 he was just this guy who was like hey like i want to go to the west i think there might be stuff

00:43:56.180 there and she was finally like oh fine so he approached the catholic monarchs numerous times

00:44:00.460 for financial support for his goal to voyage across the atlantic to find new trade routes to

00:44:04.580 the indies but um they kept saying no he only he so he kept like dropping his price of how much he

00:44:10.760 needed and finally it was cheap enough that isabella found it acceptable and so she reappropriated the

00:44:16.060 money seized from the expelled jewish people and muslims to fund this trip so okay so christopher

00:44:22.340 columbus his actions in north america are fairly well known and in case you weren't sure how truly

00:44:28.000 awful he was and the things he perpetrated were so awful um i'll put some more links to a few

00:44:32.940 things in the show notes as well because again that's a whole other topic but worth reading about

00:44:39.720 for sure. I don't feel personally capable of speaking to it to the extent it needs to be

00:44:46.320 spoken about, but I will put some links in the show notes. So one thing that's interesting about

00:44:51.780 this whole scenario is that Isabella was never comfortable with the idea of enslaving or

00:44:56.560 mistreating the indigenous people of the Americas. This was partially because she viewed

00:45:01.520 Christopher Columbus's colonies as subsidiaries of Castile, which made the indigenous people,

00:45:07.200 she thought of them as castilian subjects and she was their monarch and the law of the land was that

00:45:12.220 castilian subjects could not be enslaved furthermore she was keen to convert the indigenous

00:45:17.480 people to catholicism and to her catholics could also not be enslaved but also like note to her

00:45:24.920 she wasn't like a um civil rights um to her black people captured during her conquest on the african

00:45:30.840 continent could be enslaved it's just like castilian subjects and catholics couldn't be enslaved

00:45:36.500 but her desire to convert people to Catholicism was not limited to the indigenous people of the

00:45:41.900 Americas they were still consistently obsessed with ensuring that every single person living in

00:45:47.720 Spain practiced the same religion they did to the point that they began even mistrusting people who

00:45:52.620 claim to be Catholic because like it makes sense to me if you're there and everyone's just are you

00:45:55.960 Catholic like you just start being like yeah I'm Catholic like but Isabel and Ferdinand were like

00:45:59.900 but are they are they Catholic enough so they wanted to build a country that was entirely

00:46:04.920 Catholics and all of whom fully supported them. So like a full on dictatorship situation. And so

00:46:11.660 that's why they founded a Royal Inquisition, aka the Spanish Inquisition. They weren't the first 0.93

00:46:17.520 people to do something like this, but they were among the most successful at it, by which I mean 0.99

00:46:22.420 they captured and killed more people than most other Inquisitions did. I will put a link to that 0.94

00:46:28.980 in the show notes as well. Just this, this is what I was talking about. Like at first it's like

00:46:33.240 easy to cheer for this person and now she's actually getting a lot of stuff done and it's

00:46:37.680 just like the global implications of what she did are quite extreme so Isabella's religious fervor

00:46:43.960 was not just limited to just her subjects she applied similar high standards to her children

00:46:49.500 so including some problematic slash abusive methods and so it is in her home life that

00:46:57.240 Isabella found herself like she was so savvy and so competent and so ruthless and so successful at

00:47:03.680 her political stuff. But it was at her home life where she wasn't able to control things quite as

00:47:08.680 much because guess what? Her children inherited her strong emotions and strong force of personality.

00:47:15.320 So Isabella and Ferdinand had five children. Her oldest daughter was also called Isabella,

00:47:19.740 her son juan prince of asturias juana of castile and maria of aragon and catherine of aragon yes

00:47:28.060 that's right the first wife of henry the eighth was the youngest child of isabella of castile

00:47:33.920 which puts her whole thing in context too i think in terms of her strong force of personality so

00:47:40.920 isabella ensured that all her children were provided with extensive education she hired

00:47:45.680 humanists as tutors so education was important to her even for girls which her daughter catherine

00:47:52.460 of aragon um would also felt was really important to the point so that isabella's granddaughter

00:47:57.640 mary the first of england was also very well educated as well it was not the standard it had

00:48:02.480 not been standard for children to be educated to this extent especially not girls but isabella

00:48:06.920 presented herself as a role model to her daughters in other ways by bringing them with her when she

00:48:11.800 accompanied troops into battle so it was really like you know women can do anything asterisk all

00:48:17.540 the caveats i've already said but like so she she was raising her daughters in a way that a lot of

00:48:22.340 women were not being raised at the time and that affected her daughter's lives so part of the 0.81

00:48:27.180 reason why she was so intent on getting them really well educated was because she herself

00:48:31.460 if you recall hadn't received much schooling in her childhood like until she was age 11 she was

00:48:35.760 in the ghost castle um not really getting a lot of education so it was really important for her

00:48:41.020 to her that her children were all taught basically everything possible. So languages, science,

00:48:46.120 history, politics, archery, dancing, music. Juan, the only son, was trained in how to become the

00:48:51.200 new king, while the girls learned skills about how to be a wife and mother alongside their other

00:48:55.580 studies. Isabella and Ferdinand ensured that their family would be impervious to criticism

00:49:00.580 by training the children to behave so perfectly and so catholically. Each of the children was

00:49:07.360 recorded as being both really accomplished really intelligent and also really gorgeous which is like

00:49:15.100 they were like if you look at the portraits like they have this gorgeous like red blonde hair the

00:49:18.840 same as their mother some of them uh the girls all seem to have inherited many of the personality 0.69

00:49:23.220 traits of their mother as they all wound up expressing um very stubborn personalities 0.56

00:49:28.080 alongside uh really resiliency and tenacity of all the children Isabella clashed the most with 0.97

00:49:35.180 her daughter juana perhaps because these two were more alike than the others which is like isn't that 0.91

00:49:40.640 how it always is with mothers and daughters and we're going to learn more about juana perhaps 0.99

00:49:45.720 next week we'll see one final part of isabel and ferdinand's strategy for complete domination of

00:49:51.400 spain slash the western world was to connect their dynasty with royal families in other countries

00:49:56.680 so they arranged the best possible matches for each of their children isabel was shipped off

00:50:02.300 to marry the Portuguese king, who don't worry, not Afonso. He's not the king anymore. While Juan

00:50:08.620 and Juana were each married off to a Habsburg royal. Isabel's husband died suddenly at a very

00:50:14.540 young age, after which Isabel begged to be allowed to remain unmarried and to live life as a nun,

00:50:19.860 because this whole family was like really Catholic. But Isabel was needed to help firm up

00:50:24.840 another, the same alliance with Portugal. And so Isabella sent her daughter Isabel back to marry 0.97

00:50:30.880 the new Portuguese king. Isabelle died in childbirth a year later, and her baby son passed

00:50:36.340 away shortly after that as well. At around this time as well, Juan, the only son in the family,

00:50:42.540 and Isabella had always favored him, referring to him as her angel, also died. So this meant,

00:50:48.020 much to Isabella's grief and frustration, if you're going chronologically, that her least

00:50:53.960 favorite daughter, Juana, was suddenly and unexpectedly heir to the thrones of Castile

00:50:59.060 and Aragon because that was it um her youngest daughters so Juana was the oldest daughter there's

00:51:04.860 two other sisters Maria and Catherine so Maria and Catherine were sent off for their own politically

00:51:09.580 advantageous marriages Maria was to be the second wife to her sister Isabel's widower the king of 0.69

00:51:17.300 Portugal which is just like blah so like Isabel married the king of Portugal who dies then she

00:51:22.560 married the new king of Portugal then she died then that second king of Portugal married her

00:51:26.780 sister maria which is just like blah so um and catherine was sent off to marry arthur the crown

00:51:33.980 prince of england this did not go particularly easily for catherine which is what um that's the

00:51:40.540 whole henry the eighth situation and we'll talk about that some other time but basically the

00:51:45.320 children were married off to other countries that spain wanted to ally with but um these deaths in

00:51:50.860 quick succession, Isabel, Isabel's baby son, and then Juan, combined with the heartbreak of having

00:51:56.880 all of her children almost simultaneously move away to other countries where she'd never see

00:52:00.900 them again, severely affected Isabel's health, including her mental health. Remember, she grew

00:52:06.100 up with the trauma and her mother had some psychological problems, like there's some

00:52:12.720 undealt with trauma in her life, kind of clearly. So as she had when she was a girl in the ghost

00:52:18.480 castle. Isabella turned to prayer and fasting for strength, but this weakened her constitution

00:52:23.440 because she wasn't eating enough. She still used to come to the effects of dropsy, which I think

00:52:30.100 is an oldie time word for, it's basically swelling. I think it has something to do with

00:52:38.020 heart conditions. Anyway, just like she wasn't eating, she's not doing well.

00:52:42.520 It was the 15th century. Things weren't great, but she kept enough wits about her to be able

00:52:46.700 to compose her will. So the document is part advice and instruction to Ferdinand. And Ferdinand

00:52:52.640 would continue on being the solo monarch for another 12 years. And it's also instructions

00:52:57.940 for their successors. So her will is sort of like a manifesto almost. So she charges her successors

00:53:04.360 to remain vigilant against the devil and his minions, which included the Muslim and Jewish 0.91

00:53:09.300 people, as well as to continue to work to conquer the African continent and to continue the 0.98

00:53:14.440 Inquisition. She's just like, this is what's important to me. She also noted in her will,

00:53:19.020 her desire for the indigenous people of the American colonies to be treated fairly and not

00:53:23.300 to be abused. And Isabella I died aged 53 at the Medina del Campo Royal Palace, where she had been

00:53:31.900 living bedridden for her final months. This was in 1504. Her tomb is in Granada, the site of one

00:53:37.980 of her greatest military and political victories. When Ferdinand died, he was buried next to her

00:53:43.460 and when their daughter juana died 55 years later uh she was buried there as well as well as was

00:53:51.780 oh sorry juana her daughter juana not juana the portugal stuck in the convent having to do prayers

00:53:58.120 all the time person and isabel's dead baby son miguel was also buried there so a little family

00:54:02.820 tomb situation so just to like wrap up her story before we get into the whole scoring situation

00:54:09.240 is that Isabella of Castile, her life, her reign forever changed the course of world history. Like

00:54:14.800 other people in the same place in the same time might have done some of the same stuff, but I

00:54:18.300 don't know if anyone could have accomplished as much as she did. Again, I'm not calling the things

00:54:22.860 she did good. I'm just saying that they were accomplishments for her, for what she wanted

00:54:28.180 to do, to have happen. She founded the first cross-Atlantic colonial empire, creating a

00:54:34.340 template that was used later by both the French and the English. Her successes in the wars against

00:54:38.800 Muslim areas paved the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion through most of 0.84

00:54:43.460 Western Europe. She was also the first European woman to be recognized as a monarch in her own

00:54:47.720 right, changing the word queen to mean woman who rules rather than just the woman married to the

00:54:53.560 king. There are echoes of her story in the character arc of Daenerys Targaryen on Game of

00:54:58.420 Thrones, including the fact that Daenerys was also narcissistic and became a dictator and killed a

00:55:07.100 lot of people but basically like Isabella Daenerys went from a forgotten sideline young woman to an

00:55:12.620 ambitious would-be queen to a seemingly power mad colonizer Isabella's legacy is complex and

00:55:17.860 impossible to label as entirely positive or entirely negative I mean nothing is really

00:55:23.880 it's hard to find something that you can say is entirely positive or entirely negative

00:55:27.600 um but so I'm just trying to present like here's the facts like here's what she did and some of it

00:55:32.940 was impressive. Some of it is horrendous. All of it is significant and truly changed world history.

00:55:43.260 So hers is one of the most consequential and important reigns in European history. And it's

00:55:49.260 ridiculous. But now we're going to score her on our Scandalicious Scale, which I mean, it's hard 0.69

00:55:54.560 for me to quantify the purpose of the Scandalicious Scale, but it's mostly just it's a nice 1.00

00:55:58.700 way to wrap up each episode and it's a way to sort of measure the different women who are talking

00:56:03.140 about um not saying who is better than who or but just more kind of like where do they all stack up

00:56:09.860 if we're putting them on a list and measuring them in these various different ways so the first

00:56:15.040 category oh my cat is here being like real friendly with her claws i don't know isabella

00:56:20.720 had other people had this pet's been all been brainwashed by enzymes and cat poo to worship

00:56:26.020 anyway um so the first category is scandalousness and I'm just giving her a zero a zero have I ever

00:56:34.980 given everyone a zero I don't I don't think I've ever given someone a zero in scandalousness but

00:56:39.800 she's I feel like the ghost of Isabella of Castile would come and like strike me down if I suggested

00:56:44.880 anything about her life was scandalous you know what no I'm gonna give her a two a two for 0.68

00:56:50.340 scandalousness because the whole running away secretly marrying situation um scheminess now 0.98

00:56:56.900 for a lot of the women we've been looking at this is meant sort of like behind the scenes how did

00:57:01.000 they you know orchestrate a murder or whatever but for isabel i think it's more just like planning

00:57:07.260 did she come up with plans were those plans effective and i think i kind of need to give her

00:57:12.820 her plans were good she had a plan to take over um all of castile which she did um she had a plan

00:57:20.140 to also have Aragon taken over by Mary Ferdinand which she did um she had numerous military plans 0.86

00:57:25.640 I think her scheminess is I mean even outside of the like genocide of it all she came up with 0.60

00:57:34.880 plans the plans went well for her 10 for scheminess I think significance I think also has to be a 10 0.72

00:57:43.040 I would give her like 10 plus if I could because the significance of her reign like even the people 0.51

00:57:49.100 who we have higher up on the scandalous scale like agrippina matilda like they even cleopatra 0.89

00:57:54.700 like they did stuff that mattered a lot at the time but isabella of castile is the first person

00:58:00.200 who we've looked at who i think what she did literally changed world history like we're still

00:58:05.860 dealing with the effects of um colonizing of africa and of the americas and what happened

00:58:14.060 with um jewish people and muslims in spain and like the east versus the west like other people

00:58:20.020 might have been monarchs at the same time she happened to be the person that was there and she

00:58:24.540 with her scheminess like just had these plans that just did what she wanted them to so significance

00:58:29.800 is 10 and then this one is so the sexism bonus i usually think to myself like it could never be 0.98

00:58:37.100 less than five because everybody is always dealing with sexism once she became queen and i think she

00:58:42.120 was protected or sort of inoculated from a lot of criticism both by being married to Ferdinand so

00:58:48.560 there was a man that people could think like well she's in charge but also there's a man there so 0.60

00:58:52.460 it's like not quite so threatening to people but the fact that she like the sexism that got in the 1.00

00:58:57.940 way of her not being named Enrique's heir to begin with um when her her brother was and the fact she 0.90

00:59:05.100 had to kind of fight to take over but then just fighting against a different woman slash girl I'm

00:59:10.840 I'm gonna stick to my guns I'm gonna give her a five because I feel like show me a person who 1.00

00:59:16.560 hasn't had at least a five out of ten in sexism effect on their life so that brings her total up

00:59:21.980 to five twenty seven which is kind of right in the middle which makes sense to me because this

00:59:29.440 is a podcast where like we prioritize scheminess and scandalousness and things like that and so

00:59:35.300 the people who are at the top are the people who did scandalous type things combined with some

00:59:40.500 significance type things and isabel of castile is significant but she's not like again this is

00:59:46.340 where you're not there's not a lot of um it's not like there's a lot of sexy movies and historical

00:59:52.300 novels about like oh isabel of castile and like all the schemes she did she was like a military

00:59:56.200 leader and she's an effective military leader but not not the sort of person's gonna get to the top

01:00:01.160 based on what we're scoring on here on vulgar history so again i'm gonna put like a whole lot

01:00:06.320 of links in the show notes for this because there's a lot of important context that i breezed

01:00:12.260 over pretty quickly in the aim of giving you a whole big picture view of her life from beginning

01:00:19.300 to end and but that context is really crucial to glean and to really appreciate the effect that

01:00:26.600 this woman had on all of world history i mean she's one of the most significant not just women

01:00:32.400 but like people of any gender to have ever lived like just this stuff and that's partially like

01:00:39.500 she could have been the same personality the same person with the same skills and in a different

01:00:43.860 situation and she wouldn't have done all these things it's like she is it was like a combination

01:00:48.600 of who she was her skills um and just the situation she was in and her ability to make

01:00:54.140 the best of it um and to win people over to her side so so yeah this is vulgar history my name is

01:01:01.080 ann foster um i have a couple so a couple little links you can look at first of all um if you want

01:01:08.280 to find more of my writing including effectively a transcript of this podcast just the two essays

01:01:13.920 i've written before about isabelle of castile that's at ann foster writer.com um this podcast

01:01:19.460 we're on instagram and twitter at vulgar history pod on instagram vulgar history on twitter if you

01:01:25.680 want to email me uh you can reach us at vulgar history pod at gmail.com if you want to support

01:01:33.820 this podcast um i'm on patreon at patreon.com and foster writer i've also got some merch um

01:01:43.760 including from last week's episode a shirt that i find the most hilarious thing in the world

01:01:48.320 it's just like a plain white shirt and then it says in sort of oldie time font like empress

01:01:52.740 matilda in the snow because of how last time i talked about how she camouflaged all in white

01:01:57.880 and was hidden in the snow you can get that image on like a mug and a bag and all kinds of different

01:02:02.120 hilarious stuff that's a teespring.com slash stores slash vulgar history um if you're interested

01:02:08.860 in a book that i have to recommend to you there's a book called isabella the warrior queen by kirsten

01:02:16.760 downey that came out in 2015 that i think gives a really good sort of balanced appraisal of her

01:02:21.680 and her life there's also a book called Isabella of Castile Europe's First Great Queen by Giles

01:02:27.220 Tremlett which also both of them really do I think a fine job of balancing the Isabella

01:02:33.740 kind of the cool parts of her story with kind of the horrific effects of the things she did

01:02:40.900 without kind of like saying she was a bad person or she was a good person it's just kind of like

01:02:45.200 here's some facts and here's some information so both of those books I would recommend definitely

01:02:50.340 and also if you go to to the website bookshop.org i have an ongoing book list there i think it's

01:02:57.740 just called the book list is if you go to again it'll be in the show no thanks but it's bookshop.org

01:03:05.440 slash lists slash vulgar history recommends with dashes in between vulgar history and recommends

01:03:11.700 um and that's where you can find a lot of the books i've been reading um for researching for

01:03:15.960 all the different podcast episodes. And bookshop.org is a lovely site that helps support

01:03:20.540 independent bookstores. You can sort of tell them who's your local store and then the purchases you

01:03:24.500 make can go to help support them as well. And then also, if you are interested in audiobooks

01:03:31.100 and that sort of thing, if you're considering a subscription to Audible, if you go to

01:03:37.120 audibletrial.com slash vulgarhistory, then you can get a free trial and some of that money brings

01:03:44.120 back to help support this little podcast project so i hope you're all keeping well um wash your

01:03:49.280 hands don't touch your face stay inside and i'll talk to you next time vulgar history is researched

01:03:57.040 written and hosted by ann foster that's me the editor is christina lumaghi theme music is by

01:04:03.300 the severin duo the vulgar history show image is by deborah wong transcripts are written by

01:04:09.040 Aveline Malik. Find transcripts of recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com.

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Vulgar History - April 01, 2020

Women Leaders, part 6： Genocidal Warrior Queen, Isabella I

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