Ever “more rigid and less tolerant” in her fanatical Catholicism, she unleashed the Inquisition as what Downey calls “a useful mechanism for rooting out all kinds of dissent.”Īs Isabella knew, there was but one way to power, and that was the expulsion of the Ottoman Turks, the “most powerful land force in Europe” whose “military operations were at the core of its existence.” Some would judge Isabella’s core little different.

By the end of her life, in 1504 - she was 53 - she could admit that she had “caused great calamities and depopulated towns, provinces and kingdoms” - but not with regret. Mounted on a white horse, she returned to the church she had just left and had herself crowned before a glittering entourage.įerdinand, who unaccountably signed a prenup limiting his power to that of prince consort, may have provided the nominal face of Spain’s monarchy, but it was Isabella who was ravenous for power. The funeral Mass of a ruler, who had oddly - a little too oddly - named no successor, was barely over before Isabella had replaced her mourning dress with a resplendent gown and jewels. With Ferdinand conveniently preoccupied elsewhere, in 1474, immediately upon the death of her brother, King Enrique, the 23-year-old Isabella rebounded from grief with astonishing alacrity. Her infamous, subzero sang-froid inspired her assumption of the Spanish throne in one of the smoothest, swiftest coups in European history. Instead, she used his weakness to her advantage, furthering her own career by handling whatever crises developed during his absences. But when Ferdinand’s adolescent lust soon gave way to what Isabella would discover was her young husband’s single heroic pursuit - adultery - she wasted no time brooding. In fact, Downey credits Isabella with instituting a “shift from medieval to modern management principles.”Īfter a series of botched betrothals, Isabella, 18, accepted the hand of Ferdinand of Aragon, 17. “Isabella: The Warrior Queen” follows Kirstin Downey’s 2009 “The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins - Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the Minimum Wage,” and if so immensely provocative a figure as Isabella seems an unlikely successor to Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, who quietly worked out of the public eye, the two women successfully maneuvered in an almost exclusively male world of politics. While Ferdinand of Aragon has always gotten first billing, Isabella of Castile was the driving force of 15th-century Spanish - and therefore European - politics.

Isabella by Kirstin Downey