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

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00:00:55.740 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast.

00:01:00.000 My name is Anne Foster. And before we get into today's, the content of today's episode, I do have two exciting announcements slash reminders for you. And that is that I'm coming to Minneapolis. First and foremost, I'm going to be doing an event with friend of the podcast, Alison Epstein, who is promoting their new book, Fagin the Thief, at the Minneapolis bookstore, Majors and Quinn, which is in Uptown, Minneapolis.

00:01:23.260 And she and I are going to be appearing, Allison and I, on March 4th at 7 p.m. at Majors and

00:01:29.940 Quinn Booksellers for a free event, but you do need to register to attend. Registration again

00:01:35.220 is free, and I'll put a link to that registration in the show notes of this episode. And since I'm

00:01:40.760 in Minneapolis, and I know that several of you live there or nearby in St. Paul, which I understand

00:01:46.380 is a different city, I am going to be having a Vulgar History Tits Out Brigade meetup in

00:01:51.180 Minneapolis probably on March 5th, but date TBD. And if you're interested and want to get details

00:01:57.960 about that, please go to vulgarhistory.com slash meetup. And that just to let me know your interest

00:02:03.280 so I know how many people to expect. And so I know kind of where, where we should go for that

00:02:08.500 exciting wintertime meetup in March in Minneapolis. And so today's episode, we're going to be

00:02:15.460 revisiting an episode from March of 2020, which as you may recall, was the beginning of the COVID

00:02:22.000 pandemic. And I mentioned that because my past self that you're going to be hearing in a minute

00:02:27.300 does mention that a couple of times during this episode. And when I saw that just in terms of

00:02:31.900 revisiting episodes, the next one up was this one, Isabella of Castile. I'm always like,

00:02:36.080 Oh God, it's an episode that I'm proud of and that I really struggled with at the time. And

00:02:42.360 that I'm still just like about because her story, it's, it's, well, the way that I see it,

00:02:47.600 it's just really the way I presented this. It's really two parts. There's the part where she's

00:02:51.720 this underdog and you're cheering for her and she's so capable and she's this young woman

00:02:56.500 facing adversity. And then the second half, it's like, she's perpetuating multiple genocides

00:03:02.480 and kind of setting up the world hellscape that we all live in now. So it's, it's two different

00:03:09.260 parts. And I do appreciate my past self for putting in lots of suggested readings, which I'm

00:03:15.660 going to attach to this episode as well, to get more of a full picture of the scope of the various

00:03:22.320 genocides involved. But also, if you want to revisit some other vulgar history episodes,

00:03:27.680 so the fallout of what Isabella perpetuates in the second half of this story, you can see that

00:03:34.400 in my past episodes about Saida al-Hura,

00:03:37.820 the Muslim woman who left, was forced out of Spain,

00:03:42.220 as well as the story of Doña Gracia Nasi,

00:03:44.340 the Jewish woman who was forced out of Spain.

00:03:47.840 And then also our various episodes

00:03:49.400 about the indigenous people of the Americas,

00:03:53.280 like the episode we did about Malinzin,

00:03:55.640 the episode about Matoka, about Tenelder,

00:03:59.960 about Sacagawea, just kind of the ripple effect

00:04:03.140 of what Isabella did

00:04:05.180 have large repercussions

00:04:07.360 on lots of people

00:04:08.380 we've talked about

00:04:08.880 on this podcast as well.

00:04:10.040 But anyway, I think,

00:04:11.480 as I say in this episode,

00:04:12.600 you're about to hear

00:04:13.120 that they're recorded in 2020.

00:04:14.740 It's an important story

00:04:15.600 to recognize,

00:04:17.480 and I think it's a good one

00:04:18.960 to think about.

00:04:20.340 So I don't know.

00:04:21.400 I feel, I was going to say enjoy,

00:04:22.880 but it's like enjoy, question mark.

00:04:25.260 Please listen to this episode

00:04:28.060 about Isabella of Castile.

00:04:33.140 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster, and this is a feminist women's 0.94

00:04:39.420 history comedy podcast. And we are on season two. And the theme for season two has been

00:04:46.240 women leaders in history and the men who whined about them. And we've started off before the

00:04:51.480 year zero, we went through ancient Roman times, early Britain situations. Last time we did

00:04:59.740 Empress Matilda. And now we're just zooming a few years ahead, like 300-ish years ahead.

00:05:06.920 And we're looking at a woman who was a descendant of Empress Matilda. And frankly,

00:05:13.440 most Western European monarchs were a descendant of Empress Matilda in some way or another,

00:05:20.660 because she was one of those, or her son, Henry, was one of those people who just had so many kids

00:05:25.120 and they just kind of spread far and wide all over the place and the person and i'm not like

00:05:30.340 i can't even get into the great great aunt removed of it all but just trust me i double check this

00:05:37.660 my facts are solid empress matilda was a an ancestor of this person who we're going to look

00:05:43.440 at today this is another sort of person who i was like oh does this like it fits the theme it fits

00:05:51.100 to seem well and in an interesting way. But what my hesitation of doing this person for the podcast

00:05:57.360 was more about, is it inappropriate to be talking in sort of a lighthearted, comedic type way about

00:06:06.400 somebody whose actions had horrific repercussions that are still being dealt with on an international

00:06:13.940 scale. But then I thought, you know, I don't want to not talk about her. Like if we're looking at

00:06:19.120 women and leadership through history. Skipping over her would sort of leave a hole in the

00:06:24.420 narrative. So I'm going to treat this story as I do other stories in a sort of lighthearted,

00:06:31.460 whimsical way, but also with appropriate, I hope, respect to the consequences of her actions.

00:06:39.260 Most of the women so far really have been sort of like, it's easy to cheer for them because

00:06:44.480 there's so many gross dudes who are up against them and the women achieved great stuff and then 0.92

00:06:50.320 eventually were undone by some gross dudes around them and the thing about the women who are doing

00:06:55.800 today isabella the first is that she actually lived for like a pretty long time and she actually 1.00

00:07:01.780 wound up being successful in what she chose to be a success at doing which um spoiler includes

00:07:10.460 genocide of a couple different groups so but the thing about her reign is that she was so

00:07:18.800 successful the beginning of her story is similar to other people in the sense of like she was

00:07:23.260 a woman and people like oh but should women be in charge like all those same issues came up she

00:07:28.840 she surpassed them uh she found ways around it and she ended up so it's kind of like there's two 1.00

00:07:34.260 parts to her story there's the part where you're like yes you know i want this young woman to

00:07:37.320 succeed against all these odds and then there's the second part where you're like okay well once

00:07:41.460 she's in power what's she gonna what's she gonna do and and that's the part of this whole situation

00:07:48.080 that we haven't actually dealt with really so far in the season of this podcast is so much of what 1.00

00:07:55.420 the women we've been looking at have been doing is just like trying to get a seat at the table or

00:07:59.840 like the head seat at the head table but like with the exception maybe of Cleopatra who was in charge 1.00

00:08:07.180 for quite a while and did do a lot of governing, etc. A lot of the other women just never got to 1.00

00:08:13.620 really show their mettle as a leader beyond being a military leader or behind the scenes leader.

00:08:20.520 And the thing is, and it does still bother me when I hear people say still today, when here's

00:08:26.140 the things about like, you know, men have had their chance, like, let's just let women be in

00:08:29.300 charge. Like women are more, people think are more compassionate or more or smarter or whatever. 0.99

00:08:35.700 And it's like, there's a lot of cultural baggage around that as to why people think that. And a lot of it is that women are culturally groomed to behave in a certain way. And for women to succeed, often it means sort of leaning into these sort of stereotypical roles. 0.97

00:08:50.280 But also, I firmly believe, and this is a theoretical thing, and so I think it's fair to firmly believe things that you can never actually prove, is that if there were an equal amount of male and female leaders and other gender leaders, if there's an equal amount of every gender leader throughout all of human history, there'd be an equal amount of good ones and shitty ones.

00:09:11.220 because your gender doesn't mean you're going to be better or worse at being a leader. It can

00:09:18.240 affect how people treat you depending on the cultural context that you're looking at. And it

00:09:22.240 can depend what you're able to do depending on the cultural context you're looking at. But I don't

00:09:26.620 think one gender is inherently better or worse, like inherently not with like if you divorce all 0.80

00:09:32.280 the cultural stuff from another. And so this is the first time we can really look at a woman who

00:09:36.680 actually got to lead got to be very significant and what did that look like so when we get to the

00:09:44.100 end and it's like how scandalous was she it's like we'll see how we feel about that by that point

00:09:50.500 i mean we're gonna go through her story and see where she lands but personally i think she's

00:09:55.420 gonna be high up significance wise not very high up skin delicious wise because she was a very um

00:10:02.340 Like she was responsible for some horrific stuff, but it's not scandalous stuff. It's not like secretly poisoning your lover or whatever. So I don't know. This is this is going to be a different sort of paradigm we're looking at today. But it's an important story. It's one I want to look at. And I think it's interesting, too, that Isabella of Castile was sort of a generation, basically one generation before Queen Elizabeth the first and Queen Elizabeth the first.

00:10:27.960 Like if you look at all this sort of feminist, you know, picture books and fridge magnets and like T-shirts and things, there's a certain group of people who are often celebrated.

00:10:37.840 It's like Queen Elizabeth I and like Frida Kahlo and Harry Tubman.

00:10:42.460 And there's certain sort of big names that are often there.

00:10:46.240 Cleopatra is often involved.

00:10:48.100 Isabel I isn't.

00:10:49.280 And I think it's because the repercussions of what she did really make it harder for us to be like, yes, girl, go queen, when we're still wrangling with a lot of the stuff that she was responsible for.

00:11:02.980 On the other hand, she was a significant figure.

00:11:07.880 She was successful at what she set out to be successful at doing.

00:11:12.240 I think she was more successful at those things than other people would have been of any gender.

00:11:18.180 so she was a significant woman but this isn't like a go girl sort of scenario but it's an

00:11:26.080 interesting situation and maybe this will get all of our minds off of the fact that we're all

00:11:30.520 self-isolating and the world is seems kind of different well i mean it's obviously different

00:11:37.560 but it just seems sort of uncertain and what what's going to come next who knows um so we'll

00:11:43.820 get into it so Isabella of Castile we're going to do a bit of place setting because we've been

00:11:51.420 doing a bunch of like England slash Rome things that all sort of led into each other and now

00:11:56.900 we're going over into Castile slash Aragon slash Spain and that's a whole different different

00:12:04.120 kingdom so briefly what happened so Isabella's parents so what what got her to the point of

00:12:11.140 her being born. What's the situation? So a clever and ambitious young woman named Isabel of Portugal,

00:12:17.880 not Isabella, but her mother Isabel, wound up with a terrible husband named King Juan II of

00:12:23.660 Castile. So Castile was a kingdom. There's a bunch of kingdoms all around, sort of like how England

00:12:28.980 used to be all the different kingdoms. So Spain, there was like Aragon, there's Castile. Nearby

00:12:33.620 was Portugal. So there wasn't like one country of Spain. So Castile was a medium powerful kingdom.

00:12:39.260 So Juan's first wife, Maria, had probably been poisoned to death by Juan's evil henchmen

00:12:44.720 because she was too old to have any more babies.

00:12:47.280 The only surviving baby that Maria had was a person named Prince Enrique,

00:12:54.420 who was aka, like even while he was alive, known as El Impotente, the impotent,

00:13:00.080 because he grew up and he had two different wives and didn't have any children,

00:13:04.160 not even illegitimate children.

00:13:05.720 So Juan wanted to have some new kids to be his heirs because of the usual situation of like you want your dynasty to continue on because when dynasties change, there's a civil war and that's just like not good for the economy or people being alive.

00:13:19.960 So Juan married Isabel.

00:13:23.360 So Isabel of Portugal, which again, so these are the parents of today's heroine, Isabella.

00:13:30.060 So Juan and Isabel had one son and one daughter.

00:13:34.020 Isabella, our hero, and Alfonso, her brother.

00:13:37.120 When Juan died, Enrique sent his stepmother and two little half-siblings

00:13:41.700 to live in poverty in a castle that was allegedly haunted by ghosts. 0.99

00:13:45.680 Isabelle, pretty understandably fed up with all of this scheming 0.94

00:13:49.440 and backstabbing and murdering, began...

00:13:51.880 She had a psychological break, began spending her time in a fugue state,

00:13:57.880 like not responding, not eating, screaming at ghosts in the castle,

00:14:01.480 just like not doing well psychologically. And this brings us to this week's heroine,

00:14:08.660 her daughter, Isabella. So Isabella was born April 22nd, 1451. She was the older child.

00:14:17.040 Alfonso was born three years later. So when the same year that Alfonso was born, Juan died the

00:14:23.180 king. So although Juan had left instructions in his will that his older, useless adult son, 0.63

00:14:28.740 Enrique should take care of Isabelle, Isabella and Alfonso. Enrique did not do this. So they

00:14:35.960 went to the ghost castle, etc. Enrique didn't send them as much money as they should have received,

00:14:42.720 meaning that the three person family didn't have enough food or clothes or furniture.

00:14:46.820 Again, also the castle was potentially haunted by ghosts. So little girl Isabella lived in this

00:14:52.460 situation from ages three to 11. So meaning that she and her brother Alfonso were mostly fending

00:14:58.280 for themselves for several years, most of her childhood. Even in this situation, though,

00:15:05.400 Isabella distinguished herself by being extremely clever and intelligent and basically not giving up

00:15:10.860 being resilient, despite living in a pretty dire underdog, unwinnable type situation.

00:15:17.380 All of the members of this family drew strength from their Catholic faith. So they were like all

00:15:22.040 really really sincerely truly religious in a really strict sort of way and also it's important

00:15:29.440 to mention because perhaps her experience of religion mixed with a deep personal trauma of

00:15:35.020 growing up with her mother who had all these mental issues not having enough to live on in

00:15:41.040 like a castle that was maybe haunted by ghosts like it was obviously a traumatic childhood um

00:15:45.660 and this might have something to do with her worldview later on how she might have drawn her

00:15:49.280 strength from her Catholic religion. So when she's about 11 years old, her older half-brother

00:15:56.020 Enrique invited her and Alfonso to join him at the royal court. And this, why did he invite them

00:16:01.720 after all these years, after ignoring and not giving them money, etc.? It's because after seven

00:16:07.020 years of marriage, Enrique's wife Juana of Portugal was having a baby. And this baby would supplant 0.79

00:16:13.960 both Isabella and Alfonso in the line of succession. So right now, because Enrique,

00:16:18.920 aka El Impotente, had not had any children, he didn't have an heir at all. So when he died,

00:16:24.780 it would go to Alfonso, his much younger half-brother, because it went to boys and not

00:16:30.080 girls. But he didn't want that. He wanted the crown to go to his own son. So he was feeling

00:16:35.200 more kindly towards his much younger half-siblings, because now they weren't threats anymore,

00:16:39.600 because he's going to have his own heir, or so he thought. So just side note on Enrique's wife,

00:16:46.940 Juana of Portugal, like all the women who surrounded him, Juana had developed a reputation 0.99

00:16:51.960 for being quote unquote crazy. You know, it's the thing where like, oh my God, my ex-girlfriend was 1.00

00:16:57.280 crazy. My wife was crazy where it's like, I think probably you treated them badly. Why is every

00:17:02.640 woman around you quote unquote crazy? So in this case, it mostly meant that Juana voiced her

00:17:08.880 opinions, sometimes wore lower cut dresses than the Castilian nobles preferred, and was seen to 1.00

00:17:14.120 be bossy towards her husband, Enrique. So also rumor had it that she was carrying on with various 0.93

00:17:20.160 lovers as well. And now based on everything we know about Enrique, namely that his personality

00:17:26.020 was terrible, and allegedly, or maybe not even allegedly, but he didn't have any children,

00:17:31.620 hence the name El Impotente. His penis was maybe shaped in a way that it just like wouldn't work 0.99

00:17:37.520 to father children. It seems reasonable to me that his wife might go and have a lover. 1.00

00:17:43.500 It's very Henry VIII, I think, of Enrique to always be like, well, I'm totally fine. It's

00:17:48.580 just these crazy women all around me who keep not having sons and are crazy. It's them, not me, 1.00

00:17:53.540 right? So the point of all this is that Juana suddenly became pregnant after seven years, 0.84

00:17:58.540 and everybody pretty much agreed right away that there's no way that Enrique was possibly

00:18:02.580 the father of this baby and he might have been who knows but basically nobody believed that

00:18:08.200 so juana's rumored lover was a man named beltran de la cueva which is an amazing name and he

00:18:14.140 sounds super hot and i hope he was um she gave birth to a daughter which of course everyone was

00:18:19.540 just like oh the whole point of this is we needed a son what are we going to do with a daughter

00:18:22.880 etc the usual stuff so she and enrique named the daughter juana after her mother and everybody

00:18:30.700 started calling the baby Juana la Beltraneja, meaning basically Beltran's baby. Like they just

00:18:38.580 started calling the princess by the name of the guy who everyone thought was her father,

00:18:43.620 who was not the king. So if Enrique had been more of a popular king and less of a horrible human

00:18:48.200 being, maybe this nickname wouldn't have stuck. But he was a terrible king and a really useless 0.99

00:18:52.860 person. So even in history books, baby Juana is referred to as Juana la Beltraneja, but her father 0.88

00:18:59.840 was officially the king, which made her the new heir to the throne of Castile, which shoved

00:19:05.180 Isabella and Alfonso down to second and third in line. Enrique decided to let his half-siblings

00:19:11.240 stay. And I'm sure they were pretty happy about that, to stay in a place with like enough food

00:19:16.080 and clothes and not ghosts. And Isabella finally got to begin getting proper education from actual

00:19:25.060 teachers and not just ghosts. And it is here that Isabella's extreme intelligence started to

00:19:30.500 become more noticeable. She was brilliant in all of her studies, including science, math, religion,

00:19:35.200 and dancing. And she was also really interested in learning about politics and scheming. So the

00:19:41.000 politics of Castile and Portugal and were, there's just a lot of back and forth going on. Everybody

00:19:47.180 was always trying to take over the other kingdoms. So Isabella learned about how her half brother

00:19:52.460 Enrique was not a good king. She saw what he did that was bad and kind of learned like, okay,

00:19:57.480 you know, if I was monarch, maybe I'd do this different or that different. She learned about

00:20:01.760 how Portugal and other kingdoms were constantly trying to attack Castile. She also learned that

00:20:06.200 there was a strong faction who wanted to make her brother Alfonso the new heir instead of baby Juana.

00:20:12.540 Basically, Isabella laid low, paid attention and was super smart and sort of like a Sansa Stark 0.74

00:20:18.020 sort of way. Meanwhile, in the outside world, battles were fought and treaties were brokered

00:20:21.960 and eventually El Impotente agreed with the rebels that he named Alfonso as his heir,

00:20:27.420 but only if his half-brother married baby Juana. So, and before, like, so this is just like a

00:20:35.120 weird insetuous child marriage situation, but then you don't have to worry about it for too long

00:20:39.860 because Alfonso died under mysterious circumstances. Spoiler, everybody in this story

00:20:45.460 dies of mysterious circumstances because it's that sort of story. So Alfonso was now dead,

00:20:52.780 meaning that there were two potential heirs left for Enrique, his half sister, teenage brilliant

00:20:58.660 Isabella, or his potentially illegitimate baby daughter, Juana. Both girls had their own

00:21:03.480 supporters, none of whom cared about either of them as people, but mostly for what they represented.

00:21:08.860 Isabella's genetic profile was seen as preferable because nobody doubted who her parents had been,

00:21:14.100 whereas baby juana was tainted by association with her mother's crazy reputation and the fact

00:21:21.800 that she was maybe illegitimate and also everybody hated enrique who was her father so isabella knew 0.97

00:21:27.420 she had a chance here to seize power because there was no potential male heirs anywhere and 0.64

00:21:33.140 but she knew that she had to play her cards right so she'd gone from being a royal princess to living

00:21:37.600 in an abandoned ghost castle and she knew how quickly luck could change and she didn't want

00:21:41.520 to move until it was exactly the right time. But she was also a bit of a busy body and couldn't

00:21:46.420 just sit by while her half-brother ran around being a terrible king. She decided she had to

00:21:50.860 intervene for the good of the country that she wanted to take control over. So what she did is,

00:21:57.160 seeing as how the country of Castile was literally engaging in a civil war over who would inherit

00:22:01.260 from Enrique, Isabella took it upon herself to sort things out on her own. So she sat her half-brother

00:22:07.640 down a negotiating table and forced him to make a peace treaty with her so bear in mind at this

00:22:12.380 point she was 17 years old her half-brother Enrique was 43 and she is the one who had all

00:22:17.840 the power at that table because that is just how amazing and intense and smart and capable she was

00:22:23.980 so she proposed she got all of her supporters to stop fighting against Enrique if he named her 0.63

00:22:29.300 Isabella as his heir instead of his daughter Juana Enrique was like sure but you have to marry

00:22:35.020 someone I choose and Isabella was like okay but I can veto and you can't make me marry someone if

00:22:41.300 I don't want to and Enrico was like okay but you can't get married without my permission so it's

00:22:46.960 all just like loopholes loopholes they're both thinking of sneaky ways around all of these

00:22:50.860 conditions but they still shook hands that day and agreed to the term Isabella got her supporters to

00:22:55.720 stand down and the civil war was ended because of this 17 year old negotiator which is amazing

00:23:02.460 it was amazing like she got herself named heir so as a princess in late medieval europe the 0.95

00:23:08.260 question of isabella's marriage had been uh discussed by other people since basically the

00:23:13.900 day she was born her first betrothal had come about when she was six years old back in the

00:23:19.200 ghost castle and her child fiance had been a boy around her same age named prince ferdinand of

00:23:24.180 aragon one year later though this had all gone belly up due to various infighting and shenanigans

00:23:30.300 in fact as evidence that Ferdinand's family was just as sort of like messy and drama-filled as

00:23:36.600 Isabella's these failed marriage negotiations wound up with one of Ferdinand's relatives

00:23:40.680 thrown in jail for plotting to kill his own father so just bear in mind that every person

00:23:45.100 in this whole story is like really dramatic like everyone's always doing the most like it's very

00:23:50.460 much like if you watch Picard it's like a Romulan type situation everyone just like feels things

00:23:56.640 really intensely. And there's a lot of murder going on. And yet it's just the women who get

00:24:02.220 called crazy because misogyny. So shortly after 17-year-old Isabella signed the treaty with her 0.99

00:24:09.420 useless king brother, the king of Portugal contacted Enrique with a proposal of marriage

00:24:14.820 for Isabella. So his name, the king is King Afonso. So he was also very schemey and he kind 0.95

00:24:22.560 secretly worked back channels with Enrique on a double treaty that would marry 17-year-old

00:24:27.980 Isabella to him, King Afonso, who's 36. And at the same time, the same treaty said that baby

00:24:33.660 Juana, who is now four, so like toddler Juana, would marry Afonso's son, Juan, who was 13.

00:24:39.680 The end result of these proposed inter-family marriages would be that Isabella would wind up

00:24:43.760 Queen of Portugal, with Juana as the heir to both Portugal and Castile, I think. Effectively,

00:24:51.680 though, this arrangement would cut Isabella out of the entire line of succession for Castile

00:24:55.480 in a way. Isabella knew this was happening. She is in this situation and in many other situations,

00:25:02.780 much smarter than me. So I'll trust that this was a bad deal for her. So effectively, she was like,

00:25:08.300 remember when you said I could have veto power about who I would marry when we had the treaty?

00:25:12.040 So she refused to agree to these terms. And because she didn't trust her brother, she also

00:25:16.400 began working on her own secret plans to marry Ferdinand, her fiance from when she was six years

00:25:22.140 old. This part of the story is amazing. So what happens is there are so many stories about women

00:25:28.960 who run away to get secretly married, but this is the first one that I've come across with a bride

00:25:33.800 to be. She not only arranged for a secret sexy marriage, but she also arranged for a secret 0.56

00:25:40.200 papal dispensation. Like she secretly, she couldn't just secretly run off and elope. She had to get

00:25:46.260 the Pope to give a dispensation for the marriage. And she secretly managed to do that because she

00:25:50.960 is amazing. So she wasn't just secretly marrying some random noble. She's going to marry Prince

00:25:55.760 Ferdinand of Aragon and it had to be done legally. So no one could have any questions about

00:25:59.760 the marriage. So she was secretly exchanging messages with Ferdinand's father, the King of

00:26:04.560 Aragon, and also sending secret messages with the Pope because the situation or the issue was that

00:26:10.900 Isabella and Ferdinand were second cousins and they had to get permission from the Pope to get

00:26:14.480 married because of the family relationship. And while she was sorting that all out secretly with

00:26:20.760 the Pope, Enrique was still trying to find a way to make her marry King Afonso of Portugal. Like

00:26:27.480 he just wanted to get rid of her, but he wasn't very good at it. So if she wouldn't marry King

00:26:32.220 Afonso, he tried to arrange a marriage between her and a French prince named Charles, which

00:26:37.600 mean that he could ship Isabella off to France and out of his way, but he didn't know what he

00:26:42.560 was doing. Isabella was super smart. And here's what happened. So because Isabella and Ferdinand 1.00

00:26:48.140 couldn't straight up ask the Pope for dispensation for the marriage, because then the news might get

00:26:53.240 back to Enrique and he might try to stop them. So, but one of them knew someone who knew someone

00:26:58.440 who had access to the Pope's personal, personal stationary or something like that. And so they

00:27:03.300 acquired a forged letter from the previous Pope, like not the current Pope, but the previous Pope

00:27:08.620 who was dead, a man who had been dead for five years. And this false letter on the Pope's

00:27:13.760 stationery said, basically, Ferdinand can marry his second cousin or his third cousin. No big

00:27:17.740 deal. If in the future, this comes up. So they were good to go. So once the paperwork was all

00:27:22.320 in place, Isabella was like, hey, I'm just going to go pay tribute to my dead brother

00:27:26.380 and visit my mentally unstable mother back in the ghost castle. I'll be back in a bit. Bye. 0.62

00:27:33.700 and she left and everyone was like that sounds true so meanwhile Ferdinand left his castle

00:27:39.840 disguised as a servant and the two of them headed out to meet each other for a secret wedding

00:27:44.160 so I love this part of the story and these and I love the story because they're both just like

00:27:48.880 planned really well and we're both really smart and capable because these two were so smart and

00:27:52.860 their plan was so good they met up and got married immediately so Isabella was 18 Ferdinand was 17

00:27:57.940 and now they were married to each other officially. So the secret wedding was effectively a declaration

00:28:04.460 of war against Enrique. She'd broken the brother-sister treaty where she'd said that she

00:28:09.180 would let him choose her husband but in so doing she had landed herself in a powerful alliance with

00:28:14.340 Ferdinand's country of Aragon. Isabel and Ferdinand knew that to solidify everything they needed to

00:28:19.400 have an heir because that would just kind of make their case even stronger for why they should be in

00:28:24.560 charge of basically all of Spain. So his son would have been ideal, but their first child

00:28:29.160 was a daughter who they named Isabel, because every woman in the story is called Isabel or

00:28:34.340 Isabella. Enrique was super mad about the sneaky marriage. And so he amended his will to name

00:28:40.000 Juana his heir instead of Isabella. And Juana at this point was 12 years old and just like,

00:28:47.000 poor her. So remember her mother, also called Juana, just flashback. So Juana of Portugal,

00:28:54.180 the mom, had a reputation for being quote unquote crazy, which basically meant she didn't put up 1.00

00:28:58.740 with Enrique's bullshit. So he badmouthed her and then she took a lover and here we all are. 1.00

00:29:03.520 So eventually Enrique had her kicked out of his royal court and she was like,

00:29:07.280 is that supposed to be a punishment? Because like, great. And she just like peaced the hell

00:29:12.120 out of there. She went to stay with a bishop who was a friend of hers. And then she fell in love

00:29:16.520 with a bishop's sexy nephew, took him as her new lover, had two out of wedlock children with him

00:29:22.460 and was just living her best life. Good for her. Enrique, because of all this, had eventually

00:29:28.380 declared their marriage invalid and also divorced her, which might've been good for his self-esteem,

00:29:33.540 but it meant that their daughter Juana was now sort of illegitimate because if the marriage

00:29:39.020 had never been valid, then she was illegitimate. So that complicated things. So back to our story,

00:29:45.260 Juana is now 12 years old. So just two days after Enrique did us all a favor by finally dying,

00:29:51.100 but he had written in his will that juana would be his heir instead of isabella because he's a 1.00

00:29:57.200 petty bitch who lives for drama etc two days later isabella marched into segovia which is 1.00

00:30:03.300 where the royal court was and she pulled a coup like she just marched in a coup like she was just 1.00

00:30:09.980 here to usurp things and she did it via a parade so she was 23 years old at this time and she

00:30:15.600 literally paraded in a procession down the street wearing jewels and carrying a sword 0.68

00:30:19.120 and basically daring anyone to stop her from doing this.

00:30:22.240 No woman had ever taken over anything like this, ever.

00:30:25.660 And she was so impressed with the nobles

00:30:26.980 basically just let her become queen

00:30:28.620 because she was so terrifying and incredible. 0.79

00:30:30.980 Like she was grand marshal of her own coup parade

00:30:33.340 and she just kind of took over

00:30:35.320 despite what the king's will had said.

00:30:37.360 And part of her confidence here

00:30:39.640 comes from her belief that she was God's choice

00:30:42.840 to be in charge of Castile.

00:30:44.400 And so that sort of helped soothe the hurt feelings

00:30:46.520 of all the misogynists around her

00:30:48.080 who wouldn't normally support a woman in power.

00:30:50.620 But when the options were a 23-year-old parade-holding political genius 0.70

00:30:54.620 versus her 12-year-old possibly illegitimate half-niece,

00:30:57.900 Isabella seemed like the better of two options, 1.00

00:31:00.400 and she just took over anyway, so like, let's just let her.

00:31:03.220 So to complicate or maybe simplify things,

00:31:06.900 Juana, the mom, Juana of Portugal died at around this time too,

00:31:10.620 leaving her daughter Juana in her own sort of ghost castle underdog scenario.

00:31:15.480 but younger juana still had lots of powerful powerful supporters like the entire portuguese

00:31:21.480 royal family including a man you might remember from a few minutes ago from the same story king

00:31:27.760 afonso the one who had wanted to marry isabella in the first place but she didn't so his proposal

00:31:33.820 to marry isabella hadn't worked out and he now had his sights set on marrying juana and through

00:31:39.240 her taking over castile so just five months after isabella had been crowned queen alfonso and his

00:31:47.380 troops marched from portugal into castile and he seemingly picked up 12 year old juana and married

00:31:52.480 her and that just happened um so this was another marriage that was also marriage slash act of war

00:31:59.200 and for the next four years there was a war called the war of the castilian succession

00:32:04.860 on one side was Juana and Alfonso on the other side was Isabella and Ferdinand lives were lost

00:32:10.980 battles were fought four years passed and now it's 1476 and it's the Battle of Toro where the

00:32:16.960 whole war was ended when Ferdinand invented public relations stunts so here's the thing

00:32:22.020 neither side was sure who had won the Battle of Toro like they fought the battle everyone was

00:32:26.820 just like tired and exhausted a bunch of people were dead and everyone's just like wait who just

00:32:30.220 won. So Afonso's troops went back like, I guess we won. And Ferdinand went around spreading fake

00:32:37.480 news that he had won in a huge victory. And his fake news spread to some of Afonso's allies who

00:32:43.000 were like, oh, I guess we actually lost. Let's go home now to Portugal or whatever. And so many of

00:32:48.340 Afonso's troops mistakenly left because of these rumors that Ferdinand's side ended up actually

00:32:53.840 winning. So it was a victory for mind games and strategy. And it wound up with Juana and Afonso

00:32:59.380 heading back to Portugal where they stayed basically for the time being. Back on the home

00:33:04.240 front, Isabella was busy with a parallel PR stunt. In front of witnesses, she had her daughter 1.00

00:33:10.060 Isabella. Her daughter Isabel officially declared to be the heir to the crown of Castile. So not

00:33:14.980 only was Isabella herself the queen, by naming her daughter her heir, she was basically swearing

00:33:19.580 herself in as queen at the same time. So both Isabella and Ferdinand were just really good

00:33:24.640 at this sort of thing using like mind games and just like confidence to just will themselves into

00:33:31.120 the positions they wanted to be in. And they were just so like self-assured about it. Everyone was

00:33:35.300 like, that seems true. I guess that's what happened. He won that battle. She's the queen.

00:33:39.600 Here we are. Okay, moving on. So the team up wasn't just Ferdinand being a warrior and Isabella being

00:33:45.280 a political mastermind because Isabella was also a literal warrior queen slash continues to be a

00:33:51.260 negotiating genius. For instance, later that same year, while Ferdinand was off fighting like

00:33:56.140 whoever, other enemies, a rebellion broke out against the pair of them. And Isabella was like,

00:34:00.880 well, I'm just going to go and quash this. And all of her male advisors were like, but what if

00:34:04.580 you just stayed home and did like women things like sewing and raising your baby daughter? And 1.00

00:34:10.500 she was like, so I can't hear you. I'm busy running off on a horse to single-handedly negotiate this

00:34:15.380 all. And that's what she did. So she just negotiated with the rebels. The rebels were like,

00:34:19.880 oh you know what we're not against you anymore we support you end of rebellion like she'd been

00:34:25.360 negotiating peace treaties since she was a teenager and could outsmart anyone like her mediation 0.99

00:34:30.240 skills was just like amazing so she was a political mastermind had married a man who seemed to be her

00:34:35.660 true equal in terms of scheming and ambition had given birth to a daughter and heir had driven her 1.00

00:34:40.540 tween half-knees back to Portugal what more was left to solidify her place as queen well basically 0.82

00:34:46.340 because of patriarchy and misogyny, she still needed to have a son. Like having a woman queen 1.00

00:34:52.660 who had a daughter was just like not quite enough for everyone to be like super comfortable with the 0.70

00:34:58.500 whole situation. But lo and behold, in 1478, she gave birth to a son who was named Juan,

00:35:04.220 Prince of Astorias. With this baby boy now supplanting Isabel as heir, there was really

00:35:09.400 no argument to be made about why she shouldn't be in charge of literally everything. She had

00:35:13.800 the pedigree, she had the sun, she had the record of military victories, she had charisma and

00:35:19.180 intelligence, and she was just getting started. And now for a quick advertising break.

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00:36:28.040 realms of peril and glory explore the mechanically magical vistas of veil

00:36:34.860 The paranormal mysteries of liminal London

00:36:38.980 And the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg

00:36:43.940 Be awed by our incredible guests

00:36:47.140 From familiar shows like Oxventure and No Rolls Barred

00:36:51.820 Search realms of peril and glory to find out more

00:36:55.960 The war is over and both sides lost

00:37:03.000 Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, and armies scattered like bones in the dust.

00:37:08.620 Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.

00:37:16.120 But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.

00:37:20.400 This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.

00:37:23.880 Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.

00:37:29.720 This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make.

00:37:37.380 This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.

00:37:42.020 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.

00:37:52.820 See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

00:37:59.720 and we're back so what happens next so this is where she stops being underdog this is where

00:38:08.040 she's like we're getting into like and now she's in charge of stuff and what's that going to look

00:38:12.960 like spoiler genocide so Isabella and Ferdinand at this point are officially co-monarchs of both

00:38:19.520 the huge kingdom of Castile and the smaller but important Aragon they were truly an equal pairing

00:38:25.000 so Isabella was given the same level of respect and responsibility as her husband it wasn't a

00:38:29.540 thing where it's like, that's the king and that's his wife. We'll call her the queen. They're like

00:38:32.640 co-monarchs. And this was the first time in Western history that a woman actively ruled a 1.00

00:38:38.580 country. This was before Elizabeth I. This was before Catherine the Great. This was 300 years 0.94

00:38:44.440 after Matilda. There had been women who had ruled like kingdoms or like they'd been duchesses. Women 0.98

00:38:51.140 had been in charge of stuff, but she was like actively a reigning monarch. So she and Ferdinand 0.99

00:38:56.860 were both reigning it wasn't just the husband of or the wife of so when Isabella 23 years old and 0.99

00:39:03.620 small she's like a small like person with sort of like red goldish hair when she paraded down the

00:39:08.460 street with a giant sword and declared herself queen everyone was kind of like okay but by the 0.89

00:39:12.520 middle of her 30-year reign those same people were like Isabella is the greatest human being

00:39:17.300 the world has ever seen at least in the past 500 years she is we worship her basically so we're

00:39:23.520 going to look now at what made her what she was like as a queen and what made her such a significant

00:39:28.700 figure so first of all you remember when she was hanging around the castle and just paying

00:39:33.540 attention to stuff and seeing like oh this is why my half-brother is like a terrible king and here's

00:39:38.200 what i would do differently so she started implementing the stuff she figured out during

00:39:41.900 her time sansa starking it so she was able to turn around castile's finances through her careful and

00:39:47.200 meticulous leadership the past two kings so enrique and also her father who had been the 0.94

00:39:52.700 puppet of his evil pal who is this guy called del luna her father had been like a shitty king 0.94

00:39:58.140 her half-brother had been a shitty king um they'd been like literally awful at the job she inherited 0.99

00:40:03.500 a country that was in massive amounts of debt due to their financial mismanagement 1.00

00:40:07.180 including enrique's idiotic decision to his short-sighted decision to increase the country's 0.99

00:40:14.360 money by just like making more coins that never works that that never works like that never work 0.99

00:40:20.320 So basically, Isabel had numerous ideas about how to salvage this particular situation,

00:40:26.920 like, for instance, putting an end to excess coin manufacturing and also forcing nobles 0.92

00:40:31.360 to pay off their debts to the crown.

00:40:33.200 So the ongoing war between Castile and Portugal had also been putting too much pressure on

00:40:37.480 the country's budget.

00:40:38.520 So she used her brilliant strategic mind to put an end to this war with a number of 0.99

00:40:42.440 peace treaties.

00:40:43.600 Among the terms of these treaties was Portugal's agreement that Juana, remember her?

00:40:48.220 I feel so badly for her.

00:40:49.740 She just like didn't have it. So Juana would be confined to a convent for the rest of her life and forced to do lots of compulsory prayers, which is like a weirdly specific punishment. 0.80

00:40:59.840 But it's kind of a hint at the way that Isabella would sort of use piety and religion as sort of a punishment in other things she would do.

00:41:09.600 So another terrible thing about the reigns of Enrique and their father was that criminals had never really been tracked down or punished in any sort of organized manner.

00:41:18.400 And this kind of made sense because the country's laws had never actually been written down.

00:41:22.320 So Isabella hired a scholar to write out an eight volume set of all of the laws.

00:41:27.960 She saw herself as the divinely appointed arbiter of all that was good and holy.

00:41:32.160 So again, like she's so smart.

00:41:33.480 She's so capable.

00:41:34.700 And she, if you asked her, she would be like, well, this is because God put me here.

00:41:38.140 Like I'm a brilliant genius because of God.

00:41:41.140 And so that's part of where her confidence came from.

00:41:43.180 That's part of where like she wasn't fazed by men doubting her.

00:41:46.220 but that's also why a lot of men wouldn't doubt her because they were like, well, God, put her

00:41:49.720 here. Like, okay. So she's determined to have a zero tolerance policy against criminality,

00:41:54.560 especially rape and sexual crimes. More rapists were tried and convicted during her reign than

00:41:59.560 ever before. But important note, Isabella considered homosexual acts in the same league

00:42:05.400 of unforgivable criminality as she did rape. And the punishment for men convicted of sodomy was 0.84

00:42:11.140 to be castrated and hanged, which was also the punishment for heterosexual rapists. 0.99

00:42:16.220 is that so basically consensual sodomy was given the same punishment as unconsensual 0.98

00:42:22.840 sexual activity between anyone so because you can't have medieval spanish law without medieval

00:42:28.000 spanish order isabella also invented the concept of a state-sanctioned police department up to this 0.80

00:42:33.580 point justice had been mostly meted out by ad hoc gangs of men called brotherhoods or hermandads

00:42:39.260 hermanadads so isabella called her new royally appointed squad la santa hermandad the holy

00:42:45.440 Brotherhood. Her predecessors had been largely under the thumb of powerful aristocrats who got

00:42:50.360 who themselves gave and accepted bribes for their own self-interest and they weren't really there

00:42:54.460 for the country they're just there for their own personal gain. Isabella and Ferdinand put an end

00:42:59.020 to this whole situation by positioning themselves as absolute monarchs. Now obviously being a

00:43:04.540 dictator isn't ideal most of the time all of the time I'm gonna say most of the time but this was

00:43:11.480 one situation where it was kind of their only option. The country's allegiances had been

00:43:16.460 scattered and the new monarchs were determined to coalesce all support behind them. So this is

00:43:21.860 what was best for them. But in several ways, it was also kind of best for the country. So this

00:43:28.300 meant they removed all power from the nobles, consolidating it all for themselves. Isabella

00:43:32.580 had the nobles move from active participants in government to more like audience members and 0.88

00:43:37.420 replace them with actual administrative staff, like lawyers who would perform the actual tasks

00:43:41.700 of running the country. So it was sort of like really modernizing things in a really effective

00:43:48.480 way. So they got a stronghold over the country just by having a vision and a plan and being a

00:43:53.480 really good team together. The pair of them, especially Isabella, also wound up being really

00:43:57.800 effective in other ways. But the first steps and some of the necessary first steps were to take a

00:44:02.680 struggling country and make it over into something actually productive. So in a sort of triage way,

00:44:08.620 once they gathered all control into their own hands and established law and order,

00:44:12.220 they were able to move on to other stuff, such as to unify the country under a single religion.

00:44:18.120 So Isabella and Fernand were so pious that the Pope bestowed upon them the name

00:44:23.160 the Catholic Monarchs, which is the way that people refer to them now sometimes.

00:44:27.560 so it becomes no surprise that the religion they want everyone to have was catholicism so this

00:44:34.080 wasn't just conversion for like to get the numbers up or whatever like isabella truly saw herself as

00:44:39.780 god's hand on earth like god had put her there like this is her job is to make everyone like

00:44:44.900 save everyone or whatever so her role was as the savior to all non-catholics so at the time that 0.77

00:44:51.020 she took over. Spain was populated not by only Catholics, but there's also a lot of Muslims and

00:44:57.760 the largest concentration of Jewish people of anywhere in Europe at that time. So did this 1.00

00:45:02.620 mean she ran around like a missionary converting people? No. What it meant is that she created

00:45:07.900 policies forcing non-Catholics to convert. And then she changed her mind and later decreed that

00:45:12.540 all non-Catholics were to be expelled from Spain without their money or possessions. And their

00:45:17.920 money or possessions were then given to Isabel and Ferdinand, which helped out financially.

00:45:22.660 So they were all expelled. It was a horrifying time for Jews and Muslims in Spain. And there

00:45:29.120 isn't this podcast's thesis, not really time to get into all the details of it, but I'll put some

00:45:35.660 article links in the show notes to really get into how horrendous this whole thing was and the effect

00:45:41.060 it had on world history. But basically it was genocidal. So simultaneous to the expulsion of

00:45:47.580 jews and muslims isabella and ferdinand were also hard at work conquering the remaining muslim

00:45:52.240 strongholds in their area which were run by a dynasty called the nasrid dynasty isabella was

00:45:58.680 actively involved with a multi-year campaign because again she had this military background

00:46:02.300 she'd military victories before so she helped to plan campaigns and accompany troops near the field

00:46:08.120 of battle using the newly increased treasury of money that they got from genocide reasons

00:46:15.160 she amassed a larger arsenal of weapons than any previous monarch had ever acquired including 0.99

00:46:20.260 cannons strong enough to destroy castle walls her tactics and arsenal forced all armies in europe

00:46:25.200 to change their battle strategies like this is like again we're just i'm just presenting some

00:46:29.640 facts here and the fact is like she was a really competent leader and some of her actions were

00:46:36.420 horrific and everyone around her kind of had to change their strategies against her because she

00:46:41.460 was so effective. The final stronghold of the Nasserid empire was Granada, which finally 0.98

00:46:47.220 surrendered to the Catholic monarchs in 1492. Isabella and Ferdinand entered the city and were

00:46:52.560 ceremonially presented with the keys to the city. And so then they set out converting not only the

00:46:58.180 people, but the place itself. They reconsecrated the primary mosque into a Catholic church, for

00:47:02.920 instance. Their success in defeating Muslim expansion forever altered the global balance 1.00

00:47:08.560 of power forever internationally. So at this point, it had been like the global balance of 1.00

00:47:14.040 power, like Eastern areas, countries, kingdoms had been more powerful. And then because of her

00:47:20.920 actions, the West suddenly became more powerful. So Spain was becoming the first Western superpower,

00:47:26.820 paving the way for the domination of France and then England, and then some of the colonies

00:47:30.860 on the world stage. And we're still dealing with that world order today. So Isabel and Ferdinand

00:47:36.640 had achieved massive success in their plans to consolidate the various parts of spain into a

00:47:41.020 single empire with themselves as supreme rulers rather than spreading themselves to the east 0.80

00:47:46.860 like to like spreading spain more east isabella isabel's interest was piqued by a persistent

00:47:53.300 italian adventurer who kept visiting his name is christopher corombo or his anglicized name

00:47:59.740 is better known as christopher columbus and he was just this guy who was like hey like i want to go

00:48:04.300 to the west i think there might be stuff there and she was finally like oh fine so he approached

00:48:08.420 the catholic monarchs numerous times for financial support for his goal to voyage across the atlantic

00:48:12.800 to find new trade routes to the indies but um they kept saying no he only he so he kept like

00:48:19.020 dropping his price of how much he needed and finally it was cheap enough that isabella

00:48:22.320 found it acceptable and so she reappropriated the money seized from the expelled jewish people and

00:48:27.960 Muslims to fund this trip. So, okay. So Christopher Columbus, his actions in North America are fairly 0.93

00:48:34.880 well known. And in case you weren't sure how truly awful he was and the things he perpetrated were so

00:48:40.000 awful, I'll put some more links to a few things in the show notes as well. Because again, that's

00:48:45.600 a whole other topic, but worth reading about for sure. I don't feel personally capable of speaking

00:48:53.020 to it in the, to the extent it needs to be spoken about, but I will put some links in the show notes.

00:48:58.460 So what's one thing that's interesting about this whole scenario is that Isabella was never

00:49:03.940 comfortable with the idea of enslaving or mistreating the indigenous people of the

00:49:08.020 Americas. This was partially because she viewed Christopher Columbus's colonies as subsidiaries

00:49:14.240 of Castile, which made the indigenous people, she thought of them as Castilian subjects and

00:49:19.460 she was their monarch and the law of the land was that castilian subjects could not be enslaved

00:49:24.040 furthermore she was keen to convert the indigenous people to catholicism and to her catholics could

00:49:30.660 also not be enslaved but also like note to her she wasn't like a um civil rights um to her black

00:49:38.380 people captured during her conquest on the african continent could be enslaved it's just 0.99

00:49:42.420 like castilian subjects and catholics couldn't be enslaved but her desire to convert people to

00:49:48.680 Catholicism was not limited to the indigenous people of the Americas, they were still consistently

00:49:54.320 obsessed with ensuring that every single person living in Spain practiced the same religion they

00:49:58.740 did to the point that they began even mistrusting people who claimed to be Catholic. Because like,

00:50:03.580 it makes sense to me if you're there and everyone's just, are you Catholic? Like you just start being 1.00

00:50:06.620 like, yeah, I'm Catholic. Like, but Isabel and Ferdinand were like, but are they, are they Catholic

00:50:10.400 enough? So they wanted to build a country that was entirely Catholics and all of whom fully

00:50:17.320 supported them so like a full-on dictatorship situation and so that's why they founded a royal 0.84

00:50:22.580 inquisition aka the spanish inquisition they weren't the first people to do something like

00:50:28.220 this but they were among the most successful at it by which i mean they captured and killed more

00:50:33.480 people than most other inquisitions did i will put a link to that in the show notes as well

00:50:39.840 just this this is what i was talking about like at first it's like easy to cheer for this person

00:50:44.180 And now she's actually getting a lot of stuff done. And it's just like the global implications

00:50:49.040 of what she did are quite extreme. So Isabella's religious fervor was not just limited to just her

00:50:54.980 subjects. She applied similar high standards to her children. So, um, including some problematic

00:51:02.380 slash abusive methods. Um, and so it is in her home life that Isabella found herself, like she

00:51:08.320 was so savvy and so competent and so ruthless and so successful at her political stuff. But it was

00:51:14.800 at her home life where she wasn't able to control things quite as much because guess what? Her

00:51:19.380 children inherited her strong emotions and strong force of personality. So Isabel and Ferdinand had

00:51:26.020 five children. Her oldest daughter was also called Isabel, her son Juan, Prince of Asturias,

00:51:31.700 Juana of Castile and Maria of Aragon and Catherine of Aragon. Yes, that's right. The first wife of

00:51:39.520 Henry VIII was the youngest child of Isabella of Castile, which puts her whole thing in context

00:51:46.640 too, I think, in terms of her strong force of personality. So Isabella ensured that all her

00:51:51.960 children were provided with extensive education. She hired humanists as tutors. So education was 0.51

00:51:57.680 important to her even for girls which her daughter Catherine of Aragon would also felt was really

00:52:04.780 important to the point so that Isabella's granddaughter Mary the First of England was

00:52:08.380 also very well educated as well it was not the standard it had not been standard for children

00:52:12.860 to be educated to this extent especially not girls but Isabella presented herself as a role

00:52:17.760 model to her daughters in other ways by bringing them with her when she accompanied troops into

00:52:22.140 battle. So it was really like, you know, women can do anything. Asterix, all the caveats I've 0.94

00:52:27.720 already said, but like, so she, she was raising her daughters in a way that a lot of women were 0.99

00:52:32.240 not being raised at the time and that affected her daughter's lives. So part of the reason why

00:52:37.100 she was so intent on getting them really well educated was because she herself, if you recall,

00:52:41.800 hadn't received much schooling in her childhood, like until she was age 11, she was in the ghost

00:52:45.740 castle, um, not really getting a lot of education. So it was really important for her to her that

00:52:51.240 her children were all taught basically everything possible. So languages, science, history, politics,

00:52:56.500 archery, dancing, music. Juan, the only son, was trained in how to become the new king,

00:53:01.400 while the girls learned skills about how to be a wife and mother alongside their other studies.

00:53:06.540 Isabella and Ferdinand ensured that their family would be impervious to criticism

00:53:10.080 by training the children to behave so perfectly and so catholically. Each of the children was

00:53:16.880 recorded as being both really accomplished really intelligent and also really gorgeous which is like

00:53:24.620 they were like if you look at the portraits like they have this gorgeous like red blonde hair the

00:53:28.360 same as their mother some of them uh the girls all seem to have inherited many of the personality 0.69

00:53:32.740 traits of their mother as they all wound up expressing um very stubborn personalities 0.56

00:53:37.580 alongside uh really resiliency and tenacity of all the children Isabella clashed the most with 0.95

00:53:44.720 her daughter Juana, perhaps because these two were more alike than the others, which is like,

00:53:49.780 isn't that how it always is with mothers and daughters? And we're going to learn more about

00:53:54.120 Juana perhaps next week. We'll see. One final part of Isabel and Ferdinand's strategy for complete

00:53:59.920 domination of Spain slash the Western world was to connect their dynasty with royal families in

00:54:05.640 other countries. So they arranged the best possible matches for each of their children.

00:54:10.040 And Isabel was shipped off to marry the Portuguese king, who don't worry, not Afonso.

00:54:15.520 He's not the king anymore.

00:54:17.240 While Juan and Juana were each married off to a Habsburg royal.

00:54:22.040 Isabel's husband died suddenly at a very young age, after which Isabel begged to be allowed

00:54:26.620 to remain unmarried and to live life as a nun because this whole family was like really

00:54:31.420 Catholic.

00:54:32.320 But Isabel was needed to help firm up another, the same alliance with Portugal.

00:54:36.680 And so Isabella sent her daughter, Isabelle, back to marry the new Portuguese king.

00:54:41.980 Isabelle died in childbirth a year later, and her baby son passed away shortly after that as well.

00:54:48.140 And around this time as well, Juan, the only son in the family, and Isabella had always favored him, referring to him as her angel, also died.

00:54:56.080 So this meant, much to Isabella's grief and frustration, if you're going chronologically, that her least favorite daughter, Juana, was suddenly and unexpectedly heir to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, because that was it.

00:55:11.540 Her youngest daughters, so Juana was the oldest daughter, there's two other sisters, Maria and Catherine.

00:55:16.040 So Maria and Catherine were sent off for their own politically advantageous marriages. Maria was to be the second wife to her sister Isabel's widower, the king of Portugal, which is just like, blah. So like, Isabel married the king of Portugal, who dies, then she married the new king of Portugal, then she died. Then that second king of Portugal married her sister Maria, which is just like, blah. So, blah.

00:55:39.200 um and Catherine was sent off to marry Arthur the crown prince of England this did not go

00:55:45.720 particularly easily for Catherine which is what um that's the whole Henry VIII situation and we'll

00:55:52.240 talk about that some other time but basically the children were married off to other countries that

00:55:57.320 Spain wanted to ally with but um these deaths in quick succession Isabel, Isabel's baby son and

00:56:03.980 then Juan combined with the heartbreak of having all of her children almost simultaneously move

00:56:08.880 way to other countries where she never see them again. Severely affected Isabella's health,

00:56:12.780 including her mental health. Remember, she grew up with the trauma and her mother had

00:56:19.060 some psychological problems. Like there's some undealt with trauma in her life, kind of clearly.

00:56:25.640 So as she had when she was a girl in the ghost castle, Isabella turned to prayer and fasting

00:56:30.720 for strength. But this weakened her constitution because she wasn't eating enough. She still used

00:56:36.320 to come to the effects of dropsy, which I think is an oldie time word for, it's basically

00:56:43.320 swelling. I think it has something to do with heart conditions. Anyway, just like she wasn't

00:56:50.480 eating. She's not doing well. It was the 15th century. Things weren't great, but she kept

00:56:54.740 enough wits about her to be able to compose her will. So the document is part of advice and

00:57:00.160 instruction to Ferdinand and Ferdinand would continue on being the solo monarch for another

00:57:05.320 12 years and it's also instructions for their successors so she her will is sort of like a

00:57:11.380 manifesto almost so she charges her successors to remain vigilant against the devil and his minions

00:57:16.560 which included the muslim and jewish people as well as to continue to work to conquer the african

00:57:22.240 continent and to continue the inquisition she's just like this is what's important to me she also

00:57:27.160 noted in her will her desire for the indigenous people of the american colonies to be treated

00:57:32.020 fairly and not to be abused. And Isabella I died aged 53 at the Medina del Campo Royal Palace,

00:57:40.820 where she had been living bedridden for her final months. This was in 1504. Her tomb is in Granada,

00:57:46.840 the site of one of her greatest military and political victories. When Fernand died, he was

00:57:51.500 buried next to her. And when their daughter Juana died 55 years later, she was buried there as well

00:58:00.160 as well as was oh sorry Juana her daughter Juana not Juana the Portugal stuck in the convent having

00:58:07.200 to do prayers all the time person and Isabel's dead baby son Miguel was also buried there so a

00:58:11.760 little family tomb situation so just to like wrap up her story before we get into the whole scoring

00:58:18.240 situation is that Isabel of Castile her life her reign forever changed the course of world history

00:58:24.120 like other people in the same place in the same time might have done some of the same stuff but

00:58:27.740 I don't know if anyone could have accomplished as much as she did. Again, I'm not calling the

00:58:32.160 things she did good. I'm just saying that they were accomplishments for her, for what she wanted

00:58:37.720 to do, to have happen. She founded the first cross-Atlantic colonial empire, creating a

00:58:43.860 template that was used later by both the French and the English. Her successes in the wars against

00:58:48.300 Muslim areas paved the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion through most of 0.84

00:58:53.000 Western Europe. She was also the first European woman to be recognized as a monarch in her own

00:58:57.240 right, changing the word queen to mean woman who rules rather than just the woman married to the

00:59:03.080 king. There are echoes of her story in the character arc of Daenerys Targaryen on Game of

00:59:07.940 Thrones, including the fact that Daenerys was also narcissistic and became a dictator and killed a

00:59:16.640 lot of people. But basically, like Isabella, Daenerys went from a forgotten, sideline young

00:59:21.640 woman to an ambitious would-be queen to a seemingly power-mad colonizer. Isabella's

00:59:26.240 legacy is complex and impossible to label as entirely positive or entirely negative i mean

00:59:32.180 nothing is really it's hard to find something that you can say is entirely positive or entirely

00:59:36.660 negative um but so i'm just trying to present like here's the facts like here's what she did

00:59:41.580 and some of it was impressive some of it is horrendous all of it is significant and truly

00:59:50.980 changed world history so hers is one of the most consequential and important reigns in european

00:59:57.240 history and it's ridiculous but now we're going to score her on our scandalous scale which i mean

01:00:03.580 it's hard for me to quantify the purpose of the scandalous scale but it's mostly just it's a nice

01:00:08.220 way to wrap up each episode and it's a way to sort of measure the different women who are talking

01:00:12.660 about um not saying who is better than who or but just more kind of like where do they all stack up

01:00:19.400 if we're putting them on a list and measuring them in these various different ways so the first

01:00:24.560 category oh my cat is here being like real friendly with her claws I don't know Isabella

01:00:30.240 had other people had this pet spent all been brainwashed by enzymes and cat poo to worship

01:00:35.540 anyway um so the first category is scandalousness and I'm just giving her a zero a zero have I ever

01:00:44.500 given everyone a zero I don't I don't think I've ever given someone a zero in scandalousness but

01:00:49.340 she's, I feel like the ghost of Isabella of Castile would come and like strike me down if

01:00:53.880 I suggested anything about her life was scandalous. You know what? No, I'm going to

01:00:57.780 give her a two, a two for scandalousness because the whole running away, secretly marrying situation. 1.00

01:01:04.940 Scheminess. Now for a lot of the women we've been looking at, this is meant sort of like behind the 1.00

01:01:09.720 scenes. How did they, you know, orchestrate a murder or whatever. But for Isabella, I think 1.00

01:01:15.420 it's more just like planning. Did she come up with plans? Were those plans effective? And I think I

01:01:21.160 kind of need to give her, her plans were good. She had a plan to take over all of Castile, which 0.63

01:01:28.140 she did. She had a plan to also have Aragon taken over by Mary Ferdinand, which she did. 0.89

01:01:33.360 She had numerous military plans. I think her scheminess is, I mean, even outside of the like 0.85

01:01:41.600 genocide of it all she came up with plans the plans went well for her 10 for scheminess i think

01:01:49.360 significance i think also has to be a 10 i would give her like 10 plus if i could because the 1.00

01:01:56.180 significance of her reign like even the people who we have higher up on the scandalous scale like 0.78

01:02:01.100 agrippina matilda like they even cleopatra like they did stuff that mattered a lot at the time

01:02:07.740 but isabel of castile is the first person who we've looked at who i think what she did

01:02:11.260 literally changed world history. Like we're still dealing with the effects of colonizing of Africa

01:02:19.340 and of the Americas and what happened with Jewish people and Muslims in Spain and like the East

01:02:27.320 versus the West. Like other people might have been monarchs at the same time. She happened to

01:02:32.440 be the person that was there. And she, with her scheminess, like just had these plans that just

01:02:36.720 did what she wanted them to. So significance is 10. And then this one is, so the sexism bonus.

01:02:43.700 I usually think to myself, like it can never be less than five because everybody is always

01:02:48.560 dealing with sexism. Once she became queen, and I think she was protected or sort of inoculated 0.98

01:02:54.120 from a lot of criticism, both by being married to Ferdinand. So there was a man that people could

01:02:59.440 think like, well, she's in charge, but also there's a man there. So it's like not quite so

01:03:03.080 threatening to people but the fact that she like the sexism that got in the way of her not being 0.79

01:03:08.740 named Enrique's heir to begin with um when her her brother was and the fact she had to kind of fight 1.00

01:03:15.400 to take over but then just fighting against a different woman slash girl I'm I'm gonna stick

01:03:21.440 to my guns I'm gonna give her a five because I feel like show me a person who hasn't had at least

01:03:26.780 of 5 out of 10 in sexism effect on their life. So that brings her total up to 527, which is 0.73

01:03:35.980 kind of right in the middle, which makes sense to me because this is a podcast where like we

01:03:40.740 prioritize scheminess and scandalousness and things like that. And so the people who are at

01:03:45.340 the top are the people who did scandalous type things combined with some significance type

01:03:51.320 things. And Isabella of Castile is significant, but she's not like, again, this is where you're

01:03:56.160 not, there's not a lot of, it's not like, there's not a lot of sexy movies and historical novels

01:04:02.200 like, ooh, Isabella Castile and like all the schemes she did. She was like a military leader 0.97

01:04:06.080 and she's an effective military leader, but not the sort of person that's going to get to the top 0.99

01:04:10.680 based on what we're scoring on here on Vulgar History. So again, I'm going to put like a whole

01:04:15.660 lot of links in the show notes for this because there's a lot of important context that I breezed

01:04:21.780 over pretty quickly in the aim of giving you a whole big picture view of her life from beginning

01:04:28.820 to end and but that context is really crucial to glean and to really appreciate the effect that

01:04:36.120 this woman had on all of world history i mean she's one of the most significant not just women

01:04:41.920 but like people of any gender to have ever lived like just the stuff and that's partially like she

01:04:49.240 could have been the same personality the same person with the same skills and in a different

01:04:53.380 situation and she wouldn't have done all these things it's like she is it was like a combination

01:04:58.120 of who she was her skills um and just the situation she was in and her ability to make

01:05:03.680 the best of it um and to win people over to her side so so yeah this is vulgar history my name is

01:05:10.600 ann foster um i have a couple so a couple little links you can look at first of all um if you want

01:05:17.800 to find more of my writing, including effectively a transcript of this podcast, just the two essays

01:05:23.460 I've written before about Isabelle of Castile. That's at annfosterwriter.com. This podcast,

01:05:29.420 we're on Instagram and Twitter at vulgarhistorypod on Instagram, vulgarhistory on Twitter. If you

01:05:35.200 want to email me, you can reach us at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com. If you want to

01:05:42.720 support this podcast um i'm on patreon at patreon.com slash ann foster writer i've also got

01:05:51.380 some merch um including from last week's episode a shirt that i find the most hilarious thing in

01:05:57.600 the world it's just like a plain white shirt and then it says in sort of oldie time font

01:06:01.320 like empress matilda in the snow because of how last time i talked about how she camouflaged all

01:06:07.080 in white and was hidden in the snow you can get that image on like a mug and a bag and all kinds

01:06:11.360 of different hilarious stuff that's a teespring.com slash stores slash vulgar history um if you're

01:06:17.880 interested in a book that i have to recommend to you there's a book called isabella the warrior

01:06:24.880 queen by kirsten downey that came out in 2015 that i think gives a really good sort of balanced

01:06:29.980 appraisal of her and her life there's also a book called isabella of castile europe's first great

01:06:35.100 Queen by Giles Tremlett which also both of them really do I think a fine job of balancing the

01:06:42.660 Isabella kind of the cool parts of her story with kind of the horrific effects of the things she did

01:06:50.420 without kind of like saying she was a bad person or she was a good person it's just kind of like

01:06:54.720 here's some facts and here's some information so both of those books I would recommend definitely

01:06:59.860 and also if you go to to the website bookshop.org i have an ongoing book list there i think it's

01:07:07.260 just called the book list is if you go to again it'll be in the show no thanks but it's bookshop.org

01:07:14.960 slash lists slash vulgar history recommends with dashes in between vulgar history and recommends

01:07:21.200 um and that's where you can find a lot of the books i've been reading um for researching for

01:07:25.500 the different podcast episodes and bookshop.org is a lovely site that helps support independent

01:07:30.720 bookstores. You can sort of tell them who's your local store and then the purchases you make can

01:07:34.360 go to help support them as well. Um, and then also if you are interested in audio books and

01:07:40.740 that sort of thing, um, if you're considering a subscription to audible, um, if you go to

01:07:46.640 audibletrial.com slash vulgar history, then you can get a free trial and some of that money brings

01:07:53.640 back to help support this little podcast project so I hope you're all keeping well wash your hands

01:07:59.280 don't touch your face stay inside and I'll talk to you next time

01:08:03.680 so just to remind you about the exciting things that are coming up

01:08:11.820 very soon in the sense of next week I guess so I'm going to be in Minneapolis to do this

01:08:19.780 event with Alison Epstein at Majors and Quinn bookstore in Uptown, Minneapolis on Tuesday,

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01:08:30.040 The link to that, just go to Majors and Quinn website events, or just click on the link in

01:08:34.660 the show notes of this episode you're listening to right now. And then the day after that,

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01:09:05.920 johnson friend of the podcast lives there too and many of you as well so i'm looking forward to that

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01:14:12.840 I'm at vulgarhistorypod. Next week, we're going to be revisiting another classic episode as

01:14:18.660 alluded to in this one um it's going to be one of the daughters of isabella of castile and what her 0.98

01:14:25.080 trajectory was like and until next time um keep your pants on and your tits out and i'll see you 1.00

01:14:32.520 soon minneapolis vulgar history is researched written and hosted by ann foster that's me 0.99

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Vulgar History - February 26, 2025

Women Leaders, part 6： Genocidal Warrior Queen, Isabella I (Rerelease)

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