The advantage a reader unfamiliar with the subject of a biography has is that he/she can approach the subject with few, if any, preconceived notions. I knew that Isabella was the mother of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of the famously non-uxorious King Henry VIII of England; and that she launched Columbus sailing 'the ocean blue in 1492'. Given the characterization of the book elsewhere, I had suspected that Kirstin Downey's book might be something of a feminist screed (not that there's anything wrong with that), but this was not the case. Downey has written a fascinating book that is feminist, but only insofar as the life of Isabella was female. She was, in fact, one of the pivotal characters of world history.
The world of Isabella was dangerous, complex, and violent. She led a somewhat unsettled childhood and grew up in the shadow of her elder half-brother King Enrique of Castile. At his death, the succession was unclear but Isabella seized the throne in her own right. Marrying Ferdinand of Aragon, Isabella and her husband completed the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula, an accomplishment that threw Light on Isabella's supreme worth as a ruler. While Ferdinand commanded the Spanish army, Isabella worked tirelessly to supply her husband with troops, armaments, food, and medical supplies. What is starkly clear, and what is proved by Ferdinand's sorry record as sole ruler after Isabella's death, was that the military successes of Ferdinand were only made possible by the efforts of his queen. No need for feminist special pleading here -- the facts speak for themselves.
It' is readily apparent that a biography of Isabella could easily turn into a multi-volume monument. The European discovery of the Americas, the Inquisition, the continual threat from the Ottoman Turks, Castile-Aragon's relationship with the Portuguese, and European politics in general -- particularly the predations of the French; each of these topics would require at least one book to explicate. Downey's singular triumph is to distill all this into an easy read. Not easy to plumb, but easy in the sense that the book flows quite nicely. It reads like a novel.
The chapter dealing with the first voyages of Columbus is very lucid and Downey makes it clear that the impetus for exploration came from Isabella as Queen of Castile. This was her enterprise, she funded it, and Ferdinand just wasn't that interested. And here it is important to emphasize that Isabella was, first and foremost, Queen of Castile. Ferdinand was not allowed to interfere in her rule in Castile. She and her husband single-mindedly fought the Muslim rulers in southern Iberia, but it was Isabella who controlled everything else when it came to the interests of HER kingdom. This is a point that has been glossed over for 500 years and it bears re-emphasizing.
Downey handles the Inquisition with kid gloves. She finds Isabella culpable for its genesis and subsequent horrors of its execution but she tempers her criticism with something like the standard device of pointing out the dangers of anachronistic finger-pointing. Still Downey does not shy away from describing the injustices served to Muslims, Jews, and Conversos. Downey also does not refrain from telling the sorry tale of Isabella and Ferdinand reneging on their promises to let the Muslims and Jews practice their religions in perpetuity, and that the Conversos would not be subjected to the prying eyes of the inquisitors.
Downey's feminist slant is rightly deployed to prove convincingly that her daughter Juana (later dubbed La Loca) was the victim of bad press. Isabella worked tirelessly to find suitable and advantageous marriages for her children. She married off her daughter Juana to Philip of Austria and, in a sort of two for one deal, acquired Philip's sister Margaret for Prince Juan, heir to the throne of Castile. Philip and Margaret were the children of Maximilian who became the Holy Roman Emperor. Excellent matches, politically, but Juan died young and Juana's husband turned out to be a classic example of spousal abuse toward Juana. It is too complicated to go into detail here, but it appears more than likely that the abuse heaped on Juana led to her being sequestered and being declared insane (after Isabella's death). Downey's evidence to the contrary is persuasive but the clincher for me was that when Juana and Philip were forced to land in England on their way to claim the throne of Castile, no less a personage than King Henry VII of England (future father-in-law of Isabella's daughter Catherine) deemed Juana to be quite sane and self-possessed. If anyone could read people it was Henry VII, who had spent his life reading people and their motives.
There is so much more to this fascinating book. Isabella's ups and downs with Rodrigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI (and father of the even more infamous Cesare), her relations with the Portuguese monarchy and, above all, her constant fretting about the aims of the Ottoman sultan du jour would all make for further books. If anything, though, Downey's book is a model of concision and an excellent launching pad for further reading. There are extensive end notes, a good bibliography, and a useful index. The only things missing are genealogies of the Castilian and Aragonese monarchies (and one of the concurrent Portuguese monarchy would have been welcome). Isabella's reign echoes down the centuries. Except for Brazil and the Guayanas, Spanish is the dominant language of South America and Central America, the Roman Catholic Church paid dearly for its excesses during the Spanish Civil War, and far away in the Middle East some would-be caliph dreams of regaining Al Andalus for the Prophet.
A great read.
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Isabella the Warrior Queen blends well with Tequilla & Calamara ... :-)
I am enjoying this book. BUT … I have always been a history buff and did not know a lot about Isabella. FYI … this is not a historical novel. However, it is an easy read. Started reading during happy hour at a very good Cajun seafood restaurant in Houston, TX.
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2015
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- Marie RaymondeReviewed in Canada on September 7, 2017
A must read. Both accurate and thrilling.
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