Isabella of Castile : Europe's First Great Queen / Giles Tremlett

Bibliogr. p. 562-584

1474. Castile was the largest, strongest, and most populous kingdom in Hispania-- and Isabella ascended the throne, a female ruler in a male-dominated world. Her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon not only united their kingdoms, but began a royal partnership in which Isabella more than held her own. Tremlett chronicles Isabella's colorful life as she led her country out of the Middle Ages and harvested the ideas and tools of the Renaissance to turn her nation into a sharper, early modern state

"The remarkable life of the queen who transformed Spain into a global power and sponsored Columbus's voyage that would open the New World. In 1474, when Castile was the largest, strongest, and most populous kingdom in Hispania (present-day Spain and Portugal), a twenty-three-year-old woman named Isabella ascended the throne. At a time when successful queens regnant were few and far between, Isabella faced not only the considerable challenge of being a young, female ruler in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world, but also of reforming a major European kingdom riddled with crime, debt, corruption, and religious factionism...