Isabella: The Warrior Queen Paperback – November 10, 2015

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.

This is very extensive and detailed. As a lover of Spanish history, I appreciated the details and insights provided. Too much detail fora casual reader.

Queen Isabella, or Ysabel as she was in her day, was off the radar of this particular history buff for years. Its strange because if, as John Julius Norwich says, greatness is earned by the grandness of the decisions taken, then Isabella, who in the hispanic world is known as "Isabel la Catolica", should be called "Isabella the Great". Indeed she could comfortably stand with Constantine and Peter but probably she really be up there with Alexander, such was her importance in shaping the history(for better or worse) and indeed the world we live in today. What's great about this book is that Downey presents Isabella in her proper context and thats where the greatness of her subject becomes apparent. She look's beyond the Pyranees and across to Constantinople which fell to the most unstoppable force then known to the world - the Ottoman Turks.- when Isabella was just a girl. Indeed just a girl, from a lesser branch of the royal family living in a backwater, who really had no prospects of ever reigning. Her rise to power, being a woman, is in itself one of the most memorable stories in history, but it is her actions as Queen (some of which we will not like) which should merit our attention. Those actions, whether they be the conquest of Granada and the unification of Spain or the drive to send expolorers like Columbus west, were always made with a view on the Turks and her fears for the survival of western civilisation. It is clear that Isabella saw herself not just as a defender of catholicism in Spain, but as the inheritor of classical Greece and Rome and with a mission to recover what was lost, and go beyond especially after 1453. With her vision clear, the results show that she was also a brilliant manager, surrounding herself with some of the most illustrious men in spanish history: Talavera and Cisneros the clerics who reformed the spanish church and laid the groundwork for the counterreformation; Gonzalez de Cordoba the general who laid the foundations for spanish military superiority over the next century; Columbus whose messainic vision dovetailed with her and whelped her set up the first global empire, and finally the cunning but also unfaithful Ferdinand, her husband and king of Aragon and partner in crime. I should also add the Borgia pope who she kept in her pocket and duly awarded her half the world when she asked him. Maybe now we can beter understand the woman who on the one hand supported science and female education and on the other instigated the terror of the inquisition; the woman who demanded retribution to any conquistador who mistreated the native americans while harshly expelling jewish and muslim families who wouldnt convert. Enigmatic and enthralling, it is neverthless easy to get sidetracked with Isabella becuase she covers such a wide area. Downey nails her though. Five stars