Fernando II de Aragón
Born on 10 March 1452 in Sos, in the northwest of the province of Zaragoza in Aragon; died on 23 January 1516 in Madrigalejo. Fernando was king of Aragon, Castile, Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, and Navarre. From 1506 until his death in 1516, he served as regent of the Crown of Castile, due to the incapacity of his daughter Juana to rule following the death of her husband, Felipe el Hermoso. Fernando and his wife Isabel were the first monarchs to rule both Castile and Aragon, and they became known as the Catholic Monarchs and the Kings of Spain.
He was a son of Juan II of Aragon, known as el Grande or Juan sin Fe, and his second wife, Juana Enriquez. He was born on Aragonese territory according to the wishes of his mother, while she was in Navarre due to the disputes between her stepson Carlos and her husband Juan. She moved to Sos in Aragon, just across the border, to give birth.
When he was only six years old, he received from his father the titles Duke of Montblanch — a title associated with royal succession — and Count of Ribagorza, a now-defunct county in the Pyrenees. After the death of his half-brother, Carlos de Viana, he became heir to the Aragonese crown.
He married Isabel on 18 October 1469, in the residence of Juan Vivero in Valladolid. The marriage had to be secretly arranged because the required Papal bull had not yet been issued and Enrique IV had not given his consent. The Papal bull was essential due to the close kinship between Isabel and Fernando, while Enrique’s approval was required under the terms negotiated at Guisando in 1468: Isabel was to marry whomever the king selected, though she retained the right to refuse his choice. Without Enrique’s consent, Isabel risked losing her claim to the throne.
Through his marriage to Isabel and following the death of Enrique IV, Isabel and Fernando became Queen and King of Castile, over which Fernando ruled iure uxoris—by right of his wife. In 1479, upon the death of his father, Fernando also became King of Aragon, where Isabel co-ruled alongside him. Their marriage was, of course, politically motivated. Fernando caused Isabel great sorrow through frequent infidelities with various women. Nevertheless, it is widely acknowledged that their relationship was marked by profound and mutual love. Together, Fernando and Isabel had six children: Isabel (1470), Juan (1478), Juana (1479), Maria (1482), Catalina (1485), and a son who was stillborn in 1475.
During his marriage to Isabel, Fernando fathered four additional children with four different women:
- Alonso (1471), with Aldonza Ruiz de Ivorra, a Catalan noblewoman from Cervera
- Juana Maria de Aragón (1471), with Juana Nicolás, a commoner with whom he had a brief encounter in the town of Tárrega
- Maria Esperanza (1477), with Toda de Larrea, a noblewoman from Biscay
- María Blanca (1483), with Juana Pereira, a noblewoman from Portugal
Fernando’s life was largely defined by a series of military campaigns. After the death of Enrique IV, a war broke out between supporters of the Catholic Monarchs and those of Juana la Beltraneja: the Castilian War of Succession (1475–1479). This conflict ended with the Treaty of Alcáçovas, in which Isabel and Fernando were recognized as monarchs of Castile in exchange for certain concessions to Portugal. With France—long a traditional enemy of Aragon—there were battles over the border regions of Cerdanya and Roussillon. These territories had been annexed by France in 1463 and were recovered in 1493 through the Treaty of Barcelona. During the Reconquista, the campaign to conquer the last Moorish stronghold from 1482 to 1494, Fernando demonstrated his strategic prowess by bringing the Kingdom of Granada under Spanish control. In Italy, he achieved success by expelling the French from Naples in 1505 with an army led by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, known as El Gran Capitán, thereby securing Naples as Aragonese territory.
