Aragonese Crown

Let's say Ferdinand the Catholic manages to sire a surviving son with Germaine de Foix and prevent the unification of Iberia. The other ramifications of this aside, I'm just curious as to how absolutism would fully develop in Aragon after his death, assuming such a thing is possible?

By Aragon, of course, I mean the entire collection of kingdoms in personal union, including Valencia, Catalonia and the Sicilies. I know that the Trastamaras had made great strides in the fifteenth century, and that Ferdinand himself was able to push through some administrative reforms. However, without the pool of soldiers and taxes to draw from in Castile, how exactly would things fare in Aragon? Would the Catholic King's successors be able to establish absolutism there? Or, would the kings end up just doing the same thing as Alfonso V and withdrawing to the wealthier and more easily manageable Naples, and ruling as absentee monarchs?

Just curious.
 
Well Aragon was definitely on the decline when Isabel and Ferdinand decided to unify the kingdoms. I can go back and look at my sources on Aragon administration at the end of the period but from memory the plague really did a number on royal power and that still wasn't fixed by the late 1400s. After all, Ferdinand had to fight off dissident nobility even while he was still married to Isabel (ed: Also the remença!). Valencia IIRC was the most stable part of the kingdom, but all their institutions were declining because they couldn't work together. I don't think he'd go to Naples, but I think an heir would continue the struggle against the nobility and the towns which were now fighting each other as well as the king in Catalonia.
 
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