Abstract
The death of Blanca I in 1441 was a major turning point in the history of Navarre. Blanca’s son and heir, Carlos, the Principe de Viana, was twenty years of age when his mother died. It was a reasonable to expect that he would immediately succeed her as King Carlos IV. However, Blanca left a clause in her will that asked her son to refrain from taking the title of king in his father’s lifetime without his express permission, which realistically Juan would be unlikely to give.1 This clause gave Juan all the leverage he needed to remain as King of Navarre indefinitely and was the cause of over seventy years of conflict in the kingdom, which destabilized the realm and ultimately led to its annexation by Castile in 1512.
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Notes
Ramírez Vaquero, “La reina Blanca y Navarra,” Principe de Viana 60, no. 217 (1999), 336–339.
Javier Leralta, Apodos Reales: Historia y Leyenda de Los Motes Regios (Madrid, 2008), 345–346.
Linde Brocato, “Leveraging the Symbolic in the Fifteenth Century: The Writings, Library and Court of Carlos de Viana,” La Coronica 40, no.2 (2012), 57,
citing José María Lacarra, El reino de Navarra entre Francia y España (Pamplona: Aranzadi, 1973), 250. There is a document in the AGN that testifies to Carlos’s attempts to use the mar-trimonial agreement of his parents to argue that Juan had to rescind the Navarrese title; Carlos’s request to view the document is AGN Comptos Caj.154, no.62, 6 dated Oct 12, 1448, at Olite.
Jamie Vicens Vives, Juan II de Aragon (1398–1479): Monarquia y revolución en la España del siglo XV (Barcelona, 1953), 138.
María del Pilar Rábade Obradó, Eloísa Ramírez Vaquero, and Juan F. Utrilla Utrilla, La Dínamica Politica (Madrid, 2005), 476.
Townsend Miller, Henry IV of Castile (London, 1972), 65–70, and Zurita, Vol.7, 61–62.
Daniel Eisenberg, “Enrique IV and Gregorio Marañon,” Renaissance Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1976), 26.
José Luis Martín, Enrique IV Rey de Navarra, Príncipe de Cataluña (Hondarribia, 2003), 312–313.
Joseph Vassan and Étienne Charavay, Lettres de Louis XI, Roi de France, 11 vols., vol. 2; 1461–1465 (Paris: Libraire Renouard, 1885), 22.
Luis Suárez Fernández, “Fernando el Católico y Leonor de Navarra,” En la España Medieval 3 (1982), 621.
See Joseph Calmette, La question des Pyrénées et la marche d’Espagne au moyen-âge (Paris, 1947), 81;
Enrique Flórez, Memorias De Las Reinas Católicas. 2 vols (Madrid, 1761; reprint, Valladolid, 2002), Vol.2, 743–744; Ramírez Vaquero, Leonor de Navarra, 110–112; Videgáin Agós, Reina sin Corona, and Zurita, Vol. 7, 408–410.
Henri Courteault, Gaston IV: Comte de Foix, Vicomte Souverain de Béarn, Prince de Navarre 1423–1472 (Toulouse: Edouard Privat, 1895), 281–283.
See Núria Silleras-Fernández, “Queenship en la corona de Aragón en la Baja Edad Media: Estudio y propuesta terminológica,” La corónica 32, no. 1 (2003), 121–129
and William Clay Stalls, “Queenship and the Royal Patrimony in Twelfth-Century Iberia: The Example of Petronilla of Aragon,” in Queens, Regents and Potentates, ed. Theresa M. Vann (Cambridge, 1993), 49–62. Constanza was the granddaughter of Juana II of Navarre, through the marriage of Maria of Navarre and Pedro IV of Aragon. Pedro attempted to designate Contanza as his heir in 1347, but the Aragonese jurists ruled that she was ineligible to be named as her father’s heir; see Earenfight, King’s Other Body, 25–26.
Alfonso Garcia Gallo, “El Derecho de Sucesion del Trono en la Corona de Aragon,” Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 36, no. 5 (1966), 123–124.
Karl Ferdinand Werner, “Les Femmes, e pouvoir et la transmission de pouvoir,” in La Femme au moyen-âge, ed. Jean Heuclin and Michel Rouche (Maubeuge: Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot, 1990), 366.
Bethany Aram, “Authority and Maternity in Late Medieval Castile: Four Queens Regnant,” in Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages, ed. Brenda Bolton and Christine Meek (Turnhout, Belgium: Brill, 2007), 122–123,
and Miriam Shadis, “Women, Gender and Rulership in Romance Europe: The Iberian Case” History Compass 4, no. 3 (2006), 483–485.
Miriam Shadis, “Berenguela of Castile’s Political Motherhood: The Management of Sexuality, Marriage and Succession,” in Medieval Motherhood, ed. John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler (New York, 1996), 336.
See Hans Eberard Mayer, “Studies in the History of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers no. 26 (1972), 110–111 and 114–182.
Jaroslav Folda, “Images of Queen Melisende in Manuscripts of William of Tyre’s History of Outremer: 1250–1300.” Gesta 32, no. 2 (1993), 101–104.
See also Sarah Lambert, “Image of a Queen: Melisande and Her Heirs in the Illustrated Chronicles of the Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in Juliana Dresvina, ed. Authority and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), 140–165.
Luis Suárez Fernández and Juan de Mata Carriazo Arroquia (eds.), La España de los reyes católicos (1474–1516), Historia de España (Madrid, 1969), 202–203.
The text of Leonor’s ultimatum is printed in N. Coll Julia, “El dilema franco-espanol de Doña Leonor de Navarra,” Principe de Viana 13 (1952), 417–418. Coll Julia lists the original document as Archivo Historico Ciudad Barcelona, Cartas Reals Originals, 1476–1484, 204. Original text is “ la mas hobediente fija que nunqua nascio.” See also Zurita, Vol.8, 343–344.
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© 2013 Elena Woodacre
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Woodacre, E. (2013). Leonor: Civil War and Sibling Strife. In: The Queens Regnant of Navarre. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137339157_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137339157_5
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