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Prologue
Valladolid, May, 1509
Despite the efforts expended at maintaining the personal union of the Iberian kingdoms during the lifetime of King Ferran’s wife, Queen Isabel of Castile, the queen’s recent death in has seen a great shift in Aragonese policy. Lacking a male heir, the Castilian throne was inherited by the heiress presumptive, the Catholic Kings’ eldest surviving child, the infanta Juana de Aragón y Castilla in 1504. With the death of his wife, King Ferran essentially lost the right to the crown matrimonial of Castile, though his wife’s will--ratified before her death by the Cortes of Castile--gave him the right to govern in his daughter’s absence or incapacity until the twentieth birthday of his grandson.
Furious losing his power over Castile and being confined to the role of regent, the wily king of Aragón immediately allied himself with the French and took a new wife, Germaine de Foix, niece of King Louis XII of France and cousin of Queen Catalina of Navarra, in hopes of preserving the independence of Aragón, and perhaps also gaining the kingdom of Navarra—the Queen Germana having a claim to the Navarrese throne through her late father, the Jean de Foix, vicomte de Narbonne, son of Queen Leonor of Navarra.
The arrival in Castile of Queen Juana and her husband, Philippe IV, Duke of Burgundy, in April, 1506, only complicated matters. The Cortes of Castile, meeting at Valladolid, soon confirmed Juana as Queen of Castile and León, granting the crown jure uxoris to her husband as King Felipe. Due to Queen Juana’s mental instability, King Felipe essentially assumed de facto rule over Castile, shutting King Ferran out of power in his late wife’s kingdom. However, the sudden death of King Felipe less than a year later from typhoid (though many insist that he was poisoned by King Ferran himself), once again allowed the Catholic King to seize the regency in Castile.
In the two years since, King Ferran has managed to once again secure his personal rule over Castile, confining his mad daughter, Queen Juana, to the convent of Santa Clara in Tordesillas, and implementing the terms of his wife’s will, to allow him to continue to govern until his seven year old grandson, Duke Charles II of Burgundy, has attained his majority and been proclaimed king by the Castilian Cortes. However, King Ferran knows that he is aging, and his hold over the rule of Castile is only for the duration of his own lifetime. The king of Aragón thus has been determined to sire an heir of his own and undo the personal union of the Iberian crowns that he and his wife had earlier worked so hard to fully implement.
In the small hours of May 3, 1509, after an agonizing eight hour labor, Germaine de Foix—known in her husband’s kingdom as Queen Germana—is delivered of a healthy son at Valladolid. Queen Germana’s husband, the King Ferran II of Aragón, now in his fifty-seventh year of life, is overjoyed and immediately orders three days of public celebration in honor of his newborn heir. Throughout the mighty Catholic King’s many realms and territories, including Aragón, Catalonia, Naples, Sicily and Valencia, church bells are rung, bonfires lit, and wine distributed freely amongst the populace. Indeed, in Saragossa, the spiritual heart of the Kingdom of Aragón, the king’s own bastard son, Don Alfons d’Aragó i Roig, Archbishop of Saragossa and Valencia, personally leads a Te Deum in thanksgiving for the birth of his half-brother. It is worth noting that celebrations in Castile are noticeably subdued outside of Valladolid, with the event hardly concerning the kingdom’s grandes and subjects.
The following year, on June 24, 1510--the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist--amidst great pomp and magnificence, the infant prince is baptized at the Cathedral of Sant Salvador in Saragossa by the Inquisitor General of Aragón, Joan d'Enguera, Bishop of Vic, at the very same font that the prince's own father had been christened at over fifty-seven years before. The infante is named after not only his patron saint, but also both his paternal and maternal grandfathers, being christened "Don Joan d’Aragó i Foix, Prince of Girona, Duke of Calabria and Montblanc, Count of Cervera and Lord of Balaguer," with the prince’s illegitimate half-brother, the aforementioned Archbishop of Saragossa, and Doña Isabel de Zuñiga y Pimentel, Duchess of Alba de Tormes, standing as godparents.
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