Fernando II of Aragon
| Ferdinand the Catholic | |||||||||||||||||
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Portrait by Michael Sittow
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| King of Castile and León (jure uxoris) | |||||||||||||||||
| Reign | 15 January 1475 – 26 November 1504 | ||||||||||||||||
| Predecessor | Isabella I | ||||||||||||||||
| Successor | Joanna I | ||||||||||||||||
| Co-monarch | Isabella I | ||||||||||||||||
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| Reign | 20 January 1479 – 23 January 1516 | ||||||||||||||||
| Predecessor | John II | ||||||||||||||||
| Successor | Joanna I and Charles I | ||||||||||||||||
| Born |
10 March 1452 Sada Palace, Sos del Rey Católico |
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| Died | 23 January 1516 (aged 63) Madrigalejo, Extremadura |
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| Burial | Royal Chapel of Granada | ||||||||||||||||
| Consort |
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| Issue among others... |
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| House | Trastámara | ||||||||||||||||
| Father | John II of Aragon and Navarre | ||||||||||||||||
| Mother | Juana Enríquez | ||||||||||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholicism | ||||||||||||||||
| Signature |  |
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Ferdinand II (Aragonese: Ferrando, Spanish: Fernando II, Catalan: Ferran) (10 March 1452 – 23 January 1516), called the Catholic, was King of Sicily from 1468 and King of Aragon from 1479 until his death. As a consequence of his marriage to Isabella I, he was King of Castile as Ferdinand V from 1474 until her death in 1504. He was recognised as regent of Castile for his daughter and heir, Joanna, from 1508 until his own death. In 1504, after a war with France, he became King of Naples as Ferdinand III, reuniting Naples with Sicily permanently and for the first time since 1458. In 1512, he became King of Navarre by conquest.
Ferdinand is today best known for his role in inaugurating the discovery of the New World in the future Americas, since he and Isabella sponsored the first voyage of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), in 1492. That year he also fought the final war with Granada which expunged the last Islamic state on Iberian / Western European soil, thus bringing to a close the centuries-long Reconquista. At his death he was succeeded by Joanna, who co-ruled with her son, Charles V, over all the several Iberian kingdoms except for Portugal.
Ferdinand was born in Sada Palace, Sos del Rey Católico, Kingdom of Aragon, as the son of John II of Aragon (whose family was a cadet branch of the House of Trastámara) by his second wife, Juana Enríquez. He married Infanta Isabella, the half-sister and heiress of Henry IV of Castile, on 19 October 1469 in Valladolid, Kingdom of Castile and Leon. Isabella also belonged to the royal House of Trastámara, and the two were cousins by descent from John I of Castile. They were married with a clear prenuptial agreement on sharing power, and under the joint motto "tanto monta, monta tanto." He became jure uxoris King of Castile when Isabella succeeded her deceased brother in 1474 to be crowned as Queen Isabella I of Castile. The two young monarchs were initially obliged to fight a civil war against Joan of Castile (also known as Juana la Beltraneja), the purported daughter of Henry IV, and were swiftly successful. When Ferdinand succeeded his father as King of Aragon in 1479, the Crown of Castile and the various territories of the Crown of Aragon were united in a personal union. For the first time since the 8th century, this union created a single political unit referred to as España (Spain), the root of which is the ancient name Hispania. The various states were not formally administered as a single unit, but as separate political units under the same Crown. (The legal merging of Aragon and Castile into a single Spain occurred under Philip V in 1707–1715.)
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