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Updated: May 19, 2025
But this girl of sixteen was wiser than her advisers, for she refused to head a revolution, and contented herself with a claim to the throne upon her brother's death. Such a claim necessarily had to run counter to the claim of the dubious Princess Juana, and to discredit her cause as much as possible her sobriquet La Beltraneja was zealously revived.
This proposition brought about civil warfare, which was ended by Alfonso's death in 1468, and then Isabella was generally recognized as the real successor to her unworthy brother Henry, in spite of the claims he continued to put forth in favor of La Beltraneja.
A new cause for alarm soon appeared: another of Isabella's former suitors, Alfonso, King of Portugal, was affianced to the pitiful La Beltraneja, the two were proclaimed King and Queen of Castile, and the country was at once invaded by a hostile force.
In the midst of the rebellion which had broken out after Henry's attempt to foist La Beltraneja upon the state, he had proposed as a conciliatory measure that one of the most turbulent of the factional leaders, Don Pedro Giron, Grand Master of Calatrava, should wed Isabella, and the offer had been accepted.
Matters were hastened to their climax when the queen gave birth, in 1462, to a daughter who was called after her mother, Juana; but so evident was the paternity of this pitiful little princess, that she was at once christened La Beltraneja in common parlance; and by that sobriquet she is best known in history.
The pope dissolved the marriage between Alfonso and La Beltraneja soon after, and these two unhappy mortals forthwith retired from the world, she to the convent of Saint Clare at Coimbra, while the poor king resigned his crown and became a Franciscan monk.
No sooner had Isabella's wedding been celebrated than Henry began to stir up trouble again, declared that the queen's daughter, La Beltraneja, was the only lawful heir to his estates, and to further his projects he succeeded in arranging for a betrothal ceremony between this young woman and the young Duke of Guienne, heir presumptive to the crown of France, who had been one of Isabella's suitors, as will be remembered.
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