Hark! An Explorer's Untimely Demise! (The Early Death of Columbus)

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    “January 12th of the year of our Lord 1491 marked the last day a man from Genoa named Christopher Columbus walked this God-given Earth. He had spent his days wishing to explore this world God has given us. He was a fine man, who unfortunately had to suffer through the Great Pox in his last days. He will be missed.”
    -From the funeral procession of Christopher Columbus, 1491 [1]

    The death of Christopher Columbus was not a major event. But his attempts to get an expedition to travel West to Asia did not go totally unnoticed by historians. He would be grouped in with other would-be explorers, such as Giovanni Caboto as a sort of what-if scenario for historians, to see if an earlier expedition West would even be possible. Most agree that Columbus wouldn’t have ever gotten funding, simply due to how he had completely failed to accurately calculate the circumference of the Earth, while most educated nobles knew of the true circumference of the Earth.

    The Spanish peninsula[2] would be busy with the Reconquista for the time being, as Granada would hold out until 1492, when it fell to Castilian forces under Queen Isabella. The crown of Castile was not generous after this victory, as it would pass laws demanding the expulsion or conversion of all Jews and Muslims in its territory. This is thought by many historians to have occurred due to a siege mentality amongst the Castilians, as they came from a country that had been fighting Islam for around 700 years.

    The year 1491 marked the end of Hungarian hostilities with the Holy Roman Empire, with the agreement that if Vladislaus II were to die without a male heir, Emperor Maximilian would take the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia as his successor.[3] This clause did not come into effect, with Vladislaus having a son in 1500.

    Central Europe and Spain were not the only regions to have peace treaties. The British Isles had a peace treaty between Scotland and England in the late months of 1491.[4] This worked to halt the constant wars between England and Scotland for around 5 years, thus acting more as a truce than a full-fledged peace treaty.

    Thus, the first few years of the 1490s were a bit peaceful and dull. No truly major events occurred, and almost all somewhat major events were rendered moot by later events, such as the reignition of the conflict between England and Scotland, and King Vladislaus having a child.

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    Footnotes

    1: Translated into modern English for my benefit.
    2: This is not a mistake
    3: OTL
    4: OTL
     
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    • An overview of Spain for a while
  • Index

    • The Great Krigare

    “A Espanha sempre regerá as ondas!”
    -Attributed to Mem de Sá, Spanish Naval officer from the 17th Century

    Spain’s history is a long and storied one. From its Roman roots, it has been conquered by Goths, Arabs, and then by native Spaniards. From there, it was split into three main kingdoms, and a few smaller ones. Those three kingdoms were Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. Castile was the largest of the three in the Spanish peninsula, but was not the most powerful when they were finally fully united under one king in 1524[1]. The most powerful of the time was Portugal, with its economy more than matching Castile and Aragon. Its economy was key to maintaining power over the spice trade and its ability to field a large mercenary army. This is why Portugal was given control over all disputed oversea areas in the war of Castilian succession[2].

    The unification of Spain began with the marriage of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, and was completed with the succession of Miguel I, son of Queen Isabella II of Castile and Aragon and King Afonso VI of Portugal. Miguel I would be the first King of Spain, having united the Spanish peninsula for the first time since the Roman Empire[3].

    In 1496, King John II of Portugal died[4], leaving Afonso IV on the throne at 21 years of age. As king of Portugal, Afonso VI mostly continued as his father had ruled, continuing his meritocratic Council of Scholars and stopping any potential conspiracies to overthrow the king. His rule was not truly noteworthy for Portugal specifically, other than the fact that his marriage to Isabella II would prove to unite the kingdoms of Spain after their deaths. In Castile, Isabella II would inherit both Castile and Aragon, due to her brother’s death from catching the same illness that had afflicted so many in recent years, including King John II. Isabella I died in 1502, after a gradual deterioration over many years, leaving Isabella II as ruler of Castile before inheriting Aragon in 1505 with Ferdinand II’s death of an accident relating to food[5]. Many dramas would come from his death, with a common idea that he did not truly choke on his food, but instead was poisoned to death by his family to expedite Isabella II’s ascension to the Aragonese throne. This is viewed by most scholars as unlikely, due to the personalities involved.

    Isabella and Afonso’s marriage played a key role in Portuguese-Castilian relations, thawing the relations between the states with the knowledge that their child would rule over all of Spain. Similarly to Isabella’s parents, Isabella and Afonso were co-monarchs, ruling as joint monarchs over all three crowns[6]. With this, Afonso spread his father’s policies across the rest of Spain, spreading the economic growth that Portugal had under his father. Often, he ruled while Isabella took a back seat, letting Afonso do what he wanted as she had little appetite for ruling. However, what she did do, she did well. She was intent on producing an heir that would inherit all of Spain, and that she did. While some nobility were unsure of her son Miguel’s true parentage[7], she worked to ensure that no one would publically spread such rumours and undermine their son’s succession.

    Miguel’s succession was undisputed by 1524, thanks mostly due to Isabella II’s efforts. Miguel would be known centuries after his rule as a Fool King, due to his foreign policies.Miguel is stated to have squandered his very strong economy on foolish wars across the globe, such as against the Mughals, the Ottomans and the Safavids all at once, just because he had delusions of grandeur and a belief that he was unbeatable due to his navy. While he did do this, and other major wars that depleted the Spanish treasury of the time, he did manage, in Europe at least, to establish Spain as a Power worthy of respect.

    tumblr_o2veda5rmr1uc0g8bo1_r1_500.png

    Spanish troops failing to invade the Mughal Empire

    Prior to Miguel however, Spain had severe stability issues. It had a noble populace in Castile itching for a glorious war against heathens, and no true easy targets. Thus, it can be believed that Miguel’s wars, while expensive, served to fill that itch for the nobles in Castile, and worked to get rid of them. However, experts commonly agree that if this was his purpose, he could have achieved it more efficiently if he had just focused on one target, commonly suggested to be Morocco, instead of attacking practically everywhere in Asia. Morocco was almost completely ignored by him, leading some in his time to believe that he did not truly care about “fighting the Moors” and continuing the Reconquista into the Maghreb, a common goal amongst Spaniards outside of Portugal.

    For all of his faults militarily in Asia, in Europe Miguel managed to protect Spain’s Italian holdings and even expand them, gaining more lands near Naples, and even areas north of the Papacy. This was what gained him his reputation as a king of might in Europe, as he managed to face and defeat even France, even if it was just a minor border skirmish over a small town in the Pyrenees[8].

    Miguel left Spain in worse condition than under his father’s regency, and died too early. His only surviving son, John, inherited the throne at the ripe age of six in 1533, and his upbringing after that was primarily led by the Catholic Church, leading to his future reign being extraordinarily religiously-motivated, and his one goal being to “Finish the Reconquista.”


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    Footnotes

    1. Technically united under Afonso VI’s regency before-hand, and as co-monarch of Aragon and Castile.

    2. Treaty of Alcáçovas, and Portugal being so powerful is an overstatement. While Portugal did have Naval supremacy, it lacked land supremacy over Castile and Aragon.

    3. The Visigoths did not control all of the Iberian peninsula, and neither did the Arabs.

    4. John died in 1495 IOTL. Here he dies slightly later, of similar causes. That of disease.

    5. Isabella I died in 1504 IOTL, under similar conditions, due in part to John of Asturias dying. Ferdinand II died in 1516 IOTL, dying here of a complete accident.

    6. Technically Four crowns if Leon is counted.

    7. He supposedly did not look much like Afonso, looking more like Ferdinand II than anyone else.

    8. Andorra
     
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