Isabel La Catolica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays
Edited by David A. Boruchoff 
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
312 pages
Review by Wendy J. Dunn
Receives: 
“In truth, Aeneas was not so merciful as Virgil paints him, nor Ulysses so prudent as Homer describes him.” —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha (1)
[Isabel la Católica] is a cautionary tale about the emotion-stirring power of myth, symbol and belief. (2)
Isabel la Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays provides an extremely satisfying collection of thought-provoking essays, with many of them successfully achieving one of the book’s goals to examine “Isabel’s will, inspiration and agency in refashioning the political, social, cultural, and institutional landscape of her nation, with herself positioned as an icon.” (3)
Including thorough notes and translating many of the essays from the original Spanish, this small volume (just over 300 pages) allows the English reader access to “findings available only in scattered and hard to locate venues.” (4)
My main disappointment with this work stems from its limited scope in allowing us to see the human face of Isabel. Whilst providing tantalizing glimpses of Isabel’s domestic life, the curtain tends to comes down before we are given a chance to form a firm picture of Isabel’s roles as mother and wife.
One of the essays also claims the future Richard III put forward as a candidate for Isabel’s husband. (5) I had never come across this before, and thought it strange when Richard was an untried seventeen-years-old when Isabel’s marriage to her cousin Ferdinand took place and ranked youngest of the York brothers. I believe the writer may have confused Richard with his older brother Edward. Before Isabel became Queen, marriage to Edward IV was thought a possibility, before it was discovered he had already burnt his bridges by a secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.
It is said Richard III, during his reign, was told by the Spanish Ambassador that "Isabel's heart had been turned against England because Edward IV had refused the offer of her hand to marry Elizabeth Woodville." (6)
If this is correct, putting aside the famous Castilian pride, does this indicate a very human trait in the nineteen-years-old woman who also believed God meant her to be the redeemer and Queen of Castile? Golden-haired, well over six feet tall, blue-eyed Edward IV was something of medieval pin-up King. Isabel went on to marry her cousin Ferdinand – a man too not lacking in physical charms.
I believe we see here the very human face of Isabel. Not only does this moment in history suggest Isabel possessed a typical womanly trait of a preference for an attractive man, but also shows that Isabel was determined to marry the prince of her choice, rather than be forced into a political match.
As made clear in this volume, Isabel the Catholic, like Elizabeth the First, was a remarkable and super-capable woman. But did Elizabeth the First really use Isabel the Catholic as a role model for her time as Queen? I really think that unlikely. More to the point, Elizabeth, like Isabel, understood how to politically shape herself to suit her time and place, probably resulting from a close study of what constituted less successful political careers.
It is more possible Isabel’s granddaughter, “Bloody Mary,” may have desired to model her Queenship on her grandmother’s grand example, though her stubborn crusade to return England to Rome just wasn’t a crusade England wished to take.
Also, was Bloody Mary's rule the reason Isabel became Isabella for so many? Brought up interestingly in one of the essays, Isabella may have resulted from the English desire to put down the grandmother of their unpopular Queen and the great-grandmother of her husband Philip II, who threatened England with his Armada in 1588. (7)
Particularly powerful in this work were the essays discussing how historical personages spin the onion skin of myth and legend, making it hard to really see the essence of their humanity. In Isabel’s case, the power of her myth spun a cocoon from which emerged a nation’s vision of itself to last for centuries. Only in recent time has this vision been swept away to be replaced by a more balanced analysis of Isabel’s Spain.
Even so, Isabel’s place in history is deserving of admiration, respect, and study – served aptly by the publication of these essays.
(1) Queen of Castile: critical essays, ed. David A. Boruchoff (New York: Palgrave / St. Martin’s Press, 2003, page 224.
(2) Work cited, page 70.
(3) Work cited, page 13
(4) Ditto
(5) Work cited, page 49
(6) Paul Murray Kendall, Richard the Third, W.W. Norton & Company, 1055; p. 304
(7) Queen of Castile: critical essays, page 69
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Wendy J. Dunn is an Australian writer obsessed by Tudor History. She now has a new passion: Medieval Castile. The author of the award-winning novel Dear Heart, How Like You This?, Wendy is currently working on a trilogy based on the life of Katherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII.