Leonor of Navarre: The Price of Ambition

Abstract

By rights, Leonor of Navarre (d. 1479) should never have become a queen, as the youngest child of Blanca I of Navarre and her consort, Juan of Aragon. However, as a widower, Juan would disinherit their son and elder daughter when they refused to support his retaining the crown and settled the succession on Leonor. Chroniclers have blamed unrest and civil war on Leonor’s unseemly ambition and support of her father as his lieutenant in Navarre, while her reputation suffered further damage in the popular nineteenth-century novels by Francisco Villoslado, which romanticized the fate of Leonor’s older sister who died imprisoned in one of Leonor’s castles. Woodacre assesses both Leonor’s image as a scheming villainess in contemporary and modern works and her actions as a ruler in order to ascertain whether her reputation can be rehabilitated.