Isabella's wedding needed a disguised groom and a permit from a dead pope
In October 1469 Ferdinand of Aragon crossed Castile disguised as a servant while Isabella slipped away from court on the pretext of visiting her brother's tomb. Because they were second cousins, they needed papal permission, so they produced a bull supposedly signed by Pius II, who had died five years earlier. Spain's future rested on that marriage.
Isabella was born on 22 April 1451 in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, daughter of King John II of Castile. When he died in 1454 her half-brother became Henry IV, and she, her younger brother Alfonso and their mother lived in shabby, cash-strapped conditions in Arévalo, since Henry ignored their father's will. Later brought to court at Segovia, she learned an astonishing range of skills, from chess, falconry and archery to rhetoric, French, Italian, embroidery and philosophy, but was rarely allowed to leave.
Castile's nobles turned on Henry, spreading rumours that his daughter Joanna was really the child of a royal favourite, Beltrán de la Cueva. In 1465 rebels crowned Alfonso as a rival king in a mock deposition outside Ávila. When Alfonso died at fourteen in 1468, possibly poisoned, the rebels asked Isabella to take up his cause. She preferred a deal: at Toros de Guisando Henry named her his heir, and promised never to force a husband on her.
He tried anyway. Suitors included Afonso V of Portugal and the French king's brother; an earlier match with the powerful Pedro Girón ended only because he fell ill and died on his way to meet her. Isabella held out for Ferdinand, her very first betrothed, whom she married in Valladolid the day after their reunion. Henry furiously disinherited her, but she became queen in 1474 and won the succession war that followed.
Together Isabella and Ferdinand were the first rulers called king and queen of Spain. She restructured government, curbed crime and cleared Henry's debts. Their reign completed the Reconquista, funded Columbus's 1492 voyage and launched the Spanish Empire, but it also set up the Spanish Inquisition and, through the Alhambra Decree, forced Jews out of Spain. She died on 26 November 1504; a process to beatify her opened in 1958.
Source: Isabella I of Castile
