King of Aragon, Whose Marriage to Isabella I Brought About the Union of Spain
Ferdinand II (1452–1516) was king of Aragon who in 1469 married Isabella I of Castile, the two great kingdoms thereafter in effect merged, together laying the seed of the united nation of early modern Spain. In 1492 the couple completed the last step of the "Reconquista," taking Granada and ending nearly eight hundred years of Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula; that same year they funded Columbus’s westward voyage, and in the same year issued an edict expelling from their realm the Jews who would not convert to Catholicism — 1492 thus became a year of intense symbolic weight in Spanish history, and a key point for understanding the complexity of early modern Spain’s religious and ethnic policy.
The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella was no simple royal match but a carefully planned political union — the two great kingdoms of Aragon and Castile each kept its own separate administration, yet acted in close concert in foreign policy and military action, and this joint polity gradually evolved into the unified Spanish kingdom in the modern sense.
In January 1492 the combined armies of Ferdinand and Isabella took Granada, the last Islamic state on the Iberian peninsula, ending the nearly eight-hundred-year "Reconquista" — a year that thereby became a key point of intense symbolic weight in the historical narrative of Spain.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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